Why Are We Flooded With Outrage Producing News Stories?
Tips for having a healthy relationship with the mass media
Oct 24, 2023
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Cross-posted by
The Forgotten Side of Medicine
"Recently I shared my perspectives on the cause of George Floyd’s death which elicited very strong opinions from many of the readers here.  My brilliant colleague AMD wrote a thoughtful reply to it which I feel cuts to the core of why the media programs us to become so polarized and unhappy about everything.  I would highly recommend reading it and considering its suggestions for how to have a healthier relationship with the mass media."
-
Pierre Kory, MD, MPA
A common mantra in the media is “
if it bleeds it leads
,” which encapsulates the observation that disturbing and graphic news stories are the most effective way to ensure an audience will be hooked to the story, especially if the disturbing headline can be packaged with some type of potential solution to the problem.  Since this works, it’s been a longstanding journalistic practice and a variety of methods have been concocted to both increase both the fear and disorientation mass media creates (e.g., a scary ticker always running across the bottom of a television screen).  In short, like many other predatory industries, much of the media prioritizes its own interests (e.g., getting profitable viewers) over the interests of the American people.
A decade ago, I saw a
remarkably insightful article
written by a well-known physician blogger (Scott Alexander).  It argued that the stories you will typically see covered by the media are ones touching on a controversial issue where it is unclear who is at fault.  This is because those stories will have enough information available to make a strong case either side is right, and in turn, people on either side will only be able to see the points supporting their narrative.
Once that happens, it is guaranteed many people will be available on both sides to fervently attack the other “wrong” side, allowing the story to go viral and capture the attention of the nation.  This model thus allows the media to avoid covering topics which threaten their sponsors (e.g., the dangers of the COVID-19 vaccines) and to retain a large audience (along with the advertising dollars that accompany it) despite the media not producing anything of value for the public (e.g., real investigative journalism that speaks truth to power or information that empowers the audience).
I believe this dynamic is extremely damaging to the country as it:
•Wedges people apart.
•Creates a great deal of stress anger and anxiety.
•Detracts people from doing meaningful work.
•Prevents up from coming together and finding reasonable solutions to the major problems we share as a nation.
The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
The Attention Economy
One of the major problems we face in society is that everyone is constantly clamoring for our attention, and frequently to get that attention they chose the most outrage provoking message possible.  This in turn shifts our culture from one that hungers for the truth and can appreciate the subtle nuances in arguments to a tribal one that wants brief soundbites to describe issues which say one side (your tribe) is right and the other sides is wrong.
I believe this issue is largely neurological in nature, and is best illustrated by the contrast of the effects of different drugs on the brain.
Many illegal drugs (e.g., cocaine or methamphetamines) work by giving a strong dopamine spike in the brain which is immensely pleasurable but fleeting.  This results in the times when you don’t have that spike feeling much more dead, and in time, the user becoming desensitized to the weaker stimuli of everyday life.  Additionally, dopamine spikes are immensely addictive to the central nervous system, which in turn makes these drugs extremely addictive.
Other drugs (e.g., many hallucinogens) instead work by activating certain serotonin receptors in the brain for a prolonged period, which provides a less intense but more sustained euphoria (good feeling) and often makes people feel more alive and connected during that phase.  Conversely, since those drugs do not cause addictive spikes, it is much rarer for people to become addicted to them.
In turn, I would argue that you can chose to pursue life along either of these two paths:
•By pursuing fleeting experiences that briefly give an intense euphoria.
•By trying to feel more connected and alive, and doing so by trying to fully experience what is happening in each thing you come across.
Dopamine Spikes
If you want people to buy a product, there are two common ways to go about doing it:
•Have the product elicit a strong emotional response that makes people want to buy it.
•Have the product exude a tangible value people can recognize and wish to attain.
In marketing, since the goal is to get the largest volume of sales with the minimal amount of work, this always results in the sales apparatus catering to the lowest common denominator which can do this.  In almost all cases, this requires selling the product on the basis of dopamine spikes rather than because it makes people feel more alive.
In turn, if you look throughout the society, you can see this same pattern in countless industries.  For example:
•With food, the processed food industry has done an immense amount of work to make processed food be as addictive as possible (e.g., a former FDA commissioner
disclosed how the processed food industry deliberately did this
by spiking foods with dopamine releasing substances so people would overeat junk food).
Likewise, in our culture, many ethnic cuisines (e.g., Chinese food) have been forced to change from their original rendition to a greasy fatty and salty one that caters the American palate.  Conversely, much of the subtle nuances in flavor have been largely lost from the American diet, which has led many chefs from other cultures to remark that Americans have a fairly unrefined palate.
•In human relationships, much of the connected experience people have from physical intimacy has been lost and replaced by conditioned responses to sexual ideas (e.g., odd fetishes or pornography).
•In Hollywood (
as discussed in this book
), deep and engaging movie scripts which maintain a continuity of plot (e.g., the original Star Wars) have been replaced with disconnected productions which rapidly shift from one dopamine eliciting scene to another (e.g., I felt this very much characterized
the most widely promoted Marvel Movie
).
Note: a screenwriter
left a detailed comment
on this post describing his experiences with this in Hollywood.
•In music, we’ve shifted from works of art that open the human heart to mass-produced music which uses a variety of algorithms known to trigger dopamine responses ad-infinitum.
•Tech uses a variety of dopamine triggering stimuli (e.g.,
blue light
or how
social media engagement is structured
) to make you have brief moments of euphoria and then withdrawals from the platform.
It is my belief that the susceptibility to this form of reality is a result of the nervous system becoming weakened from our modern environment.  For instance:
•Many vaccines and pharmaceuticals are neurotoxic.
•Working with computers (and poor sleep) fatigues the nervous system.
•Our sedentary lifestyles prevent us from connecting to our bodies
and circulating the fluids within it
.
•We have much less social interaction now and no longer directly activat the parts of the central nervous system that crave human connection.
To illustrate, imagine a day where you felt great (e.g., you’d had a good nights sleep and the day was not stressful) and then compare it to a day where the opposite happened.  In the case of the former, since your nerves are alive it’s much easier to appreciate the richness of life, you feel much more, and you want to engage with your environment.  In the case of the latter, you feel much less (hence why strong dopamine spikes that can still be felt in this depleted state easily grab your attention) and you have much less of a desire to engage with the world around you.
Consider for a moment the food example listed before.  Modern processed food emphasizes strong synthetic and addictive flavors fatigued tastebuds can overtly recognize. In contrast many traditional cuisines outside the reach of the processed food industry utilize a variety of more subtle flavors that form an incredible constellation of taste many industrialized tastebuds barely can even recognize.  Likewise, when you are feeling alive, you can appreciate those flavors, but when your nervous system is fatigued, those flavors pass right by you.
Likewise, look at the modern practice of medicine.  Because the schedules doctors are put under for years (if not decades) are a natural recipe for fatiguing the nervous system, doctors often are in a state of burn out where it is much harder for them to connect with patients or appreciate the subtle details a patient can present with that clues the doctor into the actual diagnosis.
Creating Dopamine Spikes
Since the total material wealth available to humanity has gradually become “limited,” (partly due to the upper class hoarding more and more of it) an interesting transition has occurred—we’ve begun to create more and more imaginary wealth (e.g., people will pay money to buy currency in online games to the point enough people do that
slave labor is used in other countries
to do the repetitive tasks necessary to earn that currency).
One of the most important new sources of this “imaginary wealth” has been an increasing importance being placed on the value of ideas.  For example, much of marketing revolves around creating the expectation of getting a product and the negative feelings with having an unmet expectation.  As a result, when you at last get the product (which can simply be a mental idea) you briefly have a dopamine rush, and then once it wears off, you are left immediately searching for the next rush.
The media in turn has done a lot of work to associate strong emotional reactions to certain ideas (e.g., specific words are “bad” and will elicit very negative emotions from the audience if they are said) whereas other ideas are good (e.g. “diversity”) so people influenced by the media crave the words even if they don’t know what they mean.
Because of this, it’s extremely easy for the mass media to craft public perception, as it can chose which narratives it wishes to associate a strong emotional stimuli with and  then provoke the public into reacting towards.  Conversely, it can also take important events and simply not condition the public to respond to them—which results in widespread apathy to a variety of critically important topics (e.g., all the COVID vaccine injuries).
One of the best illustrations of this is that the same people who will get up in arms about an offensive word being used to describe a specific demographic are completely numb to real life atrocities being committed towards that same demographic.  For instance, when Obama was president and you faced serious consequences for speech that was not “politically correct,” I simultaneously found it was almost impossible to get progressives to care at all about the deaths
which followed his bombing campaigns
in the Middle East
or the African slave markets
which were opened as a result of his administration illegally toppling Libya’s government.
The Outrage Economy
Since we have such widespread apathy and malaise in the society, there are essentially two ways to break through it.
The first is to package your message in a manner that elicits the maximum dopamine spike from the audience, which in most cases requires choosing something which greatly upsets or agitates the audience.
Note: this is also why sports announcers predominantly call out the score when it’s very close but not when one side is clearly going to win.
The second it to put forward something which feels genuine and real and thus entices people to want it on the basis of its intrinsic merits.
Since the former is easier to do, it’s been the default preference in the media sphere irrespective of the psychological and social consequences it has for the public.  However, grabbing someone’s attention through outrage cannot be used indefinitely as the dopamine spikes continually deplete the individual until they no longer respond to them.  The media has tried to compensate for this by using progressively stronger dopamine spikes (e.g., more outrage provoking material), but this is also failing, particularly since the audacity of those increasingly outrageous lies is causing many to develop immunity towards them.
If you look at the mainstream media through this lens, everything is seen very differently.
For example:
•The words no longer cause you to react, and you can identify the countless subliminal things the media does to trigger that reaction.
•Most of the words the anchors say sound more and more like hollow scripts being read from a teleprompter (which they often are—best shown by the identical words frequently
being repeated by anchors across the nation
).
•You see how many of the things aired have minimal importance and are simply being done to promote a corporation’s interests.
Note: the above image is from the cult-classic “
They Live
,” where the main character obtains a pair of sun glasses that allows him to directly see the controllers of society.
Generating Outrage
In my eyes, Scott Alexander’s key point was that if it’s relatively clear who is right or wrong with a story (e.g., Libyan slave markets are bad, committing a drive by shooting on an innocent family in a bad neighborhood is bad), unless people are directly affected by it, they do not experience a strong emotional response to the story and it’s quickly forgotten.
To illustrate this concept, let’s look at some recent events.
•The Maui Wildfires (discussed further
here
): What happened to the people of Lahaina was horrible, much of the world feels a connection to Maui and the government was responsible for much of what happened.  All of the media coverage of the fires did not discuss the government’s role in the events, so it was a relatively clear cut issue in most people’s eyes—what happened in Lahaina was bad, let’s send them some support and then move on with our lives.  As a result, Lahaina has mostly faded from the public’s memory, many of the victims of the fire are still suffering immensely (and need help), and no one has been held accountable for what occurred.
•The recent events in Israel (discussed further
here
): Almost everyone who does not harbor resentment towards Israel agrees that Hamas’s recent massacre of Israeli civilians was very bad.  In turn, if Israel had simply condemned it and just launched a retaliatory airstrike, within a few months everyone not directly affected by the massacre would have forgotten about it and before long Hamas would resume attacking Israel (which would then get minimal attention in the popular press until another large massacre happened).
However, since Israel instead chose to attack Gaza (which requires harming many civilians since Hamas habitually utilizes human shields) this issue became immensely controversial.  As a result, an acrimonious debate has ensued because people feel very strongly about about one side or the other, and this issue is thus unlikely to be forgotten. for a long time.
•George Floyd.  A key point that inspired Scott Alexander’s original post was the observation that the media only focuses on people dying at the hands of the police  when a good case can be made that either side was at fault.  In the case of Floyd, that was very much the case, which resulted it in creating an immense amount of division in the country.  Furthermore, significant controversy existed with how the police officers involved should be punished (as punishing them would signal that police officers should avoid high crime areas, whereas letting the officers off would signal support for individuals dying at the hands of police), which thus further increased the fervor on the issue.
So, as we all know, George Floyd became one of the most divisive topics in recent history.  Furthermore, it is still a vivid memory for many, best illustrated by Tucker Carlson recently
airing a viral segment
which alleged the police officers were thrown under the bus to protect everyone else and Pierre Kory (who served as a medical expert for Floyd’s family)
publishing an article
arguing that those officers were responsible for Floyd’s death.
The Downhill Spiral
In his article Scott Alexander shared a graph which aptly summarizes the dilemma many content producers face:
As the above data shows, posting something about a polarizing and divisive topic which irritates his readers gets a lot of traffic, whereas posting about something which benefits humanity (e.g., charity) gets very little traffic.  This in turn describes much of the online information economy.
Scott Alexander also illustrated how this situation (which I ascribe to a need for dopamine spikes) creates a lose-lose situation for activists.  If activists chose to promote a message that is not controversial, people agree with it, but are not motivated to do anything and forget about it.  Conversely, if they chose to promote a highly controversial message, it gets a lot of attention, but many who hear it are not motivated to support the cause.
For instance, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), is well known for staging publicity stunts that really upset people (e.g., when there was a water crisis in Detroit, they offered to pay the water bills for any family which agreed to stop eating meat).  As a result, almost everyone knows about PETA, but a relatively small number of people are converted to supporting animal rights as a result of PETAs actions (and conversely many actually decide to protest PETA by doing things like eating meat).  Conversely, principled animal rights groups that promote messages most people agree with never get any attention or motivate those who hear them to take action and thus also can’t shift the public barometer.
Similarly, if you look at all the BLM events since Floyd’s death, it’s quite hard to say if they accomplished anything or created any of the changes the less radical members of BLM had spent years pushing for.  Instead people are simply much more divided on this issue now, and many of the provisions that were put into place at the time of the protests are now being rolled back.
On the internet, you see a similar dynamic.  Those who promote the most provocative or divisive content tend to get all the attention, while the more moderate voices are drowned out unless they already have a large following.
Note: Before the “fake news” meme was weaponized against anyone who challenged the status quo, it was directed at a legitimate issue; many websites would publish patently false stories that were crafted in such a manner as to produce maximum outrage and have people be compelled to share them (e.g., “second man eaten by alligator that climbed out of a NYC sewer—city officials refuse to address this growing crisis”).
Navigating the Attention Economy
I’ve been aware of this issue for much of my life and put a lot of thought into the best ways to both get people’s attention and to do so in an ethical way that benefits everyone involved.  My own perspectives here were largely shaped by my faith’s belief that “anything of true value takes prolonged work to attain, while anything that promises instant gratification typically has minimal value.”  Because of this, I believe that a long and sustained effort to promote a good message rather than going for provocative topics and click-bait typically results in the best long term results.
For example, I’ve followed a lot of natural health websites over the years, and noted that
Dr. Mercola
has consistently gained a much larger following than the rest of them.  In parallel, I’ve noted that
Mercola’s website
only covered things that could be supported with credible references, and that a relatively moderate tone was used which did not claim more than could be claimed with the available information.
In contrast, many of the other natural health websites frequently would cover much more provocative subjects that they often could not provide evidence to substantiate, and while this might provide a temporary spike in traffic, it greatly limited their sustained growth because readers gradually realized not everything said there was true.
The central dilemma I in turn have faced has been “how do you get people to care about subjects that do not directly affect them” and “how do you do so in a manner that does not dissipate once the emotions of the moment have passed.”
My strategies have been:
1.
Connect the issue at hand to something I believe people already care about. For instance, as much as I complain about the medical system, I think the unnecessary suffering it creates is far less than what the military-industrial-complex inflicts upon the world—but sadly most people are numb and apathetic to that issue.  In turn, a large part of why I decided to pursue medicine was because I saw that the same exploitative practices were used in both industries.
I thus thought that if I could make people recognize medicine’s predatory business practices (which they often could not ignore since they were being directly harmed by them), then they would also be open to considering what the military was doing overseas.  Similarly, a major reason why I constantly mention similarities to the COVID-19 response when discussing previous medical atrocities is so that a context can created to anchor the reality of those atrocities to each reader as almost everyone was directly affected by how COVID-19 was handled.
2.
Do everything I can to make my content be genuine (e.g., writing in a heartfelt manner, trying to focus on the crux of the issue, and doing my best to ensure both the quality and integrity of what I write—which is very challenging when you consider how many data points are often involved), and then having faith it will be appropriately received.  I find one of the most important things for doing this is having a frame of mind which prioritizes discovering what is true rather than being right (and is comfortable accepting when you are wrong), and I believe this mindset is imperative for effectively navigating the immensely complex and divisive times we now live in.
3.
Waiting for the correct window to cover something.  Throughout my life, I’ve observed doing things at the right time allows you to get much more done (e.g., you do not run into all the resistance of trying to push things through), so as the years have gone by, I’ve come to have more and more faith in allowing things to unfold as the universe wishes for them to happen rather than forcing my desired outcome to be what happens.
For instance, I never planned to be a blogger as it takes an immense amount of work to build a following, and I did not have the time to commit to it.  However, during the vaccination campaign, I started to have a very strong intuition I needed to get a message out through writing.
I then made a few unsuccessful attempts to get that message out with my friend’s platforms and then before giving up, tried posting it myself on in a few places online (which I did not expect to go anywhere).  To my great surprise, it caught on, and
Steve Kirsch
for some reason decided to build a platform for me to get the message out.  Not sure what do with this newfound following, I shared
the log of the COVID vaccine injuries
that for some reason I’d felt strongly compelled to compile over the last year.
It went viral
and thus created this platform.
Since that time, I’ve continued to focus on posting about what feels “right” for the moment and things keep on working out in very fortunate ways for this publication.  So, even though writing here takes a lot of time (e.g., I’ve had to make sacrifices in my personal life and I can’t see as many patients now)—the amount of positive good I can do for the world has already greatly exceeded what I thought would ever be possible even if I pushed as hard as I could to make things happen.
Note: allowing a patient’s system to guide the pace and direction of treatment is also frequently the fastest way to cure a complex illness.  While this sounds “easy,” it is initially extremely challenging to let go of what you think needs to happen and what you want to happen—especially since you have to also be able to simultaneously recognize when a little push needs to be given to initiate the natural healing process or when it is critical for you take control of what’s happening in order to protect the patient.
Conclusion
An obscure song
I heard decades ago provides an incredibly poignant description of the world by illustrating how the rulers of the world have continually hidden the truth from us and then trapped us within a state of mind that makes it impossible to see it.  One of the most memorable lyric in it is:
And what you'll find is hate so blind
It destroys every way out of here
And what you'll find is hate so blind
It destroys every way out of here
Since I was a child I’ve been able to viscerally feel how the mass media manipulates and emotionally antagonizes us, and it’s been immensely depressing to see how effectively it invisibly influences those around me.  Similarly, once I started entering the holistic health field, I noticed one of the frequent pieces of advice I heard from many of the now forgotten figures in that movement was that the greatest thing you could do your health was to turn off the television as they all recognized how psychologically damaging the emotional manipulation (which the media thrives upon) was.
On one hand, what they each predicted is even more true now than it was in the past as, thanks to the internet, we are constantly inundated with the media from every direction and as hard as we try to escape it, we often can’t and frequently feel we have no choice but to go along with the tide it creates.  This trend is best illustrated by the tsunami of mental illness (e.g., anxiety and depression) affecting the current generation of children which
has been directly linked to their continual consumption of social media
.
Conversely, because of the more and more audacious lies being fed to us by the mainstream media, due to the ease by which independent information (e.g., competing narratives) can be easily dispersed through the internet, more and more people are waking up both to ideas that the media has continually censored (e.g., that vaccines are not always “safe and effective”) and that it just is not healthy for them to even listen to its lies in the first place.
Having watched this dynamic play out for decades, I feel the current shift we are witnessing is nothing short of remarkable.  However at the same time, it’s a very different paradigm and cultures typically struggle when they have to suddenly confront massive changes in the foundational constructs of society.
For instance, how do you functionally process the overwhelming amount of information the internet puts at our fingertips?  I would argue many people can’t, and this is both the root of both much of the mental illness we are seeing in the digital age and why it’s so hard for the right voices to be heard is the sea of noise that permeates every facet of our lives.  Similarly, to process that information, we’ve transitioned to a lifestyle that’s replaced most of our physical activity with mental activity, something which places immense strain on the body, mind, and spirit, and I believe is a root cause of much of the physical and mental illness we see today.
In short, the new environment we’ve found ourselves in has placed us under a variety of pressures many are understandably struggling to handle.  The hope I and many other share is that this dizzying pace of events is making many things (e.g., the emptiness and dishonesty of the media) easy enough to see and that it will encourage many of us to move beyond the longstanding paradigm of being controlled through negativity.  Being able to navigate this new reality is highly dependent on the state of mind you engage it with, and I hope that some of the approaches I use and shared here will assist you in engaging it too.
I sincerely thank each of you for your support of this publication (now at 60,000 subscribers) and the work each of you is doing to help move our society in a positive and more conscious direction.
The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
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George Floyd's Death - Response to Comments

