Your closing remarks about the insanity we are meant to make sense of reflects exactly how I feel in my most confused moments of wondering "is it me that is crazy since so few others are seeing what I am seeing?". thank you for speaking what I seem to be constantly struggling with.
Heather - I'm a forever fan of yours. We live on opposite coasts but under similar "rules". You, your podcast with your fabulous husband and now your writing have saved me from despair countless times. My whole family listens to Dark Horse. Feel better Heather. Thank you from the bottom of my broken heart.
The story you tell and the writing moves me to tears.... I am so thankful that you and Brett and Dr. Malone and Dr. Kory and others exist. This is one of the miracles for me that has come out of this "pandemic"-finding new heroes and new thinkers and scientists and writers with whom I feel such a deep affinity. I love that you even told about the brisket and I love that you spelled out all the anomalies of life for your family during "pandemic". It is so insane.
I am a musician, classical musician, and live in Boston. We have a brand new mayor, our first woman, first person of color, first, I think, supposedly progressive mayor, and for a first action she has mandated vaccines for all public spaces, like NYC no negative tests are allowed. So, here I am, unvaxxed, and unable to participate in what is at the core of my life. As it turns out musicians are not where I can find like-minded folks. If we are to participate in our work and our art we are required to vaxx and our life has been so decimated as performing artists that we mostly unquestioningly comply. I have to conceal from my musician colleagues. It's like living a double life. Thus, in order to continue with the life I was living as a musician, the truth of the false vaccines and false mandates has to come out into the open. Public life in the arts has been left only to those who fully have swallowed the narrative, "hook, line and sinker" We artists, by definition, have never really swallowed "the narrative" or at least what the narrative was, but look, here we are, if we are public performing artists-caught. Were we really a kind of slave all along??
Meanwhile, my musician sibling and my musician son (and he's the father of my 2 young grandchildren) have both traveled far distances to where I live and because I told them the truth of my being "unvaxxed" they won't see me-or minimally saw me and won't stay here in my home. In my son's case won't stay in the home he grew up in-and we are, have been, very close. It's beyond belief, it's heartbreaking. It was the first time in my life that I spent both Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day alone. That we have a President (who I voted for) saying that I/we unvaxxed face a winter of "severe sickness and death for themselves, their families and the hospitals they'll soon overwhelm" is, I think, is evil and irresponsible leadership.......... further dividing people, further inviting abuse and violence against people. I will never vote for him again.
So, I am beyond grateful to you and Brett. I will try with all my heart and spirit to treasure these new gifts in my life though it seems I/we have lost so much. One needs to treasure new discoveries, new directions no matter how much pain they arrive out of.
P.S. I found you both through the "historic" video with Dr. Malone, Steve Kirsch and Brett. I shared it with a group that meets weekly with an outstanding herbalist, through zoom of course, called "Conscious Health Choices". We all knew this was a "historic" video.
P.P.S. I am old enough to have lived my teenage and early college years protesting the Vietnam War. These anti war, anti racism, people were my people. Now these are the people I mostly can't even begin to speak with about the travesty we are all living in. These are more of the people that I mostly end up concealing from that I am "unvaxxed". My worlds, my people are not now my people-it's like the world is upside down.
I find it so fitting and so ironic that it's the poorest countries, mostly in Africa, that have largely escaped the "pandemic".... this is beyond poetic justice. And, of course, we never hear this from the MSM.
Thank you for your humor, wisdom and truth! So glad I found you! This is everything and more about what our bubble of peeps have been thinking/doing. Leaning more towards Chinese herbs, but yes teaching folks how to live better, healthier lives and to recognize fear and the craziness going on. Preach it!
I too suffered from some vision issues when taking IVM a few weeks ago. I took the dose with dinner so any immediate effects would be overnight, but I was light sensitive in the morning for a few hours. Was only a 5 day course of treatment. Symptoms were mild, so we suspect Omicron.
P.S. we had to drive "out of state" to meet with a doctor that would prescribe IVM that was then filled by a pharmacy "in our state" but about 150 miles away from our home.
Just joined this substack. HH’s writing is terrific and grounded. Reassuring. Also appreciate the brief note re the 110 separate room theater. Thanks for your good work here.
Oh wow! Exact same visual disturbances for me with the ivermectin! It worried me a little so I stopped taking it. Which meant my symptoms persisted longer than yours.
Also, same untested bout of covid in February of 2020. Exact same symptoms. We are covid sisters LOL!
I am glad that you got over your infection rapidly.
This is what should have happened long ago for everyone. The government and doctors working together should have supported (not forced, mandated etc. I mean educate, encourage and possibly subsidise the supplements) everyone to improve their nutrition, especially regarding vitamin D.
