In the news

Finally – It’s official! The WHO admits that healthy children below the age of 18 do not need the COVID-19 vaccine!

            I have argued since the first few months of the pandemic that children handle the coronavirus so well that they don’t need the vaccine. It has taken nearly three years for the WHO to come to that conclusion.

            As of February 1, 2023 fewer than 1500 American children below the age of 18 have died from this virus. The reasons include the fact that many if not most have experienced a coronavirus cold and have some cross-immunity. Compared with adults, children have significantly fewer comorbidities that are associated with mortality: obesity, type 2 diabetes, kidney disease, hypertension, chronic obstructive lung disease or drug-induced immunodeficiency.

            Some children SHOULD receive the vaccine. Those who are immunodeficient, have heart disease or who are obese or diabetic, or who have lung diseases such as cystic fibrosis fall into that category. About 35 percent of children who died from COVID-19 were apparently healthy but it’s likely that some of them had an unrecognized immune deficiency.

            N.B.: This information does not apply to the influenza vaccine. The influenza season usually results in about 40,000 deaths in an average year, and many of these involve children. ALL children and adults should receive the flu vaccine every year.

Lifestyle

Red wine as health food?? Sure it is, and the mainstream medical community has awakened to that fact. After all, it comes from plants, is highly colored – like all foods that are rich in antioxidants – and has numerous documented health benefits. The obvious caveat is that it should be consumed in small amounts, i.e., no more than two 5-ounce glasses a day for men and one glass for women. (Sorry, ladies – I’m just the messenger.)

The health benefits of wine were touted by none other than Louis Pasteur, the father of modern microbiology: “Wine can be considered with good reason as the most healthful and most hygienic of all beverages.”

Some of the advantages of red wine include its ability to relax blood vessels, inhibit the clotting mechanism and add to our antioxidant supply. All these factors reduce the likelihood of heart attack and stroke.

Resveratrol is one of the much-promoted constituents of wine but you need to know that almost all the studies on that constituent have been done on animals and in test tubes, not in humans. Categorically, resveratrol tablets have not been shown to be of value.

One 5-ounce glass of wine contains 100 calories. If you are a calorie-counter, keep that in mind.