In my previous post on the George Floyd case, I presented both a truncated version of the reasoning and evidence supporting my legal expert opinion report as well as the official eleven-page legal, written testimony that I submitted to the lawyers who retained me in his civil case.
 Based on the number and content of comments to my post, I discovered several areas which continue to lead to confusion and questions and alternative hypotheses. Some were a surprise to me and some were not. For instance, it is unsurprising that the case of Mr. Floyd continues to elicit strong emotions and strong beliefs and that the shortened version of my official testimony was insufficient (few read the longer version and many appear to have skimmed or superficially thought through the shortened version).
 Although I do not really want to delve into the case of Mr. Floyd further because I do not believe that countering data can change belief systems (nor do we need to flame more emotions or division/polarization). However, I will make a final attempt to address the data underpinning alternative conclusions to mine. Plus, many of us “medical dissidents” in Covid have been crying out with authorities for public debates of the available evidence underlying early treatments, vaccines, lockdowns, and masks. None were granted.
 So, although not a “true” debate, what I am doing is consistent with what academics do to critique and counter scientific papers in journals - they send their critique as a “Letter to the Editor” of the journal who published the paper, and the authors are required to offer a defense of their data, analysis, and conclusions in regards to the specific critique offerred.
 One critique from commenters is that Mr. Floyd was heard saying “I can’t breathe” well before he was put into prone restraint and thus his inability to breathe was caused by something other than prone restraint, like opiate intoxication, heart attack, methamphetamine use etc. This argument was best articulated in an article sent to me written by former Federal and State Prosecutor George Parry. He is also the Chief of the Police Brutality/Misconduct Unit of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office, which investigated and prosecuted use of deadly force by police.

