It's time to stop.

With serenity, but also with determination, the doctors of the signal medicine group (735 members of AMPAS, our association, many of whom are involved in the front line), worried about the possible authoritarian drifts in progress, wish to clarify the possibility that constitutionally guaranteed rights for citizens will be infringed.

1. Injury constitutionally guaranteed freedoms

In this period, some constitutional rights were seriously damaged (freedom of movement, the right to study, the possibility of working, the possibility of accessing treatment for all non-Coronavirus patients) and a serious injury to the horizon is looming our right to the choice of care. All this in the absence of a real parliamentary debate, and with the help of emergency decrees. We woke up in a nightmare without being able to leave the house except by signing self-certifications on the constitutionality of which several jurists expressed perplexity, chased by helicopters, drones and law enforcement vehicles with an deployment of forces never seen even in the most serious subversive moments of the history of our country.

An app is now coming into force to track the movements of individuals, in violation of our right to privacy, and that someone already thinks of using for extrasanitary purposes.

But among the most serious injuries to our constitutional rights, the one linked to the right of choice of treatment stands out, well defined both in the constitution and in the European document of Oviedo. We doctors are guilty of not having adequately opposed, two years ago, a law that deprived the pediatrician of all dignity and decision-making autonomy.

Remember that an unjustified injury of rights is always the premise to other possible injuries.

2. Conflicts of interest

The “scientific” actors of the drafting and promotion of the aforementioned Lorenzin law do not seem to be very different from the “consultants” of today’s emergency.

We ask ourselves if the information coming from the figures who operate as consultants of the Ministry of Health is disclosed with the communication of the conflicts of interest that they may have with companies in the sector. It would not be ethical or lawful to have advisors who work with large pharmaceutical companies.

Still on the subject of conflict of interest: was Parliament to establish the components of the Task Force recently set up to deal with the so-called phase 2? Are there possible conflicts of interest? These individuals appear to have sought immunity from the consequences of their actions. But shouldn’t institutional figures make “decisions” about the future of our country? One thing is consultancy, it is quite another to decide “in the name and on behalf”. With what authority?

3. Freedom of expression and contradictory

Journalism should be a comparison of ideas, discussion, evaluation of different points of view. We wonder how much freedom of expression is guaranteed even for professionals who do not think like us. Instead we see journalists celebrating the “capture” of a poor runner on the beach by a massive deployment of forces, and the systematic cancellation of any mention of different treatment systems compared to the “official narrative” of the saving vaccine, whether it is vitamin C or heparin, in the total absence of contradictory.

In this intoxicated picture, the major networks and newspapers continually broadcast a commercial, offensive to common intelligence, in which it clearly reaffirms that theirs is the only serious and reliable information: the rest is only fake. Thus the atmosphere is created thanks to which it is possible to intervene on any movie, social profile, website that does not consider itself in line with the official narrative. No dictatorship can survive unless it has the support of enslaved information.

4. Vaccine: solution to all evils?

Everyone is waiting for the new vaccine as a release (which journalists and one-way virologists continue to boast as the only possible solution), forgetting some facts. The first is that the vaccine is developed on the basis of the theoretical projections of viruses circulating in the previous year, and therefore it is a “bet” (it is a common experience every winter that many people vaccinated get sick anyway). The second is the continuous strong variability of an RNA virus such as Coronavirus, of which several variants seem to already exist. Nonetheless, in spite of the risk of viral interference (so the vaccine for a different virus may exacerbate the response to another virus) the Lazio region proposes the obligation for all health professionals and all over65s to carry out ordinary flu vaccination, violating once again (if the obligation were real) the constitutional right to the choice of treatment. And the defenders of the constitution, silent. It’s easy to imagine what will happen as soon as the new life-saving vaccine is made available, with accelerated procedures and minimal safety tests. As doctors we want to reiterate the importance of respecting the freedom of choice of care as constitutionally defined.

5. Children and physical movement

A note is necessary to understand the seriousness of the situation also with regard to physical movement and closure in the home of our children. The same WHO has pronounced on the merits recommending the exit in the open air and physical movement as indispensable health and immune support devices. Almost all the other European countries have allowed to go out alone to play sports and to walk with children. We do not. With an incredibly harsh rule, veined with an unacceptable paternalism (“if we let them free then they are not able to stay away”) we have created psychological and physical discomforts (obesity and sedentary lifestyle) and forced the people obliged to work to jump through hoops , farmers, transporters, food stores).