If most or all people had 50 ng/ml or more circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D, then their immune systems would work a lot better than they do today with typical unsupplemented levels of 5 to 25 ng/ml. Then - especially with early treatments being already available in the home, without need for diagnosis and medical consultations - very few people would become ill enough to need hospital care, and the general level of viral shedding would be so low that the virus would spread only slowly, if at all.
The current mRNA and adenovirus vector "vaccines" have higher risks than are officially acknowledged, but still provide significant protection against serious disease in the majority of today's population who cannot access early treatments and who have terribly low vitamin D levels.
If this pandemic had been properly handled, it would have been over by late 2020 at the latest. Few would have been harmed or killed. The "vaccines" would only be worth using in those with significant comorbidities - obesity, diabetes etc. There would be no global scare campaign, or lockdowns - or masks except for those who choose to wear them.
Instead, it is still an up-hill battle trying to get doctors to understand the importance of 25-hydroxyvitamin D for the immune system, and how this is unrelated to the one hormonal function of the vitamin D compounds - a very low level of circulating 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D to regulate calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism. https://vitamindstopscovid.info/05-mds/ .
The most perplexing and intractable problem is not government cluelessness and corruption at the behest of the multinational pharmaceutical companies - it is the resistance of the average physician to a proper understanding of vitamin D and the immune system.
Part of the problem is that a great deal of the mass of vitamin D research articles are poorly written (mixed up terminology) and misinformed (assuming that circulating, hormonal, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D is important to the immune system). The researchers who discovered vitamin D based autocrine and paracrine signaling (inside individual cells, and to nearby cells) have not done a good job of explaining it to anyone else, including vitamin D researchers and vitamin D aware medical professionals. I bought two current, highly regarded, immunology textbooks and neither mentioned vitamin D in their indexes.
Another problem is that some doctors who generally recognise the importance of vitamin D (collectively, the three compounds vitamin D3 cholecalciferol, 25-hydroxyvitamin D calcifediol and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D calcitriol) for the immune system is that they think they already know what they need to know. So they think that it is good enough for a 25-hydroxyvitamin D deficient person, as most are without months of proper vitamin D3 supplementation, to take 5000 IU of vitamin D3 a day when they contract COVID-19, sepsis, Kawasaki disease, Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (both AKA PIMS Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome) etc.
Overall, there is extraordinary difficulty in getting doctors to recognise that they have something important to learn about vitamin D. I think many just think of any statements to this effect as spam about another over-hyped nutrient.
Prof. Sunil Wimalawansa, who I collaborate with, has been working to raise awareness of vitamin D among medical professionals for two decades or more. Most often, the response is: "It can't be true - it is too simple." So we see Medicine being continually derailed from its proper course into swamps of overly expensive, overly complex, treatments, such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, when improved nutrition is the most urgently required change which will improve health in general.
I have tried multiple times to get Vinay Prassad to take an interest in this, such as at: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/vaccine-effectiveness-goes-down-the/comments . He is a super-bright, communicative, doctor who really cares and who recognises problems in the over-enthusiasm for COVID-19 vaccines, at least for children and younger adults. My comments get liked by others. All these comments go to the author's inbox. There are not so many comments that he wouldn't at least partly read them.
He would be very interested in a simple, safe, nutritional supplement which would restore proper immune function in the majority of the population, whose immune system has never worked properly - unless perhaps one summer they got sufficient UV-B skin exposure to significantly raise their 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels for a few months.
Most doctors' lack of understanding of - and interest in - vitamin D and the immune system is the single biggest problem humanity faces regarding general health, and especially regarding suppressing COVID-19 severity and so transmission and serious harm and death.
Heather, I don't know if this is the best way to bring something to your attention, but I just got the newsletter from Breitenbush Hot Springs and thought this would interest you. It is titled Changes To Our 2022 COVID Policy and this is a highlighted section in it:
"It will no longer be required to show proof of a negative COVID test, proof of vaccination, or proof of previous positive test result. Due to the scarcity of available tests, the potential inaccuracy of tests, and the spread of Omicron regardless of vaccination status. Our first priority is reducing the risk of the spread of COVID-19 between our guests, staff and the larger community."
I am incredibly grateful to have found you and Bret through your podcast. Thank you for your courage to pursue truth. I am also glad to hear you are doing better but sorry you both had to miss that conference. Another Covid casualty, as we say in our household.