 In the above article, Parry’s marshaling and interpretation of the evidence led him to conclude that Mr. Floyd died of an opiate overdose. Unfortunately, Mr. Parry exhibited no knowledge of the various types and presentations of acute respiratory failure which I believe is required to make an assessment of his death. That is why a pulmonologist and ICU specialist was retained and not a lawyer. .
 Now, what makes a clinical expert in medicine is not just medical knowledge, but rather the development of deep powers of “pattern recognition” which can only be acquired over years in the evaluation and treatment of thousands of patients. There are several discrete categories of respiratory failure with a large number of inciting causes. I have seen and treated all, thus I am highly familiar with their presentations, trajectories, treatments, and prognoses.
 To wit, I worked for years in the ICU and pulmonary wards at a busy hospital in Manhattan at the equivalent of more than 2.0 FTE per year. The reason for this is that other intensivists kept leaving and recruiting knew ones took a long time so we were always running a deficit in the number of intensivists to take care of the large volume of patients. As a result, I was treating and billing for so many patient hours that at one point the hospital administration became concerned it would trigger an audit for fraud (know that as an employee of the hospital I saw a small fraction of the billings generated). What I am trying to say is that I was evaluating and treating patients in acute respiratory failure for years (and giving lectures on causes and treatments for years).
 The important facts overlooked by many is that when someone is in a life threatening, severe form of acute “hypoxic” pulmonary pathology, they exhibit severely increased “work of breathing” as evidenced by rapid breathing, use of accessory muscles, exaggerated respiratory efforts, over-expansion of chest, nasal flaring, sweating etc. They often can barely speak. Although they might be able to say “I can’t breathe,” they certainly cannot speak full sentences. I observed no such signs of hypoxic respiratory failure in the multiple videos of the arrest episode.
 Further, in his article , Parry provides the transcript of the conversation Mr. Floyd was having with the officers before and during their first attempt to place him in the police car. The most important parts that I focused on in that transcript were fundamentally different than Parry’s. Although Floyd said he couldn’t breathe he also repeatedly said he was claustrophobic but the important point is that he was capable of having a prolonged conversation.
 For instance, read this exchange between Officer Keung, Lane and Floyd:
 Floyd: I can’t breathe.
 Kueng: You’re fine, you’re talking fine.
 Lane: Your talken (sic), Deep breath.
 Note that both Keung and Lane are making observations on his respiratory function and status - Keung rightly remarks that he is able to speak normally and Lane even encourages him to take a deep breath (patients in respiratory distress or failure do not need to be told this - it is automatic. That is instead something often recommended to people in panic or distress.
 Next, Floyd starts talking to Chauvin, and he starts to complains of a number of other random symptoms:
 Floyd: I’m through, I’m through. I’m claustrophobic. My stomach hurts. My neck hurts. Everything hurts. I need some water or something, please. Please? I can’t breathe officer.
 Chauvin: Then stop talking, stop yelling.
 Floyd: You’re going to kill me, man.
 Chauvin: Then stop talking, stop yelling, it takes a heck of a lot of oxygen to talk.
 Floyd: Come on, man. Oh, oh. [crosstalk] I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe. Ah! They’ll kill me. They’ll kill me. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. Oh!
 Chauvin literally has to tell him to “stop talking” because “it takes a lot of oxygen to talk.” True. Again, patients in respiratory failure do not need to be told to stop talking. The respiratory deficit prevents them from doing so.
 Further, the autopsy findings of his lungs were consistent with autopsy findings in patients post CPR such that the medical examiner did not even include it in his summary of significant findings even though they were described as edematous and congested. He also remarked on other areas of the lung:
 No mass lesions or areas of consolidation are present. The pulmonary vascular tree is free of thromboemboli. The tracheobronchial tree is free of blood, edema fluid, or foreign material.
 In terms of the autopsy findings in his heart:
 Cross sections of the vessels show multifocal atherosclerosis, with 75% proximal and 75% midnarrowing of the left anterior descending coronary artery; 75% proximal narrowing of the 1st diagonal branch of the left anterior descending coronary artery; 25% proximal narrowing of the circumflex coronary artery; and 90% proximal narrowing of the right coronary artery. The myocardium is homogeneous, redbrown, and firm.
 The bolded finding is the most important finding (which many commenters overlooked) and indicates that, although he had significant atherosclerotic heart disease (welcome to America), no areas of scar or tissue damage were found indicating a heart attack.
 Ok, so the above should address all the comments suggesting he died of a heart attack from his atherosclerosis and/or methamphetamine use given that heart attacks would also typically present as hypoxic respiratory failure. One commenter even argued that Floyd died of “negative pressure pulmonary edema” - a rare form of hypoxic respiratory failure which can also very very rarely be caused by opiates.
 Now, the other main category of respiratory failure is called hypercapneic respiratory failure. This occurs when a patient is unable to take in a sufficient volume of air with each breath and/or their breathing rate slows such that not enough air is exchanged and carbon dioxide rises in the blood, rendering them unconscious.
 Opiate overdoses are one of the most common causes of hypercapneic respiratory failure and lead to unconsciousness. Prone restraint is also a cause of hypercapneic respiratory failure and leads to unconsciousness. So, which did he die of?
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 Autopsy won’t really help here given that transient external compressive forces like in prone restraint as well as opiate overdose will not show evidence of acute pathologic changes in the lung or windpipe. From this review paper on prone cardiac arrest:
 Autopsy examinations in arrest-related deaths may be unrevealing. Luke and Reay stated that deaths in-custody often demonstrate little pathologic evidence of the cause of death and there are no diagnostic markers of asphyxial deaths [35].
 So, how can we differentiate between opiate overdose and prone-induced cardiac arrest? Again, from my prior post, patients dying of an opiate overdose do not say “I can’t breathe.” Why? Because before they stop breathing they first become lethargic in a highly pleasurable state, then progress to unconsciousness and then they stop breathing (this can happen very fast with IV administration of opiates).
 What must also be recognized is that in patients suffering from terminal breathlessness from lung pathology, administering opiates in therapeutic palliative doses is a standard treatment to blunts feelings of “dyspnea” (i.e. the sensation of difficulty breathing). Thus, someone high on opiates should not be feeling or complaining of breathlessness.
 Thus it is contradictory of Mr. Parry to emphasize that Mr. Floyd was awake, speaking full sentences, and complaining of numerous symptoms including “I can’t breathe” while also concluding he died of a fentanyl overdose. It defies physiologic and pharmacologic reasoning. Thus, given the findings on autopsy, along with Floyd’s behavior and speech and history of claustrophobia, the most rational explanation for why he complained that he couldn’t breathe during the earlier episode was from anxiety/panic at being placed in the police car with claustrophobia. In fact, anxiety/panic is one of the most common causes of dyspnea when the lungs and heart are normal.
 That is why both the first medical examiner and the 2nd opinion medical examiner, the plaintiff medical expert in the civil case (me), the plaintiff medical expert in the criminal case (Dr. Martin Tobin) as well as a jury all found that asphyxiation was the cause of death.
 Another argument that Parry makes to conclude fentanyl was the cause of his death is based on the measured level of fentanyl in his blood. From my post yesterday,
 “..in order to properly interpret the levels found, one must first recognize that chronic opiate users, which Mr. Floyd was, can and do often develop significant levels of physiologic tolerance to opiates. Thus the absolute level measured in a chronic user is not accurately predictive of the degree of intoxication or death. However, I agree that if Mr. Floyd’s level was found in an opiate-naive user, it would almost certainly predict unconsciousness and/or risk of death.”
 My favorite argument is when people pointed out that on his death certificate, Floyd was determined to have died of “CARDIOPULMONARY ARREST.” Just so you know, this is the condition of death and is what everybody “dies” from. So much so that it is often unnecessary and redundant to put it on a death certificate. The most important part of a death certificate is the proximate cause contributing to “cardiopulmonary arrest” and not the final arrest state (i.e. death).
 Finally, one of Parry’s most compelling arguments is that the medical examiners reached their initial conclusions prior to the toxicology report being made available. This is presented as damning evidence of some sort of malfeasance.
 I do not feel this is as significant a finding as Parry because the relevance of his toxicology findings is mitigated by the extensive clinical/observational data from a highly videotaped arrest episode showing Floyd walking, talking, resisting officers and complaining of claustrophobia, difficulty breathing, and multiple other symptoms. None of that behavior supports a finding of severe opiate intoxication which is why they did not conclude that was the primary cause of death. I am sure he was high though, just like millions of people every day who do not die of their drug use.
 Thus the absolute level of fentanyl in his blood did not alter their conclusions even after becoming known.
 Another argument by commenters was that I, as a plaintiff’s witness, was biased towards arriving at my conclusion. Arguing lack of bias to me is impossible, so all I can offer is that I have done plaintiffs work before and on two occasions I arrived at a conclusion that did not support a finding of malpractice of the accused physician. I was quickly dropped from the case both times. Note that was after being paid for my review work. Thus payment is not predicated on my conclusion.
 Another argument by commenters was that his methamphetamine use killed, presumably via an “excited delirium.” From this review paper :
 In 2020, Strömmer et al. comprehensively reviewed the literature and concluded that restraint was the common denominator for virtually all fatalities and found “no existing evidence that indicates that [excited delirium] is inherently lethal in the absence of aggressive restraint” [39].
 Another argument made by commenters is that Parry states that prone restraint is included as a tactic in the police manual. Not true. Instead, Parry is referring to the use of a neck restraint technique involving compressing the neck with an arm or leg, which he then argues is equivalent to placing a knee on the neck in prone position. The manual nor Parry mention that the neck restraint should not be combined with another officers two knees on his back and one holding down his legs.
 And yes, prone restraint deaths are rare but not zero. Citing papers that found no deaths in thousands of prone restraints ignores the factors which are required to cause death, such as the duration of the restraint and multiple forces. In fact the dangers of prone restraint are well known such that many agencies have restricted or prohibited the use of prone restraints, especially for extended periods, and have emphasized alternative, less risky methods of control. From this excellent review paper by Weedn et al:
 Social scientists and prosecutors have typically investigated deaths during police encounters by use-of- force analyses [4], but such analyses are not scientific or medical determinations of whether or not the police intervention caused the death. The Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) collects data on arrest-related deaths from law enforcement agencies that are more specific to cause of death determinations pursuant to the Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 (DCRA). BJS recently reported that of the 70% of the cases in which the manner of death was classified as homicide [5]:
 • In 19.9%, the police fought or struggled with decedents.
 • In 7.6%, the police physically restrained decedents.
 • In 12.3%, the police restrained decedents with equipment.
 • In 6.2%, decedents were placed in the prone position .
 However, due to non-uniform, non-detailed, and possibly biased reporting, we do not have good statistics on the frequency, manner, or duration of prone positioning, use of restraints, the underlying health of the subjects in these police encounters, or other factors that should be analyzed to understand these deaths.
 Lastly, in a truly odd coincidence, I happen to have met someone that I consider one of the world experts in the physiology and risks of prone restraint (a co-author of the above paper), albeit this happened long after the Floyd case. His name is Dr. Alon Steinberg and he happens to be the husband of my friend, colleague, and well-known fellow Covid “dissident,” Dr. Sabine Hazan (who is also a gastroenterologist and microbiome expert who has researched and published on a number of Covid topics).
 Turns out we both have daughters who are sophomores at the same University. We met up for a drink at parents weekend when I learned he had published his comprehensive review below :