Furthermore, we cannot fail to point out the total inattention of these draconian measures against families with disabled children (and in particular autistic children) for whom the daily time of going out in the open air represents an indispensable support for their difficult condition. The most fragile, as always, pay the hardest toll.

All this was not enough, the war of suspicion and delusion among the envious of the freedoms of others was unleashed.

As Noam Chomsky lucidly writes, pitting one’s subjects against each other is a splendid system for any dictatorship to distract the people from what power is truly perpetrating against them.

The intervention of police teams with quads and helicopters to chase isolated old men on the paths only reinforces the idea of being all sheriffs, demonstrating the perfect success of induction of psychosis by the power.

6. Economic damage of the lockdown: an epochal disaster

Some sectors, such as tourism, catering or the automotive sector, have had turnover reductions close to 100%. This will mean, as the first estimates say, about ten million unemployed. That will stop paying the current mortgages. They will stop buying consumer goods. They will lose their businesses or businesses built up over decades of sacrifices. We doctors know what this means at the health level: thousands and thousands of new deaths. People who get sick, commit suicide (the first signs are already visible), will withdraw their savings in the bank. We need to leave immediately, everyone, without hesitation. To reduce the damage, which, however, even if it started again today, will be epochal. If tomorrow it were discovered that someone had surreptitiously prolonged the Italian lockdown (to date the toughest in Europe) to keep panic high and find a more ready environment for vaccination, we only hope that justice can run its course with maximum hardness. People lose their jobs and starve to death, and the Lords pontificate.

7. The treatments

Here too the subject is embarrassing. It is understandable that a new virus can displace even the best doctors for some time. But as information accumulates, it would be necessary to listen to those who have been able to better understand on the ground. A Facebook group of which many of us are members, born spontaneously as self-help, and which has about 100,000 members, has developed effective care recommendations which are then sent to the ministry.

Today it seems clear and established that death occurs due to strong intravascular coagulation many lives can be saved with the use of simple heparin. But that’s not enough: specific attention is also needed depending on the timing of the disease: the first symptoms, the first aggravations, or in the procoagulation phase. In particular, we signal physicians find it difficult to understand the massive use of paracetamol or other antipyretics once it has been established that fever is a powerful antiviral for the body. An interassociative document is also being prepared on this delicate topic that deserves wider discussion.

If someone, however, allows himself to delay the adoption of effective treatment systems, for less than clear reasons (and some television interventions aimed at discrediting the heparin seem to go in that direction) expect strong reactions from those who risked their own life on the front line.

The judiciary is now investigating the serious errors made in some regions in the management of residences for the elderly, real outbreaks of infection with unfortunately a very high number of deaths, given the fragility and polymorbidity of the guests, almost always being treated with statins, antihypertensives, analgesics, antidiabetics. Beyond the regional responsibilities, which the judiciary will evaluate, it is important to make numbers: of the 22000 total national deaths as many as 7000 (30%!) Are of RSA patients. A shocking fact, but that must make us reflect on the important increase in deaths in some provinces.

The mistakes made, in good or bad faith, cost the lives of more than 100 doctors and a large number of other health workers who were sent to the rescue without a precise plan and without the necessary protective devices. Our deepest gratitude goes to them.

8. Delayed or unauthorized serological tests

One of the ways to understand how many people have already encountered the virus (let’s stop calling them “infected”, because sometimes they have had only mild flu symptoms and produced splendid antibodies) is to carry out a serological test, which is of low cost and shows disease in progress (IgM +) or outdated disease and presence of memory antibodies (IgG +). Who is IgG + could already serenely start moving again without particular caution neither for himself nor for others. Sensitivity and specificity of these tests are very high unlike those of the swabs. Why so much hostility from government and healthcare institutions to the point of prohibiting their use “until a reliable test is approved”? The cases of Ortisei (45% positive) and Vò Euganeo (75%) tell us that probably the virus has already spread much more than we think and that the measures in place may not be all that necessary, at least in some areas Italy.

9. Some numbers

Please spare us the 18:00 theater. Those numbers are not reliable and are part of a consummate direction. Alongside Borrelli, some figures sometimes parade whose potential conflicts of interest are never declared.