My husband and our two sons (19 and 17) all got Covid a year ago last November. I have yet to ever test positive. We/they were feeling smug that they had lifelong antibodies, however, I am now hearing my unvaccinated friends who very certainly had Covid before now getting Covid again. And I started to wonder. Covid 19 is a coronavirus. Colds are coronaviruses. There are no vaccines for colds, and flu shots aren't true vaccines because we can get the flu year after year. We can get a cold or the flu multiple times during the year.
So the bottom line is that the vaccine doesn't work and natural immunity may not mean as much as we thought either. What are your thoughts?
In light of that, it appears we need to keep trying everything we can to mitigate symptoms and illness and get on with our lives.
Again, thank you to your calm and common sense approach in the midst of the madness.
I am grateful that you and your son are returned to good health and want to express my deep gratitude to you and your husband for having provided such helpful analysis of these troubling times. I want to share my new post that links to free designs for posters that may be of interest to those attending the national rally against vaccine mandates on Sunday. Thank you so very much!
I'm really curious as a scientist that you'd be happy to conclude from two negative tests, but the assurance of a
remote doctor that you did certainly have covid. Are you curious to test for antibodies or conduct further testing for more confirmation, personally I'd be wanting further confirmation.
I have been insane. Really. I was a caregiver for a family member with dissociative identity disorder and their insanity drove me insane. It has been as long journey to recover and return to sanity. Seeing what is happening to us collectively now feels like a rerun of watching this person’s multiple identity system fragment and shift through its perpetual internal narrative wars. While this is someone else’s insanity we are facing in society, insanity can be contagious. It is not crazy to feel the effects of the insanity of others rubbing off on us.
Speaking of which, I wonder if you have done a talk or an article on the movie Don’t Look Up that I may have missed. If not, I’d love to see you do so. I found the movie delightfully rich with metaphors when I wasn’t trying to directly map the entire story with our current situation but allowed each individual scene to speak for itself.
Your closing remarks about the insanity we are meant to make sense of reflects exactly how I feel in my most confused moments of wondering "is it me that is crazy since so few others are seeing what I am seeing?". thank you for speaking what I seem to be constantly struggling with.
Heather - I'm a forever fan of yours. We live on opposite coasts but under similar "rules". You, your podcast with your fabulous husband and now your writing have saved me from despair countless times. My whole family listens to Dark Horse. Feel better Heather. Thank you from the bottom of my broken heart.
The story you tell and the writing moves me to tears.... I am so thankful that you and Brett and Dr. Malone and Dr. Kory and others exist. This is one of the miracles for me that has come out of this "pandemic"-finding new heroes and new thinkers and scientists and writers with whom I feel such a deep affinity. I love that you even told about the brisket and I love that you spelled out all the anomalies of life for your family during "pandemic". It is so insane.
I am a musician, classical musician, and live in Boston. We have a brand new mayor, our first woman, first person of color, first, I think, supposedly progressive mayor, and for a first action she has mandated vaccines for all public spaces, like NYC no negative tests are allowed. So, here I am, unvaxxed, and unable to participate in what is at the core of my life. As it turns out musicians are not where I can find like-minded folks. If we are to participate in our work and our art we are required to vaxx and our life has been so decimated as performing artists that we mostly unquestioningly comply. I have to conceal from my musician colleagues. It's like living a double life. Thus, in order to continue with the life I was living as a musician, the truth of the false vaccines and false mandates has to come out into the open. Public life in the arts has been left only to those who fully have swallowed the narrative, "hook, line and sinker" We artists, by definition, have never really swallowed "the narrative" or at least what the narrative was, but look, here we are, if we are public performing artists-caught. Were we really a kind of slave all along??
Meanwhile, my musician sibling and my musician son (and he's the father of my 2 young grandchildren) have both traveled far distances to where I live and because I told them the truth of my being "unvaxxed" they won't see me-or minimally saw me and won't stay here in my home. In my son's case won't stay in the home he grew up in-and we are, have been, very close. It's beyond belief, it's heartbreaking. It was the first time in my life that I spent both Thanksgiving Day and Christmas Day alone. That we have a President (who I voted for) saying that I/we unvaxxed face a winter of "severe sickness and death for themselves, their families and the hospitals they'll soon overwhelm" is, I think, is evil and irresponsible leadership.......... further dividing people, further inviting abuse and violence against people. I will never vote for him again.
So, I am beyond grateful to you and Brett. I will try with all my heart and spirit to treasure these new gifts in my life though it seems I/we have lost so much. One needs to treasure new discoveries, new directions no matter how much pain they arrive out of.
P.S. I found you both through the "historic" video with Dr. Malone, Steve Kirsch and Brett. I shared it with a group that meets weekly with an outstanding herbalist, through zoom of course, called "Conscious Health Choices". We all knew this was a "historic" video.