 Interestingly, we also had a debate as to the physiologic cause of death in prolonged prone restraints. Although I believed that it is largely the resulting hypoventilation which leads to increased CO2, he instead argues that it is not only from hypoventilation but likely more so from diminished cardiac output via external compression as well as metabolic acidosis from both overexertion and poor perfusion. Although illuminating, the underlying relative contributions of the pathologic consequences of prone restraint does not alter the finding that prone restraint can lead to an arrest.

 P.S I just want to say thanks to all my subscribers, especially the paid ones! Your financial support is greatly appreciated as it allows me to devote what is often large amount of time I spend researching and writing my posts, so again, thanks. - Pierre
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 P.P.S - Proud to report that my book is gaining Best Seller status on Amazon in several countries and is climbing up the U.S Amazon rankings… Link:

Summary: Many commenters to my last post offerred up alternative explanations to my conclusion as to the cause of Mr. Floyd's death. Let's go through them.


George Floyd Did Not Die Of a Fentanyl Overdose

Recently, Tucker Carlson, who I consider to be a highly skilled, professional, and widely respected journalist, reported that the public was lied to about the cause of George Floyd's death and that he actually died of an opiate overdose. He is apparently basing this reporting on the opinion of the Hennepin County Prosecutor Amy Sweasy who claims that Dr. Andrew Baker, the medical examiner who performed Floyd’s autopsy, withheld Floyd’s true cause of death for fear of public retaliation.
 As the pulmonologist expert witness retained in the civil case, I was provided access to all of the medical evidence. I spent dozens of hours reviewing video footage, ambulance records, medical records, toxicology reports and autopsy findings. I want Mr. Carlson to understand why my interpretation of all of the available evidence (still) strongly leads to the opposite conclusion of what the medical examiner is apparently now saying. I want to state at the outset that the medical examiner’s opinion then, as well as now, did not influence my conclusion so his changing of his interpretation has little relevance.
 I am curious as to whether Mr. Carlson will correct his reporting if indeed he agrees with my below interpretation as an independant medical expert.
 Before I go any further, a disclaimer: I recognize that the George Floyd case is a highly divisive and emotionally charged one for countless Americans. Many are profoundly saddened and outraged over the circumstances of his death; others are convinced he died of a drug overdose or believe he deserves little sympathy given his criminal background. Plenty are angered by the often supportive media coverage of the subsequent and sometimes violent Black Lives Matter movement protests.
 So let me be clear: I am not a lawyer, a prosecutor or a judge. I am not a political scientist, or a sociologist, or a psychologist. I was not asked to deliver a moral or character assessment of Mr. Floyd. I have never met a saint, although I have known a few people that I feel come close. I never met Mr. Floyd. I was simply asked for my expert opinion as a lung and ICU specialist as to the proximate cause of his death based on all the available evidence, of which there was an extensive amount. It was an important task and one I felt confident I was expertly suited to perform.

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 Know that I have for years done expert witness reviews of medical malpractice cases as I find the work both interesting and challenging. The lawyers I worked for had consistently rated my work highly thus I was consulted often. The firm representing Mr. Floyd’s family in their wrongful death lawsuit interviewed me within days of his death and I was quickly retained (as an aside, this was 5 months before I became an expert in the use of ivermectin in Covid and was subsequently punished professionally for my resulting advocacy of the medicine). Had Mr. Floyd’s death occurred after that point, I am sure I would never have been retained.
 The official expert testimony I submitted (found at the end of this post) is a lengthy and comprehensively detailed document which I’m honored to say my mentor Paul Mayo called, "a master class in pulmonary physiology."
 My report concluded that George Floyd didn’t die from (just) a knee on the neck nor were the drugs found in his system a major contributor. Just as with the response to the Covid pandemic, I think it is important to understand exactly what happened to Mr. Floyd so that it never happens again.
 For those not interested in reading the lengthy report, I will instead focus on clarifying what I think are the two most critical misinterpretations of the available evidence that I have seen on social media and in certain press outlets.
 That Mr. Floyd died of an opiate overdose due to severely elevated levels of fentanyl measured in his bloodstream as documented in his toxicology report.

