Joel S. Hirschhorn
© WMU Cooley Law School/YouTubeJoel S. Hirschhorn
The massive global effort to promote COVID vaccines plays on fears of getting the disease, despite the fact that they are experimental. Meaning that they have not gone through the rigorous, time-consuming and expensive randomized clinical trials that so many experts say is the gold standard for evaluating drugs.

This absence was used by the government to condemn and block the use of drugs such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

Vaccine testing and regulatory approval have been rushed. Missing from nearly all information reaching the public are some key facts.

The vaccines still allow the virus to stay in the body, and the virus can shed and pass on to others. In other words, the virus can stay alive in the community.

Moreover, all kinds of ugly side effects can and do hit some vaccinated people. What vaccines are engineered to do is prevent serious disease impacts and death. But they do not entirely keep the virus from living in your body. In other words, unlike most older vaccines for other viral diseases, they do not actually kill the virus. The aim is to curb viral impacts by imparting some immunity.

Vaccine advocates are selling serious COVID disease prevention. But there is another, very different prevention strategy.

As detailed in my recent book Pandemic Blunder, there are mountains of strong medical data showing that a number of cheap, safe, proven and effective medicines, vitamins and supplements have been used worldwide to stop COVID when the protocols are used very early.

In a number of countries where they have been widely used, COVID hospitalizations and death rates are markedly lower than in the U.S. and other nations that have blocked their use.

Overall, they have cut COVID deaths by 70% to 80%. The chief requirement is that they are used within days of getting symptoms or a positive test. Just as important, huge amounts of data show that these medical solutions also act as prophylactics, meaning they prevent people from contracting COVID-19.

People have a right to choose between COVID vaccines and the multitude of protocols that have been classified as components for early home COVID treatment.

This choice is all the more relevant when one acknowledges that a vast number of people do not need a vaccine to get COVID immunity. Why? Because large numbers of people either have natural immunity or immunity achieved through contracting COVID. Proof of non-vaccine immunity is everywhere, including children and elderly people in nursing homes who remained healthy unlike others living with them were infected and all too often died.

Yes, there are some groups that have a good case for taking a vaccine. They include people like me who are elderly with serious underlying medical problems and even younger people who also have serious medical conditions, including morbid obesity.

I have taken the COVID vaccine because I am 81 with a very serious heart condition. But I still take twice a day one of the protocols with strong evidence for effectiveness: zinc, quercetin, vitamins D and C. People who have access to hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin take regular doses for prevention, typically along with zinc and vitamins D and C.

It all comes down to science-based choice on how to stay safe in this pandemic. Some 40% to 50% of Americans do not want to take a vaccine. They apparently have concluded that vaccines are not the only way to stay safe from COVID. This is especially true for younger people who have seen considerable government data showing that even if they get COVID they will not likely suffer awful impacts.

The push for vaccines is also linked to many politicians arguing to maintain discredited contagion controls -- such as masking, school closings, and lockdowns -- until everyone gets vaccinated.

This thinking is not as much about "following the science" as it is about maintaining public fear and political power. And never forget the wisdom of "follow the money." The push for COVID vaccines has everything to do with drug companies making many billions of dollars.