P.P.S. I am old enough to have lived my teenage and early college years protesting the Vietnam War. These anti war, anti racism, people were my people. Now these are the people I mostly can't even begin to speak with about the travesty we are all living in. These are more of the people that I mostly end up concealing from that I am "unvaxxed". My worlds, my people are not now my people-it's like the world is upside down.
I find it so fitting and so ironic that it's the poorest countries, mostly in Africa, that have largely escaped the "pandemic".... this is beyond poetic justice. And, of course, we never hear this from the MSM.
Thank you for your humor, wisdom and truth! So glad I found you! This is everything and more about what our bubble of peeps have been thinking/doing. Leaning more towards Chinese herbs, but yes teaching folks how to live better, healthier lives and to recognize fear and the craziness going on. Preach it!
You write so well; how can you be a scientist? I look forward to you reading this one. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I laughed about the neti pot. It's certainly an acquired skill...
I too suffered from some vision issues when taking IVM a few weeks ago. I took the dose with dinner so any immediate effects would be overnight, but I was light sensitive in the morning for a few hours. Was only a 5 day course of treatment. Symptoms were mild, so we suspect Omicron.
P.S. we had to drive "out of state" to meet with a doctor that would prescribe IVM that was then filled by a pharmacy "in our state" but about 150 miles away from our home.
Just joined this substack. HH’s writing is terrific and grounded. Reassuring. Also appreciate the brief note re the 110 separate room theater. Thanks for your good work here.
Oh wow! Exact same visual disturbances for me with the ivermectin! It worried me a little so I stopped taking it. Which meant my symptoms persisted longer than yours.
Also, same untested bout of covid in February of 2020. Exact same symptoms. We are covid sisters LOL!
I am glad that you got over your infection rapidly.
This is what should have happened long ago for everyone. The government and doctors working together should have supported (not forced, mandated etc. I mean educate, encourage and possibly subsidise the supplements) everyone to improve their nutrition, especially regarding vitamin D.
If most or all people had 50 ng/ml or more circulating 25-hydroxyvitamin D, then their immune systems would work a lot better than they do today with typical unsupplemented levels of 5 to 25 ng/ml. Then - especially with early treatments being already available in the home, without need for diagnosis and medical consultations - very few people would become ill enough to need hospital care, and the general level of viral shedding would be so low that the virus would spread only slowly, if at all.
The current mRNA and adenovirus vector "vaccines" have higher risks than are officially acknowledged, but still provide significant protection against serious disease in the majority of today's population who cannot access early treatments and who have terribly low vitamin D levels.
If this pandemic had been properly handled, it would have been over by late 2020 at the latest. Few would have been harmed or killed. The "vaccines" would only be worth using in those with significant comorbidities - obesity, diabetes etc. There would be no global scare campaign, or lockdowns - or masks except for those who choose to wear them.
Instead, it is still an up-hill battle trying to get doctors to understand the importance of 25-hydroxyvitamin D for the immune system, and how this is unrelated to the one hormonal function of the vitamin D compounds - a very low level of circulating 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D to regulate calcium-phosphate-bone metabolism. https://vitamindstopscovid.info/05-mds/ .
The most perplexing and intractable problem is not government cluelessness and corruption at the behest of the multinational pharmaceutical companies - it is the resistance of the average physician to a proper understanding of vitamin D and the immune system.
Part of the problem is that a great deal of the mass of vitamin D research articles are poorly written (mixed up terminology) and misinformed (assuming that circulating, hormonal, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D is important to the immune system). The researchers who discovered vitamin D based autocrine and paracrine signaling (inside individual cells, and to nearby cells) have not done a good job of explaining it to anyone else, including vitamin D researchers and vitamin D aware medical professionals. I bought two current, highly regarded, immunology textbooks and neither mentioned vitamin D in their indexes.
I wrote an explanation, which cites the key research articles: https://vitamindstopscovid.info/02-autocrine/
Another problem is that some doctors who generally recognise the importance of vitamin D (collectively, the three compounds vitamin D3 cholecalciferol, 25-hydroxyvitamin D calcifediol and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D calcitriol) for the immune system is that they think they already know what they need to know. So they think that it is good enough for a 25-hydroxyvitamin D deficient person, as most are without months of proper vitamin D3 supplementation, to take 5000 IU of vitamin D3 a day when they contract COVID-19, sepsis, Kawasaki disease, Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (both AKA PIMS Paediatric Inflammatory Multisystem Syndrome) etc.