 In order to properly interpret the levels found, one must first recognize that chronic opiate users, which Mr. Floyd was, can and do often develop significant levels of physiologic tolerance to opiates. Thus the absolute level measured in a chronic user is not accurately predictive of the degree of intoxication or death. However, I agree that if Mr. Floyd’s level was found in an opiate-naive user, it would almost certainly predict unconsciousness and/or risk of death.
 Much more important than the level of opiates found in his blood is that clinically, throughout the videotaped arrest, Mr. Floyd was conscious and able to walk and communicate clearly. Due to his known claustrophobia, he was even able to struggle with officers on two separate occasions as they tried to force him into the back of a police car. His awake and physically active state was observed up until he was placed into prone restraint for many minutes. Also, when he was first placed in prone restraint, he was clearly awake, in distress, and begging to have the pressure of the officers bodies be removed from his back and neck.
 The physical and cognitive abilities exhibited by Mr. Floyd are completely inconsistent with someone severely intoxicated with an opiate. In opiate intoxication, patients are lethargic, minimally arousable, and/or exhibit slowed breathing.
 As a pulmonologist expert in physical examination, I did not observe shallow or slowed breathing until he was put into prone restraint (i.e. face and chest down on a hard surface). Recall that properly trained police officers are taught to never restrain a suspect in this position, because it is well known to cause death due to the inability of a suspect to sufficiently breathe. So, although he was probably somewhat high given the fentanyl found in his system, it was not severe clinically nor did it appear life-threatening.
 Third, opiate overdoses occur within seconds to minutes of IV administration and the first physiologic effect is loss of consciousness prior to breathing then slowing and the heart then stopping minutes later (in massive IV overdoses, the first two can occur simultaneously and quickly). Thus, the prolonged time between when he would have last had access to IV opiates and when he stopped breathing in prone restraint was far too prolonged to blame on an IV opiate overdose. But what about if he had swallowed a bunch of pills containing opiates as the officers were approaching just prior to the arrest?
 Certainly, if it was a really large amount of pills or a very high dosage form, this could lead to an overdose, but again, the absorption of oral opiates is much much slower and, if that was occurring, would have led to a slowly progressive intoxication evidenced by gradually diminishing consciousness and clarity, loss of muscle tone/activity, and slowed breathing. Although not directly relevant nor did it figure into my conclusion, I was provided no evidence of him having overdosed in the past.
 But let’s just say, for the sake of argument, that the opiates he allegedly took prior to arrest just started to enter his bloodstream during the same time period he was put into prone restraint. A couple of problems with making this argument. First, I found no report of any witness or police officer who described him swallowing pills. That supposedly happened in a prior arrest in 2019 but was not documented in the 2020 arrest. From a media report, he had “foam” around his mouth and “semi-chewed pills” were allegedly found in his car but again, even if it were true, from the above, he was not initially severely intoxicated.
 Second, know that prone restraint causes carbon dioxide (CO2) to slowly rise in the suspect’s blood as a result of their inability to inhale and exhale sufficiently, a condition called “CO2 narcosis.” C02 narcosis, as the name suggests, presents identically to opiate intoxication with increasing lethargy evolving into unconsciousness, slowed breathing, and then cardiac arrest.
 Thus, in order to say that he died of an opiate overdose, you have to believe that it is more likely that his (supposedly) slowly rising opiate absorption reached a critical level at the same time that he was many minutes into a breath-restricting and C02 narcosis-causing prone restraint position. This is so improbable as to be near impossible. In medical malpractice causation, the evidence standard for cause is that which is “more likely than not.” The problem with this argument is that patients whose respiratory drive is being suppressed by opiates… never complain of it (Mr. Floyd was crying “I can’t breathe” repeatedly - with each plea ignored). In contrast, opiate overdose victims first descend into a sleep-like, highly pleasurable state, and then progress into unconscious, their breathing slows, stops, and they arrest.
 But there’s more to disprove opiate overdose than a compelling probability assessment.
 So lets entertain this hypothesis even further. Let’s again entertain that the (allegedly) rising oral opiate absorption hit a critical level causing gradual unconsciousness perfectly timed in the middle of a prolonged, three officer-weight bearing prone restraint episode.
 Here is where you need to know that in one of the videos, there is a bystander who claimed he had specific training which led him to shout at the officers, over and over, “get off his neck man, you ain’t supposed to do that, get off his neck, get off his neck, he can’t breathe” which, after Mr. Floyd lost consciousness, changed to “check his pulse, check his pulse, he ain’t breathing, check his pulse, he is dead man.”
 They did not take their weight off of Mr. Floyd, either at the time or for many minutes after. This is important because opiate overdoses are easily treatable as long as you can support breathing. For instance, I have taken care of many many dozens of opiate overdoses in the ICU. As long as the unconscious overdose patient is found with a pulse or pulse can be restored with CPR, all they need is a breathing tube and mechanical ventilator support until the opiate wears off. I cannot tell you how many young overdose victims I admitted on a ventilator. The majority would wake up hours later when the opiates wore off and then were quickly discharged alive from the ICU.
 Certainly an uncomfortable minority never woke up due to anoxic brain injury from being in cardiac arrest for too long prior to successful CPR. However, in Floyd’s case, that would not and should not have happened because 4 police officers trained in CPR were present at the scene and could have identified pulselessness quickly (they were being begged to do so by bystanders). So, they were right there when he lapsed into unconsciousness, and thus they could have rapidly taken their body weight off of him, identified pulselessness, and initiated CPR.
 But that didn’t happen until many minutes later when an ambulance paramedic showed up on the scene and tapped Officer Chauvin’s shoulder to get him to release his knee from the neck of the lifeless Mr. Floyd (I should point out that even the paramedic did not immediately check the pulse of unconscious Mr. Floyd, which to me as an intensivist, violated medical standards).
 Thus, and I don’t want to litigate this, but I believe that based on the above actions, the crime would still have been homicide/unintentional murder/3rd degree murder based on the use of an aggressive and life-threatening prone restraint along with their indifference to Mr. Floyd’s unconscious and limp body. Lastly, all of the toxicology data and medical record data were presented and argued in the criminal case, and a jury of his peers found Chauvin guilty of same.
 The second misinterpreted piece of evidence is that that no damage or fracture to his trachea (windpipe) was found on autopsy thus he did not die of asphyxiation.

 What you need to know is that the windpipe is only half made of cartilage/bone. The posterior half is actually made of soft tissue. Windpipes can thus be occluded easily, either with hands around the neck via strangling, or just pressure from a knee. The trachea does not have to fracture to be occluded. Heck, when I was doing bronchoscopy and my scope was in the trachea, if the patient responded with a vigorous cough, the trachea would occlude transiently due to thoracic pressure “ballooning” the posterior membranous wall to contact the anterior wall and occlude. But that occurs transiently and is of no significant consequence. So, fracture of the trachea is not required for prolonged occlusion to have occurred.
 Further, it is my opinion that Mr. Floyd did not die of asphyxiation solely due to the pressure on Mr. Floyd’s neck from Officer Chauvin’s knee. Had this been the sole cause, total occlusion of the trachea via external forces would have rendered communication impossible. When Chauvin’s knee was initially placed on Mr. Floyd’s neck, he could phonate (i,.e. make sounds) given that he was recorded pleading with the officers to “get off” of him and then later, just before he became unconscious, he began calling out for his mother. This is impossible with an occluded trachea. It is also impossible in severe opiate intoxication.
 Instead, my conclusion was that Mr. Floyd died by the combined forces of three officers bearing weight on his thoracic cage (upper back, lower back, and neck/throat) against a concrete surface, rendering him unable to take in sufficient oxygen or expel sufficient carbon dioxide with each breath. It is a rapidly and extremely distressing sensation to not be able to take in a sufficient volume of air with each breath. Just think back to the last overly vigorous bear hug you received and how quickly you became uncomfortable and sought release.
 Ultimately, it was my determination that Mr. Floyd was slowly suffocated as a result of the combined weight of multiple officers on this thoracic cage and windpipe after being placed in the prone position. It was a severely distressing way to die.

 P.S My official submitted report follows but I first want to say thanks to all my subscribers, especially the paid ones. Your financial support is greatly appreciated as it allows me to devote what is often large amount of time I spend researching and writing my posts, so again, thanks. - Pierre
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 GEORGE FLOYD EXPERT OPINION REPORT
 June 9, 2020
 Dear Ms. Roman ( not the attorneys name ):
 You have asked me to review materials and offer expert opinions concerning the cause of death of Mr. George Floyd during his videotaped apprehension and arrest which occurred on May 25, 2020, in Minneapolis, MN.
 I am a physician licensed by the States of Wisconsin and Illinois.  I am a graduate of St. George’s University School of Medicine and I completed an Internal Medicine Residency at Columbia University’s St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Internal Medicine Residency Program in New York City followed by a Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine Fellowship at The Albert Einstein School of Medicine’s Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan. I am Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Pulmonary Diseases, and Critical Care Medicine. I have evaluated and treated a large number of patients over the past 15 years who have presented with a myriad of respiratory ailments with a large proportion of those patients having suffered acute respiratory failure in the ICU or on the hospital wards at multiple medical centers that I have worked at. Further, I had a large pulmonary and bronchoscopy practice for almost a decade in New York City where I performed numerous interventional and diagnostic procedures in the airway and thoracic cavity. I have also served as the Program Director of a large fellowship training program at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City for a period of 3 years prior to being recruited by the University of Wisconsin where I then served as the Chief of the Critical Care Service and the Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center for the past 5 years. I am also known as one of the pioneers and world experts in critical care ultrasonography, a skill set which has led to me becoming the senior editor of the best-selling textbook “Point of Care Ultrasound” which is in its 2nd edition and has been translated into 6 languages.
 My expert opinions are based upon my skill, education, training, and experience, and my knowledge of the medical and scientific literature.  I have also considered the following materials in forming my opinions in this matter:
 1.    Code of Conduct, City of Minneapolis – Dated May 25, 2020
 2.    Use of Force, Minneapolismn.org, 5/26/20
 3.    911 Call Transcript, Redacted, FOIA, 111725.pdf
 4.    Hennepin CME Autopsy 2020-3700 (Floyd) -111817
 5.    EMT Report -111711.pdf
 6.    Hennepin CME Summary Autopsy Findings
 7.    Videos
 a.    Watch A Minute-To-Minute Breakdown Leading Up To George Floyd's Deadly Arrest | NBC News NOW

 b.    Full video of 2 officers murder George Floyd

 c.     Facebook posted video of George Floyd Arrest https://www.facebook.com/NIT2019/videos/255189079067424
 d.    How George Floyd Was Killed in Police Custody | Visual Investigationse.    Presentation of preliminary independent autopsy findings

