Coronavirus COVID-19. Is a real health debate about this virus being stifled?

News and current affairs coverage has been little else but coronavirus COVID-19 for the past couple of months and more. It has been provided incessant, unrelenting wall-to-wall coverage. Yet there is no real health debate going on. How can this be? And what are the likely consequences?

• We know there is a virus and what it is called.
• We know it is affecting people around the world, and it's been designated a pandemic.
• We know thousands of people are dying with it (although not of it).
• We know most people who are dying die in hospital.
• We know pharmaceutical medicine has no treatment for it - which is why people are dying.
• We know about public health advice, washing our hands, social distance, lockdown, et al.
• We know that the government was scare that it would overwhelm the NHS.
• We know £billions have been spent propping up health care services.
• We know normal social life has been severely disrupted.
• We know that our economy has been devastated.

We know all this as we have been told about it, ad infinitum. And as the early weeks of the epidemic passed, and the number of people dying grew, it did appear that some debate did begin.

• Did the government act quickly and consistently enough? 
• Were they too slow to enforce public health measures rigorously enough?

Yet this is essentially a sterile debate. It is about 'the rules' that conventional medicine has dictated to governments, and how they were, and how they should have been enforced. The rules themselves have never been challenged or even debated. The application of these public health rules have led to serious social and economic mayhem; but as the rules were never questioned that is just 'unfortunate', unavoidable. They have led to nonsensical and laughable situations with little or no logical explanation; but they are the rules, as we must all abide by them.

• the rules were made on the advice of medical science (and science is, of course, sacrosanct, unquestionable).
• the government itself had no policy beyond this advice (perhaps their way of washing their hands).
• and must all abide by the rules to protect the NHS, which would otherwise not be able to cope.

The science on which public health policy is now built is the same medical science that has told us routinely for the last 70-100 years that pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines are 'entirely safe'; and this is also not to be questioned. It is the same science that has been bought and controlled by the pharmaceutical industry, the science that tells us that the only 'scientific' approach to medical care, to combat illness and disease, is through their drugs. It is also the science that now dominates the way we think about health, and what we understand health to be. There is no vaccine available, and there will be no solution to coronavirus COVID-19 until we have one.

• So if we are given rules that causes serous social disruption, and untold economic damage we must accept it. 
• If a doctor diagnoses an illness, we have the illness, no questions are asked.
• If then a doctor says we have to take a drug, or a vaccine, then that is exactly what we must do. 
• If we are told there is no alternative then there is no alternative. 

If , in addition, we are all frightened out of our wits (as we have been about COVID-19) we become even more compliant to the mandatory advice of conventional medicine - supported by the government, and the mainstream media. There is no alternative, we must conform to the rules, otherwise we might die too. There is no treatment.

And mostly we do this because we now assume that conventional medicine has been 'proven' by medical science, and that no other medical treatment can work.

This is what stifles the health debate. Pharmaceutical medicine is too powerful, it does not want a debate. Why should it? A virus is causing death and it has no treatment. Would it really want government and media to discuss alternatives? The conventional medical establishment has a monopoly position in the NHS, and it wants to maintain it. It has used the vast and excessive wealth of the pharmaceutical industry to ensure that there is no debate. So neither the government nor the mainstream media can afford to do anything other than 'follow the money', and obey 'the science'. Both have become slaves to medical science.

How much simpler it would have been if our medical hierarchy had pursued a different, alternative health policy.

• recognise that they had no medical treatment,
• that it is farcical to chase a virus that cannot be seen, but which is everywhere, and that doing so leads to nonsensical social disruption and unnecessary economic harm,
• to focus instead on the immune system, confirming that natural immunity is the best way we can each defend ourselves, to provide everyone with the best possible advice on how to support and augment personal immunity to the virus,
• to focus support on those who immune systems are weak, protect them if we can by locking down,
• to engage with natural medical therapies (as has been done in India and Cuba) to see (and study) what treatments they have to offer, and how safe, how effective, and how cost-efficient they are.

To discuss these issues would take us beyond 'the rules' to a real health debate, where conventional wisdom is questioned, where dominant views are challenged, and where conventional medical  assumptions are investigated.

Unfortunately this is clearly NOT happening. Indeed, both government and mainstream media is not only refusing to discuss the efficacy of the conventional medical establishment, it is parroting their propaganda - describing these alternative medical approaches as 'fake news', 'dangerous misinformation', and attacking anyone who dares to mention them.

This is not what real science does - real science questions, challenges, investigates. And this is not what medical science would do - if it was genuinely independent of pharmaceutical medicine.

So we argue about whether a failed conventional medical policy could have been more successful if it had been implemented more effectively, and believe this to be a debate. Remember, we had a much more serious epidemic 100 years ago - Spanish flu. Similarly, conventional medicine had no effective treatment. Millions died despite the medical treatment available at the time. 100 years on we are experiencing exactly the same.

What will be the conventional medical response to another serious epidemic in another 100 years? Unless there is a real debate they will have learnt nothing, yet again, largely because it has stifled and prevented serious debate now?