Such people need 4 hour boosting with a single oral dose of calcifediol, or if this is not available, bolus vitamin D3 to boost their levels in, very approximately, 4 days: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sunilwimalawansa_multisystem-inflammatory-syndrome-mis-activity-6815294839769436160-99qJ/ and https://nutritionmatters.substack.com/p/calcifediol-25-hydroxyvitamin-d-or
Overall, there is extraordinary difficulty in getting doctors to recognise that they have something important to learn about vitamin D. I think many just think of any statements to this effect as spam about another over-hyped nutrient.
Prof. Sunil Wimalawansa, who I collaborate with, has been working to raise awareness of vitamin D among medical professionals for two decades or more. Most often, the response is: "It can't be true - it is too simple." So we see Medicine being continually derailed from its proper course into swamps of overly expensive, overly complex, treatments, such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies, when improved nutrition is the most urgently required change which will improve health in general.
I have tried multiple times to get Vinay Prassad to take an interest in this, such as at: https://vinayprasadmdmph.substack.com/p/vaccine-effectiveness-goes-down-the/comments . He is a super-bright, communicative, doctor who really cares and who recognises problems in the over-enthusiasm for COVID-19 vaccines, at least for children and younger adults. My comments get liked by others. All these comments go to the author's inbox. There are not so many comments that he wouldn't at least partly read them.
He would be very interested in a simple, safe, nutritional supplement which would restore proper immune function in the majority of the population, whose immune system has never worked properly - unless perhaps one summer they got sufficient UV-B skin exposure to significantly raise their 25-hydroxyvitamin D levels for a few months.
Most doctors' lack of understanding of - and interest in - vitamin D and the immune system is the single biggest problem humanity faces regarding general health, and especially regarding suppressing COVID-19 severity and so transmission and serious harm and death.
Heather, I don't know if this is the best way to bring something to your attention, but I just got the newsletter from Breitenbush Hot Springs and thought this would interest you. It is titled Changes To Our 2022 COVID Policy and this is a highlighted section in it:
"It will no longer be required to show proof of a negative COVID test, proof of vaccination, or proof of previous positive test result. Due to the scarcity of available tests, the potential inaccuracy of tests, and the spread of Omicron regardless of vaccination status. Our first priority is reducing the risk of the spread of COVID-19 between our guests, staff and the larger community."
Mandarin oranges never tasted so good as during this past week.
Glad you're feeling better.
I am incredibly grateful to have found you and Bret through your podcast. Thank you for your courage to pursue truth. I am also glad to hear you are doing better but sorry you both had to miss that conference. Another Covid casualty, as we say in our household.
My husband and our two sons (19 and 17) all got Covid a year ago last November. I have yet to ever test positive. We/they were feeling smug that they had lifelong antibodies, however, I am now hearing my unvaccinated friends who very certainly had Covid before now getting Covid again. And I started to wonder. Covid 19 is a coronavirus. Colds are coronaviruses. There are no vaccines for colds, and flu shots aren't true vaccines because we can get the flu year after year. We can get a cold or the flu multiple times during the year.
So the bottom line is that the vaccine doesn't work and natural immunity may not mean as much as we thought either. What are your thoughts?
In light of that, it appears we need to keep trying everything we can to mitigate symptoms and illness and get on with our lives.
Again, thank you to your calm and common sense approach in the midst of the madness.
I am grateful that you and your son are returned to good health and want to express my deep gratitude to you and your husband for having provided such helpful analysis of these troubling times. I want to share my new post that links to free designs for posters that may be of interest to those attending the national rally against vaccine mandates on Sunday. Thank you so very much!
https://onehotlot.substack.com/p/national-rally-against-vaccine-mandates
I'm really curious as a scientist that you'd be happy to conclude from two negative tests, but the assurance of a
remote doctor that you did certainly have covid. Are you curious to test for antibodies or conduct further testing for more confirmation, personally I'd be wanting further confirmation.
I have been insane. Really. I was a caregiver for a family member with dissociative identity disorder and their insanity drove me insane. It has been as long journey to recover and return to sanity. Seeing what is happening to us collectively now feels like a rerun of watching this person’s multiple identity system fragment and shift through its perpetual internal narrative wars. While this is someone else’s insanity we are facing in society, insanity can be contagious. It is not crazy to feel the effects of the insanity of others rubbing off on us.
Speaking of which, I wonder if you have done a talk or an article on the movie Don’t Look Up that I may have missed. If not, I’d love to see you do so. I found the movie delightfully rich with metaphors when I wasn’t trying to directly map the entire story with our current situation but allowed each individual scene to speak for itself.
Again, thank you.