 I have found with a reasonable degree of medical certainty that George Floyd died from asphyxiation as the direct result of the use of excessive restraining force by at least 3 of the police officers who participated in restraining Mr. Floyd. The forces that caused his asphyxiation (defined as “the state or process of being deprived of oxygen, which can result in unconsciousness or death; suffocation) resulted from the simultaneous application of near full body weight pressure by two grown men of unknown weight, with one who applied pressure with both knees on his back and one with his knee on his neck/spine while he lay prone on the ground in handcuffs, with the third officer restraining the movement of his legs such that Mr. Floyd could not change this threatened position.
 The foundation of this expert opinion will be detailed in the summary of the evidence along with a review of respiratory system structure and function that follows. I will state at the outset that, based on the evidence presented, I am unable to determine precisely the relative contribution of each of the injurious forces that I have identified as it is my opinion that Mr. Floyd’s asphyxiation resulted from multiple, simultaneous injurious forces which limited his ability to take in sufficient volumes of air which led to him being deprived of sufficient oxygen to sustain his life. The simultaneous forces, combined with a disadvantageous mechanical respiratory position to support breathing are as follows; 1) excessive weight pressure on neck/upper back by Officer Chauvin which limited the superior expansion of the thorax during compromised positioning while also partially or completely occluding the upper airway “windpipe”, 2) excessive body weight pressure on lower/mid back by Officer Keung whose knees were positioned on top of Mr. Floyd and which limited diaphragmatic displacement to an extent which prevented sufficient inhaled air flow and volume, and 3) the prone positioning of Mr. Floyd on the ground which subsequently compressed his chest, limiting thoracic cage expansion which would allow for sufficient inhaled air flow and volume, and 4) the immobilization of Mr. Floyd’s legs by Officer Lane, preventing him from adjusting his body position in any manner which could relieve him of the aforementioned injurious restricting forces on his ventilatory ability.
 Evidence
 FORCE 1: As seen on the above listed videos taken from the sidewalk side of the police vehicle, and based on identification taken from a review of newspaper reports, Officer Chauvin can be seen applying pressure using his knee positioned on the upper neck and back of Mr. Floyd for a continuous period of approximately 10 minutes and 32 seconds.
 FORCE 2: Officer Keung can be seen, during a shorter video taken from the street side of the car, with his 2 knees elevated off the street and placed on what appears to be the mid-lower back of Mr. Floyd. Given the limited duration of this video, I am unable to determine the length of time that Officer Keung’s body weight pressure was placed on Mr. Floyd’s mid-lower back beyond the time duration of this video.
 FORCE 3: Officer Lane is positioned closest to Mr. Floyd’s feet with Officer’s Lanes arms extended over what appear to be the position of Mr. Floyd’s legs, thus rendering them immobile. The immobility of his legs further restricted Mr. Floyd’s ability to shift body position so as to relieve the injurious restricting ventilatory forces above.
 MALPOSITION: Throughout both videos taken from street and sidewalk side of the car, Mr. Floyd can be seen in; 1) prone position and, 2) with his hands pulled behind him in a handcuff position preventing him from relieving the pressure on his chest or modifying his position so as to augment his breathing capacity.
 Overview of the Critical Structures and Functions of the Respiratory System
 In order to understand how the above forces and malposition led to the asphyxiation of Mr. Floyd, several concepts must be understood in order to understand the minimum amount of breathing (i.e. “minimum minute ventilation”) required to sustain life and how the above forces and malposition rendered Mr. Floyd unable to achieve this “minimum minute ventilation” so as to prevent his cardiac arrest/death.
 Oxygen gas, present in atmospheric air, is required by all the cells in the body in order to create and use the energy to maintain each individual cell’s structure and function. These life sustaining oxygen molecules are absorbed by the air sacs in the lungs and then are transferred to the red blood cells circulating through the lung capillaries to then be pumped by the heart through the blood vessels of the body so that the oxygen molecules they carry can be delivered to each organ/cell. However, if these cells and/or organs are deprived of sufficient oxygen/energy, they begin to lose function, structural integrity, and if deprived of sufficient oxygen over a prolonged period, the cells and/or organs will sustain irreversible damage and cell/organ death.
 Oxygen delivery is dependent on 2 main physiologic functions; 1) cardiac output, i.e. sufficient circulating blood flow per minute such that oxygen carrying red blood cells can “deliver” oxygen to each cell, with cardiac output dependent on the “pump function” of the heart, i.e. the heart must be able to receive sufficient oxygen to contract and forcefully eject enough blood flow throughout the circulation and 2) minute ventilation , i.e. the sufficient intake (inhalation) of a sufficient volume of fresh oxygen gas to be absorbed by these red blood cells while also transferring the carbon dioxide gas content from the blood to the open lung units in order to be able to exhale this gas into the atmosphere (carbon dioxide being the waste product of energy metabolism of the body).
 Minute ventilation is defined by the volume of air inhaled/exhaled with each breath (i.e. “tidal volume”) multiplied by the rate at which this volume is exchanged per minute (i.e. “respiratory rate”).
 Minute ventilation (MV) varies with the amount of energy being consumed which is dependent on the amount of activity being performed . For instance, at rest, an adult male will breathe, on average, approximately 12 times per minute and take in about 500 milliliters of air with each breath, thus the MV of an adult human at rest is approximately 6 liters per minute to support the energy required of a body at rest.  During light, moderate, and extreme exercise in highly trained male athletes, MV can be increased to approximately 12, 60, and up to 180 liters per minute respectively. Note that MV can only increase via 2 factors; 1) the “tidal volume” of each breath is increased by expanding the volume of the thoracic cage via; contraction of the diaphragmatic muscle which pulls the diaphragm lower into the abdominal cavity, contraction of the intercostal muscles which spread the ribs further apart, and contraction of multiple accessory muscles in the neck, chest and spine which extend the height of the thorax, and/or, 2) increasing the respiratory rate up to 40-50 times per minute at peak exercise.
 Conversely, the minimum minute ventilation required to sustain life is the MV at which both oxygen and carbon dioxide levels remain in the normal range.
 Hypoventilation is the condition where the MV is decreased such that carbon dioxide levels rise above normal and oxygen levels fall below normal, with the former becoming abnormal prior to the latter. Mild hypoventilation which causes slight abnormal fluctuations in oxygen or carbon dioxide levels are generally well-tolerated, especially if this hypoventilation occurs gradually over time, for example in morbid obesity, the slow and persistent accumulation of adipose tissue surrounding the thoracic cage and abdomen causes progressively worsening hypoventilation over months to years and is generally well tolerated. However, if acute, severe, or prolonged enough, both oxygen and carbon dioxide levels will become rapidly and severely abnormal. If hypoventilation is severe enough, patients will first lose consciousness due to the high carbon dioxide levels (a condition called “CO2 narcosis” given that high Co2 levels produce unconsciousness), and if MV persists at this low level, oxygen levels will then start to decrease to such an extent that the cells in the heart begin to lose energy/function, causing the heart as a whole to cease function, leading to a state of cardiac arrest/death.
 It is my opinion that Mr. Floyd suffered cardiac arrest as a result of prolonged hypoventilation, i.e. he was unable to inhale enough oxygen and exhale enough carbon dioxide such that he lost consciousness and then suffered cardiac arrest.
 Causes of Hypoventilation
 In order to achieve sufficient minute ventilation (MV) to sustain life, three factors must be present, which I have traditionally taught as the “three A’s” of breathing; 1) an “ airway”, i.e. a windpipe that is patent/open to allow air to flow down through the airways to the lung tissues, 2) “ ability” – i.e. both an intact neurologic respiratory drive combined with sufficient strength of the respiratory muscles to contract, along with sufficient “space” for the thoracic cavity to expand in size, thus creating a “vacuum” for fresh air to flow in on a pressure gradient from the atmosphere into the lungs, and 3) “ area ” – sufficient surface area of viable lung tissue so that oxygen can be absorbed from the inhaled air into the bloodstream while carbon dioxide can pass from the bloodstream into the inhaled air volume to then be expelled into the atmosphere during exhalation.
 If any limitations in the above factors are present, hypoventilation will result, generally from three causes; 1) a reduced tidal volume (reduced volume of an inhaled breath),  2) a reduced respiratory rate, or 3) insufficient viable lung surface area, a cause only seen in acute and chronic lung conditions such as pneumonia, pulmonary edema, asthma, emphysema, pulmonary embolism etc.
 I found no evidence that Mr. Floyd’s respiratory drive (rate) was significantly suppressed, despite the fact he had opiates in his bloodstream, an agent known to suppress respiratory rate. His intact respiratory rate is evidenced by observing him in the minutes prior to and at the beginning of the restraint by the officers whereby he was able to walk, sit, stand, answer questions, and cry out for help. It is clear from these observations that the opiates in his bloodstream at the time were not of sufficient concentration to suppress his respiratory rate.
 I find no evidence, based on the reported autopsy results, that Mr. Floyd, despite his history of smoking and of a recent Covid-19 infection, had a chronic or acute lung disease which would lead to loss of sufficient lung tissue surface area that would lead to the degree of hypoventilation that would cause a cardiac arrest.
 Therefore, given no evidence of either 1) a suppressed respiratory rate or 2) an acute or chronic lung disease, it is my opinion that Mr. Floyd died from 3) hypoventilation secondary to an insufficient volume of air with each breath, preventing him from exhaling sufficient carbon dioxide and inhaling sufficient oxygen to sustain life. The evidence for this is as follows:
 1)    His complaints of “I can’t breathe” very soon after being restrained in a prone position with the weight of two grown men on his mid and upper back/neck. In my opinion, the fact that he was able to form words at that point in his prolonged restraint, leads to the following conclusion;
 a.     Mr. Floyd, at least initially, was drawing enough air to “phonate” or “make sounds/speech”, (sounds are made on exhalation and require a sufficient volume of inhaled air to create sufficient exhaled flow through the vocal cords). The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that he was heard to phonate early on in the videos of his prolonged restraint is that “complete occlusion” of his airway was not occurring at that time because, if it had occurred, by definition, no sounds could have been produced by Mr. Floyd.
 b.    Although his ability at the time to speak indicates that at least some air flow in and out of his airways/lungs was occurring, it is my opinion that this amount of airflow and inhaled volume was insufficient to sustain life if not reversed in minutes. I base this assertion on the fact that Mr. Floyd immediately communicated “I can’t breathe” indicating that he was suffering from a sensation termed “dyspnea” defined as “the sensation of difficulty breathing” which arises whenever airflow or air volume entering the chest is decreased to the point where gas exchange is compromised, a state immediately sensed by the nervous system, and is a well-described and uniquely distressing sensation (see below).
 c.     Thus, it is my belief, at least initially, that the force of Officer Chauvin’s knee on Mr. Floyd’s neck did not lead to complete collapse of his upper airway/windpipe but rather caused at least some “narrowing” given his diminished, but not absent, ability to phonate. It is my opinion that the most injurious impact of the officers weight on the knee placed over Mr. Floyds cervical spine/upper back was that it led to restriction of the respiratory accessory muscles of the neck such that it prevented him from drawing in sufficient air to counteract the pressure on his thoracic cage from Officer Keung (explained in detail below under “Compensatory Mechanisms of the Respiratory System).
