May 27, 2020
Honourable Tyler Shandro QC
423 Legislative Building
10800-97 Avenue NW
Edmonton, Alberta
T5K 2B6
Dear Mr. Shandro:
RE: Preparation for the Second Wave of COVID 19
I hope that you are doing well with all the exceptional challenges that COVID 19 has sent your way. It appears that the first wave is coming to a close. Our numbers are getting better by the day and of course summer is here and corona viruses do not do that well in summer. However, there is a very real concern that there could be a second wave starting in about October. Preparing for the second wave will be the topic of this month’s letter.
This will probably be the last letter in this series. My original plan was to have two more letters, one on Autism and the other on cancer but I realize that you are very busy with COVID 19 at this time so we will deal with that instead. I will however start of with one paragraph each for autism and cancer. They are both pretty simple topics.
When I was in university nearly 50 years ago I never heard the word “Autism” spoke once in the five years that I studied. It was known at the time but its incidence was about 1 in 10,000. Then over the next forty years its incidence skyrocketed to 1 in 36. It is easily the most common childhood disease today. Yet you never hear of a charity raising money for research and you never see an advertisement by a drug company offering a helpful treatment. Very strange! So what causes this disease? Probably several things. There are probably several problems that cause the same symptoms and all get lumped into the same spectrum. That is the problem that you have when you name diseases based on symptoms and not causes. We saw that in the letter on dementia in November. The two main problems in autism are gut issues and encephalopathy. Many things can cause these problems but according to my best source (A group that have been very accurate over the past 50 years.)the main cause of what we know as autism was just large amounts of aluminum that concentrate in the reticulo-endothelial system of the gut and inside the cranium and this leads to serious over reaction then the immune system is reacting normally to ordinary infections. According to my sources, the excess aluminum was from an iatrogenic origin and that now this issue is quietly being tidied up and hopefully the incidence of autism starts to decline in the near future if it hasn’t already.
Similarly, cancers are a known quantity for the most part. We know what causes most cancers so to some degree most cancers are somewhat preventable. The three main causes of cancer are carcinogens, viruses, and radiation. We have been identifying carcinogens for years. Tobacco and asbestos are the two most famous carcinogens but in our chemical rich modern world we are finding new carcinogens all the time. As for viruses, since viruses change the DNA in cells, by definition all viruses cause cancer. However, the most famous cancer causing virus is Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer and also throat cancer in some cases. Radiation from many sources from sunshine to computer screens causes damage to DNA and therefore cancer. So it is obvious that all of us are exposed to the causes of cancer but not everyone suffers from cancer. What makes the difference? The simple answer is that everyone gets a few cancer cells from time to time just like everyone catches a cold virus from time to time. However, it is the people that have the good immune systems that really never noticed that they had a cold or cancer or COVID 19. So if you get the right preventive protocol for COVID 19 you might also cure cancer at the same time. Bonus!
So, what have we learned about COVID 19 so far? Let’s look at the Cargill case first. There we saw the disease go from zero to a thousand cases in about two weeks. That proves how contagious this disease really is. However, within another two weeks over 90% of those infected were completely recovered. Why? They recovered because the Cargill workers are tough tough men and women. The work in the slaughter house is very hard work and you simply have to be very strong and healthy to do it.
Now let’s look at our nursing homes. Approximately 80% of the deaths from COVID 19 are in the elderly and most are in so called care homes. In our November letter on “Dementia”, we identified a half dozen causes of dementia most of which involved high degrees of malnutrition and medical incompetence. These people do not have healthy immune systems and that is why they get killed by a virus that a healthy person hardly notices. These seniors are not dying from COVID 19 they are dying from medical neglect and malnutrition.
So how do we prepare for a second wave which could come back as early as October? We prepare by identifying the people who are truly at risk for this disease and cure the problems that cause them to be at such high risk in the first place. We have four or five months so let’s get to work. What are the problems that we need to fix? Certainly we start by fixing the deplorable care in our nursing homes. Then we should address diabetes, metabolic syndrome, malnutrition and weak immune systems.
Let’s start with our nursing homes. We do not have a COVID 19 problem we have a nursing home problem. The provinces of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland-Labrador have a total population slightly less than Alberta but they probably have more seniors than Alberta. These five provinces have a total of 18 deaths. Alberta has 140 and counting. There is something wrong here. The key to understanding why our seniors are so ill is explained in depth in the November letter on “Dementia”. Good diet and nutrition would go a long way to improving the immune capabilities of our seniors. But don’t expect your physicians to be much help with this. The vast majority are not trained in nutrition and general wellness and they don’t believe in it either. They are not paid to have healthy patients. They are trained prescription writers and they wait until patients are overwhelmed with symptoms.
