Government Incompetence is Killing Us

Complete Failure To Address The Public's Vitamin D Insufficiency
- Even In The Midst Of The Covid-19 Pandemic -
Means That Citizens Need To Force The Issue Download Flyers

What is this all about?

A call to grassrooots action for dealing with covid-19, and beyond.

Like many, if not most Americans, I've watched the once-in-a-lifetime covid-19 crisis develop, with a large measure of despair, and sometimes anger. The level of lethality and economic destruction has been amplified many-fold by governments' incompetence. The list of these failures include:

  • The White House closed the White House’s National Security Council Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense, in 2018.
  • States were forced to bid against each other for medical equipment, like ventilators.
  • The rollout of covid-19 tests in the US was both tardy, and botched.
  • Evidence that, while covid-19 is dangerous, the initial dire forecasts were wide of the mark. (A good aggregation of reports on this score can be had at the Swiss Policy Research covid-19 page.)
  • Positive evidence regarding hydroxychloroquine was suppressed (typically by pretending that large numbers of anecdotal cases aren't instructive; while also suppressing the carrying out of "gold standard" randomized controlled trials, which constitutes higher quality evidence, when it exists.
  • Poor to non-existent reaction by authorities when negative studies were retracted, such as the Lancet study Hydroxychloroquine or chloroquine with or without a macrolide for treatment of COVID-19: a multinational registry analysis.

But beyond even this damning list of failures, there is another failure that, had the Federal government and relevant Federal agencies gotten it right, the fallout from covid-19 would have been far less. I'm talking about the vital role of adequate Vitamin D levels to ward off illnesses. And it is this failure that I've made the focus of governmentincompetence.org. There are a few reasons for this.

One is that Vitamin D hasn't been politicized, as has been the case with just about every other aspect of the pandemic response (most notably with hydroxychloroquine). Another is that Vitamin D advocates have organized outreach efforts that long preceeded the outbreak of covid-19. (E.g., at grassrootshealth.net, Scientists' Call to D*action was initiated in 2015.) Hence it underscores the governmental incompetence as long-standing. Which, in turn, underscores the need for activism on the part of the public, because the government appears incapable of reforming itself. And lastly, data regarding Vitamin D status and covid-19 lethality have now started coming in, and it strongly supports the thesis that improving vitamin D status could have a) blunted the pandemic and b) can still be employed as a central weapon to make sure that future waves of infection are not as disruptive.

Consider, e.g., the following observations of patients in Indonesia, originally reported in SRSN: Patterns of COVID-19 Mortality and Vitamin D: An Indonesian Study

Citizen-Activists Need To Step In

Addressing Vitamin D Insufficiency Is A Relatively Easy First Step, That Can Be Done In Spite of Government Incompetence

Vitamin D insufficiency is an easy problem for laymen to understand, to address in their personal lives, and to educate family, friends and strangers about. There is a wealth of information, online, such as at vitamindwiki.org. And there is at least one Vitamin D advocacy effort (grassrootshealth.net) that already exists, that can be suported.

Where Will Leaders Come From?

small business owners

A couple of points regarding leadership. The lockdowns pose an existential threat to many small business; restaurants and gyms are probably most vulnerable. However, such customer-facing businesses are well positioned to raise their customers' awareness about Vitamin D's role in fighting off disease, as well as the government's incompetence in filling this role. I feel badly about small business people who are looking at losing their life's work and savings, due to lockdowns. However, if this class of citizens can't collectively rise to the challenge of taking some of the responsibility for compensating for government incompetence, then they will have forfeit a relatively easy opportunity, which can help them more than most, and make the difference between them surviving, or not.

Businesses with heavy customer interactions can do many low cost things to get the word out. They can make poster sized flyers and afix them to walls and store-fronts. They can make inserts, and pass them out with menus. Gyms could waive fees for a month or two, for customers presenting evidence that they have gotten their blood Vitamin D levels tested. Waiters can memorize a 3 sentence spiel, to be recited with the specials of the day. Etc.