 d.    Although complete compression of the airway, by definition, was not present while Mr. Floyd was able to speak, there were prolonged periods in the video where no speech was heard and thus I cannot rule out the possibility that with subtle changes in neck position or weight directed by Officer Chauvin’s knee over Mr. Floyd’s neck that complete compression and lack of airflow occurred for transient or prolonged periods. Further, it is my opinion that, despite the fact that the autopsy reported no fracture or injury to the cartilaginous structures of the trachea (“windpipe”), the absence of such an injury does not in any way exclude the possibility that the airway was completely compressed at some point. The reason for this possibility is that only half the circumference of the windpipe is made of cartilage, i.e. the anterior trachea. The posterior trachea is “membranous” and is composed of soft tissue/mucosa and can easily be displaced/compressed such that it can oppose the anterior trachea thus leading to complete occlusion of the windpipe, either transiently through benign forces such as a vigorous cough or from sustained life threatening forces such as external body weight pressure applied over a knee to the cervical vertebrae which would then cause the vertebrae to compress the windpipe just anterior to it. In conclusion, the windpipe can be completely occluded without causing permanent damage to the tracheal rings.
 DYSPNEA (“I can’t breathe”)
 “Dyspnea” is a medical term defined as “the sensation of difficulty breathing” and most commonly occurs when the amount of muscle work required to draw in a sufficient volume of air is increased due to some “load” which restricts either airflow through the windpipe, ability of the lung to inflate, ability of the lung tissue to absorb sufficient oxygen with each breath, or the ability of the chest wall to expand to draw in a sufficient volume of air into the lung/chest. Many acute and chronic lung conditions cause this sensation, such as asthma where the airways are constricted and thus it requires increased, exaggerated muscular effort to inhale and exhale each breath through “smaller” airways, or pulmonary edema whereby water fills many lung units causing the lungs to become heavier and partially collapse, thus inflating them with each breath requires an increased and exaggerated effort.
 It must be recognized that humans are exquisitely sensitive to any force that impairs our ability to breathe, and this “extreme sensitivity” likely developed as an evolutionary adaptation to promote our survival given that its intent is to immediately alert us to and reflexively correct via compensatory respiratory mechanisms (see below) any force which threatens or impairs our ability to sustain breathing. This is reflected by the fact that our thoracic cage (chest) is one of the most highly innervated parts of the body. Millions of nerves course over the skin and alongside the ribs of the thoracic cage. There are two types of nerves; “afferent” and “efferent” nerves. The former send “sensory” information to the brain, such as touch/movement, pain, temperature, and vibration thus allowing humans to constantly be aware of the amount of chest expansion or “stretch” that is occurring with each breath.
 Efferent nerves conduct information from the brain to the muscles to direct muscle effort/movement. The normal amount of effort applied to a breath and the resulting amount of chest expansion that is sensed is generally perfectly matched and thus normal breathing is typically unconscious/not sensed. In other words, the unconscious automatic impulses sent from the brain to our respiratory muscles/diaphragms lead to volumes of air inspired which are perceived as “satisfying” or “non-distressing”, i.e. they are not perceived as insufficient but as adequate/normal, and thus are generally imperceptible. However, as soon as any force is applied such that it limits the ability of our chest to expand or “stretch” sufficiently with a normal or even increased respiratory effort, this immediately results in the sensation of “dyspnea”, or “inability to achieve a “satisfying” or sufficient volume of air intake, which, when severe and/or acutely severe, is known to be one of the more distressing sensations one can experience and can immediately create a superimposed sense of “panic”. Some examples of this sensation are when an over-exuberant or prolonged “bear hug” may be applied by a friend or family member and one feels immediately that “they cannot breathe”, a situation which is generally quickly reversed/decompressed upon release of the “hug” such that this distressing sensation is typically short-lived. Another example would be when a group of children (or adults) are wrestling or playing in a pile and the child/adult on the bottom of the pile suddenly experiences the cumulative weight of their playmates on their chest or back such that their normal or even exaggerated respiratory effort leads to the highly distressing, noxious, fearful feeling of insufficient air flow/chest expansion such that they immediately cry out “get off, I can’t breathe”.
 Knowing the forces, diseases, situations, and positions that can restrict breathing, it is my opinion, that as soon as Mr. Floyd was placed prone on the ground and the weight of the two officers knees were applied to upper back/neck and mid-lower back, he immediately suffered acute, severe “dyspnea”, i.e. a sensation of difficulty breathing due to the resulting “restriction” of his ability to expand his chest preventing him from inhaling a sufficient “tidal volume” or a “satisfying breath.” This led to his immediate exclamation of “I can’t breathe”. In essence, he immediately sensed that the volume of air entering his chest was insufficient to maintain normal oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations in the blood. It is my opinion that the severe and prolonged “hypoventilation” caused by the weight of the officers on his chest and shoulders/neck led to his loss of consciousness due to progressively increasing blood carbon dioxide levels followed by a cardiac arrest secondary to his progressively decreasing blood oxygen levels due to his inability to take in a sufficient volume of air to be able to absorb sufficient oxygen or expel sufficient carbon dioxide. In treating acute and chronic respiratory failure throughout my career, it should be recognized that this symptom/condition is one of the most distressing/noxious/panic inducing symptoms a human can suffer.
 Respiratory System Compensation to Inspiratory or Ventilatory Deficits
 Another important concept to understand are the compensatory abilities of the respiratory system that counteract limitations or restrictions in ventilatory function. Examples are as follows:
 1)    INCREASING RESPIRATORY RATE: When we have insufficient ability to take in a large enough breath due to thoracic wall restriction, we typically compensate by increasing the respiratory rate, in this way sufficient minute ventilation can still be achieved, as per formula above. However, this compensatory mechanism fails if the volume of air inhaled with each breath is smaller than the volume of air in the windpipe and bronchi, a.k.a. smaller than the “dead space volume” (i.e. the volume of air that enters the thoracic cavity but does not come into contact with the lung tissue and thus the oxygen in this volume of air cannot be absorbed into the blood). This volume of air is equivalent to the air volume in the mouth/nose/trachea/proximal bronchi and is about 150ml in an adult male – i.e. any volume of air lower than this amount does not participate in gas exchange and thus cannot be compensated for by increasing the respiratory rate). It is my opinion that the volume of air entering Mr. Floyd’s lung was smaller than his dead space volume thus, his increased respiratory rate was unable to compensate for such a severely reduced tidal volume, again a condition which is immediately experienced as severely distressing or panic-inducing.
 2)    INCREASING TIDAL VOLUME VIA USE OF ACCESSORY MUSCLES:
 a.    If there is restriction to airflow through the windpipe or restriction to the descent of the diaphragms or a person suffers from a condition which limits lung inflation, the “accessory muscles of respiration” are recruited as follows:
    i.  Diaphragm – the first response to an inspiratory load or restriction is to increase the rate and depth of descent of the diaphragm above normal “excursion” such that air flow rate and thoracic air volume is increased. It is my opinion that, in Mr. Floyds case, the ability of his diaphragm to descend further than normal, or even to descend the normal distance/excursion was impaired by two factors; 1) prone positioning on the ground which placed his body weight over his abdomen which compressed the abdominal contents such that they are displaced upwards against the diaphragm and thus limited the  descent of the diaphragm and 2) this upward displacement of abdominal contents/intestines against the diaphragm was further increased due to the added external weight of Officer Keung over Mr. Floyd’s mid back and consequently his abdomen.
 ii.     Intercostal muscles – typically, when we make an exaggerated respiratory effort, the space between the ribs expand and the chest wall cavity/volume increases. When we exert increased respiratory effort using the intercostal muscles which run between the individual ribs, such expansion can be increased further. In Mr. Floyd’s case, the pressure on his back/abdomen and neck/shoulders by the two officers rendered the intercostal muscle contraction insufficient to overcome such severe restriction of the chest wall.
 iii.     Accessory muscles of the neck/back/chest – after diaphragmatic effort, use of the accessory muscles are the next most powerful compensatory mechanism that humans employ to augment tidal volume or overcome an inspiratory resistance/load. These muscles include the sternocleidomastoid, spinal, neck and chest muscles. When these muscles are recruited/engaged, they serve to expand the thoracic cavity not only by expansion outwards such as with the intercostal muscles between the ribs, but by raising the thoracic cavity superiorly or “upwards.” It is my opinion that the knee of Officer Chauvin on Mr. Floyd’s neck/spine, rather than cutting off airflow at the windpipe, more than likely caused asphyxia/hypoventilation by limiting the neck/spine accessory muscles to achieve sufficient chest expansion to counteract the limitation produced by his prone position combined with the force of Officer #2’s weight on his chest/abdomen.
 I have also identified a separate set of actions which caused Mr. Floyd further harm by making it less likely that cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) could be successful which limited his ability to survive. These separate injurious actions were committed by the emergency medical personnel who appeared on the scene in the videos and were as follows:
 1)    One emergency medical technician/paramedic clearly checks Mr. Floyd’s pulse at 11:50 of the youtube video entitled “Full Video of 2 officers murder George Floyd”. Although a determination of the presence or absence of a pulse is not audible on the video, it is my opinion that Mr. Floyd was pulseless at that time. If true, as an expert in the performance and training of CPR, it is my opinion that, in the setting of detecting the absence of a pulse of a patient who does not meet exclusion criteria for CPR delivery, chest compressions should immediately be initiated by the first trained bystander or personnel present.
 2)    Instead of initiating immediate CPR on Mr. Floyd by; 1) directing Officer Chauvin to release his restraining knee pressure, 2) rolling Mr. Floyd supine and 3) beginning chest compressions, the medical technician/paramedic instead leaves to go to the ambulance to prepare a stretcher and transfer board/sheet. The period of time until the stretcher can be seen is 39 seconds later at 12:29 of the video, with the 39 second period beginning being from the first detection of an absent pulse. Further, it is not until 12:44, a full 54 seconds from absent pulse detection that the medical technician/paramedic directs Officer Chauvin to remove his knee so they can begin the process of transferring Mr. Floyd to a stretcher and into the ambulance. The last time Mr. Floyd can be seen on the video was at 13:29, and at that time, there is no evidence that CPR had been initiated on Mr. Floyd who had then been pulseless a minimum of one minute and 39 seconds since the initial pulse check.
 3)    This delay towards attempting to restore circulation via chest compressions or other interventions that make up ACLS (advanced cardiac life support) prolonged the “no flow” period after circulatory arrest which severely limited Mr. Floyd’s chances of achieving successful “recovery of spontaneous circulation” (ROSC). Such an unnecessarily prolonged period of “no flow” clearly added further cellular and organ damage to the prior period of lack of blood flow to Mr. Floyd’s vital organs, namely his heart and brain.
 In summary, the prolonged, simultaneously applied restraining forces by Minneapolis Police Officers Chauvin, Keung, and Lane on critical parts of Mr. Floyd’s respiratory and musculoskeletal system while he was in a handcuffed, prone position on the ground led to severe hypoventilation which caused a life-threatening elevation in blood carbon dioxide levels rendering him unconscious, which was then followed by a progressive and severe decrease in blood oxygen levels which directly caused his cardiac arrest and death. Further, the failure of emergency medical personnel to initiate CPR on Mr. Floyd immediately upon discovering he was pulseless led to an additional significant decrease in Mr. Floyd’s chances of achieving ROSC from the CPR that was eventually initiated in the ambulance.
 The opinions in this report are expressed to a reasonable degree of medical certainty.
 I reserve my right to amend or supplement my opinions based on any additional information that may become available to me.
 Yours sincerely,
 Pierre Kory, MD, MPA
 June 9, 2020
 Associate Professor of Medicine
 Chief of the Critical Care Service
 Medical Director of the Trauma and Life Support Center
 Division of Allergy, Pulmonary and Critical Care
 University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health