Another thing that could be done in the second wave is don’t leave infected patients in the nursing homes. They belong in the hospital. Nursing homes are not equipped to prevent the spread of infection. They are homes not hospitals. The workers are not properly trained or equipped to do Infection Prevention and Control. Until recently they probably didn’t use gloves or gowns or even wash their hands very often. They probably don’t have much for sterilizers. Why would they? During Phase I you had thousands of hospital beds standing empty while COVID 19 patients remained in nursing homes and the disease spread and people died unnecessarily. Someone has got some explaining to do here.
The next large risk factor is diabetes. We discussed this at length last October and again under the topic of “Sugar”, in December so I will not repeat a lot of that information here. Suffice to say that diabetes is a completely preventable and completely curable disease. Diabetes is the result of consuming more refined carbohydrates than our bodies are capable of dealing with. As the gamblers say, “Know your limit and stay within it.” I am not saying that you have to completely abstain from sugar and refined grains but the average annual per capita consumption in North America is about 150 pounds of sugar and about the same amount of refined flour. This is nearly a pound of refined carbohydrates a day! Could we significantly reduce diabetes by October? You probably could if you tried. COVID 19 has given you a gift. Use it.
The next risk factors are obesity and hypertension. These are both a part of the syndrome known as metabolic syndrome. Again, this was explained in depth in December so I won’t repeat it here. Again, this is a completely preventable and curable problem and you could have this well on the way to being controlled by October if you started right away. Again, COVID 19 has given you a gift. Strange how all the topics that we discussed all winter are mysteriously linked to COVID 19. Medicine really is pretty simple.
The next big topic that needs to be a part of the preparedness for the second wave is to have a strong immune system. Again, don’t expect your medical doctors to be much help for you in this matter either. They are not trained in immune system health, they don’t understand it and they don’t believe in it. They are drug dealers. We listen day in and day out to so called experts who go on ad nauseum about wash your hands, social distance and sometimes masks are in and sometimes they are out. But never do they say that the best strategy to beat this disease is to have a strong healthy immune system. A strong healthy immune system requires good nutrition with a diet or supplements that provide proteins, adequate vitamins especially A,B,C,D and K2 and minerals especially zinc, magnesium iron, selenium, and iodine. Other things that are important for a healthy immune system include good sleep, exercise, preferably outdoor exercise, low stress and overall mental and emotional wellbeing. A strong healthy immune system is your best defense. You can’t hide from this virus forever. Frankly, getting into shape and improving people’s immune system does not take a long time, 30 days doing the right things, then ongoing maintenance is the formula and it doesn’t need to cost much.
The one thing that absolutely will not be part of the second wave is another so called lockdown. You get away with a stunt like that about one time. There is mounting evidence that the lockdown is killing more people than this Coronavirus and it is destroying people’s lives. Of course it really wasn’t much of a lockdown. It was more of an all out assault on small business and the energy industry. Most big corporations skated through this pandemic fairly well. Places like Walmart, Costco, Home Depot, Lowes, Canadian tire, every major car dealership, most drug stores, and most fast food chains just taped a few lines on their floors, put up some plexiglass and it was business as usual. In fact they probably picked up some market share from the little mom and pop shops that were legislated into oblivion.
Every cloud has a silver lining and I see a lot of good changes that can come from the COVID 19 pandemic. Certainly we were long overdue for a serious look at all things to do with China and we will get that. The same thing goes for the United Nations and the WHO. We have known for a long time that there were serious problems in our nursing homes so that is going to be looked at and hopefully some people will be held accountable. But most of all I hope that this pandemic will show the average Albertan that our 50 year old healthcare system was badly misguided from the start, that its main purpose from the start was to transfer wealth from taxpayers to the Medical Industrial Complex and Big Pharma. It has never been a system that was intended to make people healthier, it was intended to make some people richer. I definitely feel sad for the 140 people who have died from this disease but if COVID 19 is the catalyst that moves us to fix our healthcare system then they did not die in vain.
This brings us to the end of my letter series. I hope that it has been helpful to you . If you get some time I would like to hear your thoughts about this approach to health and wellness. Hopefully phase I of COVID 19 will soon be behind us and you will have more time. And, if I can be of any further help to you please do not hesitate to ask.
In the words of the great Yogi Berra, “If you come to a fork in the road, you have to take it. “ You can be the greatest health minister in Canadian history or you can be just another average politician content with the status quo.
Stay safe, stay well, and win that Nobel Prize.
Dr. Murray Hennings, DMD