Small business owners can also investigate reports that the covid-19 economic destruction is being exploited to accelerate an pre-existing, reverse-Robin Hood phenomenon, whereby the rich are extracting wealth from the rest of the population. When a small business goes out of business, it's customers and real assets (such as buildings, real estate, and inventory) don't disappear. See [1] for more information - and extra motivation to take on a leadership role.

religious communities

Another key source of leaders for a government competence movement are members of religious communities. It was painfully obvious that some of the same leaders who had no problem locking down religious communities, and thereby infringing on their 1st Amendment rights, had no problem supporting the 1st Amendment rights of protesters, who were motivated by the George Floyd murder. Here is NYC mayor DeBlasio 'explaining' this difference.

"We worked with the religious leadership of this city for months. Cardinal Dolan in the Catholic Church, and so many other religious leaders, who were in full agreement that it was not time to bring back religious services because of the danger it would cause to their congregants. The protests were an entirely different reality, a national phenomenon, that was not something that the government could just say, go away. It’s something that really came from the grassroots."
This is a non-explanation explanation. Religious bodies are also a "national phenomenon", and no matter what some religious leaders might have agreed to, early in the pandemic, many people of faith weren't fine with constrictive lockdowns in late June, and even earlier.

Although I wouldn't describe the threat to religious gatherings, from lockdown, as "existential", the lack of concern for religious assemblies from some politicians should provide motivation for religiously oriented citizens to avoid getting the short end of the stick, during future epidemics.

A Call For Citizens To Self-organize A Government Competence Movement

"Self-organized" means lots of local leaders and cells of activism taking on the vitamin D insufficiency problem, with unification a problem that can be deferred, and achieved organically. This website essentially is presenting an idea, and providing a few resources (files, that can be downloaded and printed out; some can be modified). It's also providing some references. In spite of the ".org" in the domain name, there is no organization behind this website. On Day 1, there is only a single individual.

A Movement In 2 Parts - Part 1

At a local and personal-network level, a Government Competence movement would generally ignore politics and politicians, and relentlessly spread the word about Vitamin D, vitamin D blood testing, the superiority of sunshine over supplements for raising vitamin D blood levels, and the critical role of Vitamin D in building up the level of immune system robustness in the populace. This aspect of the movement can then later branch into other natural and "alternative" healing modalities that have been suppressed by governmental and medical authorities, and also "heighten the contradictions" between said suppression and what should be the default operation of a civically competent government. This would be a grassroots, bottom up educational process, first and foremost. A key point to emphasize is that we want the public to have robust levels of Vitamin D before a 2nd wave of covid-19 hits, so as to make unecessary any economically ruinous, widespread lockdowns.

A Movement In 2 Parts - Part 2

However, no less important, though of less immediate concern, is to take over the 2 stooges of the ruling plutocracy in the United States. These are the Democratic and Republican parties, which are both equally guilty in selling out the public. This means the public will have to engage in the messy world of Democratic and Republican politics, while keeping themselves pure from corrupting influence and alliances, and any sort of unethical compromises. To avoid wasting time and energy, the public will have to become knowledgeable about the need to install primary candidates, as 86% of House congressional seats are not competitive, with respect to party. In other words, it is certain that either a Democrat or Republican will win a given seat, in 86% of elections, depending on the district. Getting involved with electoral politics, after party standard-bearers are selected, is too late.  

It is delusional to think that the United States has anything close to a properly functioning democracy. It was shown, statistically, in Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens, by researchers Gilens and Page, that the United States' government functions as a plutocracy. [2] To claw back power from the de facto ruling class will not be easy, but can be done. Represent.us has endorsed research showing that “when 3.5% of a population actively engages in fighting for change, they win, every single time”. [3] (Note: while I respect represent.us’s strategy of getting anti-corruption laws passed at state and local levels, I disagree with not making direct electoral threats at the federal level, right from the get-go.)

Further Reading

 

references