Summary: Although the American public is lied to about nearly everything at this point, the cause of Floyd's death is not one of them. I should know as I was the medical expert who testified in his civil case.


Published Another Op-Ed Trying To Call Attention To The Exploding Rates Of Death Amongst Young, Working-Age Americans

I really don’t know how much worse it can get yet still be ignored by health and governmental authorities the world over. But it is bad, like really bad, and it ain’t just the U.S.
 John Campbell and Ed Dowd and MP Andrew Bridgen are trying to do the same with the insane excess mortality rates being measured in the U.K. In a rare “win,” Andrew told me that he has successfully scheduled a hearing on UK’s excess mortality in the House of Commons (a hearing that they scheduled for the aptly named “graveyard shift” (i.e. last spot of the day on a Friday when all the MP’s try to get out of dodge).
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 I don’t know what else to do but.. to keep trying. Here is our latest attempt, published in the Washington Examiner:

 Life insurance data show a massive spike in excess deaths among younger, working-age people that began in 2021, even as COVID-19 deaths decreased, and continues today. So far, good explanations are elusive. A concerted, bipartisan investigation should explore this threat to America’s economic future and recommend a course of action.
 A report by the nonprofit Society of Actuaries found that 34% more 35- to 44-year-olds died than expected in the last three months of 2022. More deaths occurred among white-collar vs. blue-collar workers. The organization also reported a sudden jump in employee deaths in the fall of 2021. Independent sites aggregating Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data confirm these trends. According to U.S. Mortality , excess deaths in September 2021 among 25- to 44-year-olds were 70% above normal . That number has thankfully dropped, but as of May 2023, the most recent month for which data are available, deaths in this age group remained 10% above expected. Among people under 25, it was 16% above normal .
 The Society of Actuaries maintains that COVID-19 does not fully explain these deaths. So what does?
 Experts have posited all sorts of theories, from rising obesity rates to extreme heat to lagging effects from lockdowns   to wider alcohol abuse . These possible contributors deserve careful consideration. Given the sheer number of COVID-19 vaccine deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, more than 36,000 to date, the possible role of vaccines should be examined, too.
 Virtually everyone agrees that COVID-19 vaccines carry risk . The debate is over the frequency and intensity of harm. With the CDC recommending an updated vaccine for everyone 6 months of age and older, it’s time to reassess this delicate balance. If even a fraction of the deaths resulted from vaccination, we should want to understand the trend to help people accurately weigh the benefits and risks.
 VAERS is one of the strongest available tools to track and prevent vaccine harm . It is an open database used by consumers, patients, and healthcare professionals to report vaccine problems, which are then analyzed by the CDC. The Department of Health and Human Services describes it as “a national early warning system to detect possible safety problems in U.S.-licensed vaccines.”
 VAERS has a track record of results. In 1997, U.S. physicians modified the childhood polio vaccine schedule based on a handful of vaccine-induced paralysis reports that showed up annually in VAERS . A hepatitis B vaccine was  suspended in 1998 due to a suspected link to multiple sclerosis. That same year, rotavirus vaccines found to contain porcine circovirus type 1 were removed . A meningococcal vaccine was withdrawn in 2008 on suspicion of causing Guillain-Barre syndrome, and in 2009, an H1N1 flu vaccine was suspended for increasing the risk of narcolepsy.
 In 2021, VAERS received more reports of post-vaccination deaths than in the prior 30 years combined. The totals for 2022 and 2023 are lower than 2021 but still dwarf pre-pandemic years. These reports do not automatically signify the cause of death and must be carefully analyzed. But with tens of thousands of reports in VAERS for COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths alone, it isn’t realistic to expect the CDC to investigate them all.
 Public health authorities should be concerned about the widening gap between their guidance and vaccine behavior. By February 2021, more than half of U.S. adults were vaccinated against COVID-19. But according to the latest Reuters /Ipsos poll, just 29% are “ very interested ” in getting the updated vaccine. The effect seems to be contributing to vaccine hesitancy more broadly , too.
 Solving chronic disease, substance abuse, extreme heat, and public health problems exacerbated by the pandemic will require sustained, multidisciplinary work over many years. Reducing COVID-19 vaccine-related deaths may be simpler: Reserve them for vulnerable, targeted populations. It’s a timely and appropriate course of action. New COVID-19 variants are milder and usually treatable. This explains why the rise in cases has not translated into more deaths, and why even Dr. Anthony Fauci does not predict another “ tsunami of hospitalizations and deaths .”
 How many more people will die needlessly before we discover the cause? Until we understand this trend, we can’t compel the changes needed to stop it. Getting to the bottom of what’s killing us should be a national priority.
 Pierre Kory, M.D., is president and chief medical officer of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance. Mary Beth Pfeiffer is an investigative reporter and author of two books.

 P.S I just want to say thanks to all my subscribers, especially the paid ones! Your financial support is greatly appreciated as it allows me to devote what is often large amount of time I spend researching and writing my posts, so again, thanks. - Pierre
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 P.P.S - Proud to report that my book is gaining Best Seller status on Amazon in several countries and is climbing up the U.S Amazon rankings… Link:

Summary: With the investigative journalist Mary Beth Pfeiffer, we are again trying to get the public and government's attention to focus on the "inexplicable" (yeah right) rates of death still being recorded.