The number of “infected” is meaningless, since it depends on the number of swabs made. And the vast majority of the population may have already encountered the virus without knowing it. Oxford University estimates speak of 11 million positive potentials now. If this data were true, the lethality of Sars-Cov2 would be truly negligible: 0.05%, even taking mortality data as true. But even on these there remains the terrible doubt about the deaths of PER and CON Coronavirus. Several testimonials cast doubt on the data, given that around 1900 people leave us every day in Italy (ISTAT data) and it is not difficult to extract 400 of them, which are also positive for the virus. However, it is clear to those who work in the front line that the severe intravascular coagulation induced by the encounter between the virus and a fertile soil for him (average death age 78 years, average 3.3 pathologies present) can quickly lead to the death of fragile individuals who however they would have happily lived a few more years. In England they found that 73% of patients in the Intensive Care Unit for CoronaVirus are overweight or obese. As the dr. Says Lustig: “The virus does not distinguish those who infect but distinguishes those who kill very well”.

These frail patients, however, would have preferred to die in the arms of their loved ones rather than alone in this terrible way.

In other countries they used different calculation methods. Couldn’t we ask for more accurate and reliable data without spreading panic and concern?

10. Other European and non-European countries: very different lockdowns

Other countries both in Europe and in the world are adopting partial lockdowns much less rigid than the Italian one, so much so that the complete lockdown is now sadly called “Italian”. Yet we have the problem before everyone else and they are making us believe that we will close it good last. Because of the runners and the kids walking, of course. It is a pity that in many European countries the walk of adults and children, the trip to the sea, access to second homes is allowed almost everywhere, provided that social distancing is maintained. But weren’t we in a united Europe? Why this cruelty in Italy alone? Are we still the guinea pig country? We strongly request that we align ourselves as soon as possible with the directives in place in most European countries.

11. Support for the immune system: healthy people protect

A key point, which has totally escaped our rulers and our media, is that healthy people (that 85% of people who have encountered the virus and have not even noticed it, or have undergone mild symptoms, soon building the necessary antibodies) they lead a healthier lifestyle that has strengthened and shaped the immune system. Eating healthy, doing daily sports, leading a less stressful life (perhaps living outside the city), taking vitamins and natural supplements, doing without unnecessary drugs, giving up smoking, taking drugs or drinking without control, is a commitment that you would like to see in some way valued as virtuous behavior at least in relation to the savings that allow the national health system and, in this case, the protection from the spread of the virus and the non-occupation of a bed, thus left free for another.

Instead if we turn on the TV we only see advertisements for drugs and sweets. And among the very few shops open, in full lockdown, the state thought it well to leave the tobacconists. Smoke, fill yourself with sweets, be sedentary and swallow up drugs: this is the message that the state has given us in this period. Soon, the vaccine will arrive soon.

12. The requests

Aware of the fact that the future will be new and different only if we understand that our biology does not allow us to live in overcrowded, polluted cities, smoking, drugging and eating only industrial and refined foods in complete sedentary lifestyle, we want to hope that the “after emergency” can be better than the “before”. But this will only happen if many of the things we are here to request happen, some immediate, others shortly.

We therefore strongly request, on behalf of the AMPAS association and the 735 doctors who are part of it today (as well as the numerous non-medical investigators):

The immediate restoration of institutional and constitutional legality, recalling the parliament to its democratic functions and to the debate that must necessarily arise from it.
The immediate cancellation of task forces and external consultants whose conflicts of interest could be read, when they entrust them with responsibilities that are not institutionally foreseen, as an circumvention of democratic rules.
The immediate restoration of the right to work for millions of Italians, who if they cannot have their salary will soon be hungry with foreseeable consequences of public order (in compliance with the new rules of distancing as long as necessary)
The immediate restoration of the right to study for millions of children, teenagers, university students who have been deprived of one of their fundamental rights overnight (in compliance with the new rules, as long as it is necessary)
The protection of the right to the choice of treatment, already violated by previous laws, to prevent the mandatory nature of any possible new health treatment. Each new provision issued in an emergency must obligatorily provide for an end date of the provision, in order not to “try” some to make restrictions on freedoms a rule.
The blocking of any “app” or other IT device aimed at controlling the movements of people in blatant violation of our privacy.
The immediate reopening of the possibility for adults and children to go outside to play sports, walking, social life, albeit in compliance with the necessary rules.
The immediate restoration of a television or media level playing field, with hospitality in the transmissions of exponents, obviously qualified, of different points of view, with immediate removal (or relegation to different tasks) of conductors who have not been able to live up to their duty as journalists .
Declaration of their conflicts of interest by any healthcare professional who expresses a television opinion or participates in a debate. Omission must be punished with a proportionate media departure. The viewer needs to know if the speaker is receiving millions of euros from a company or not.
The ban on closing or deleting websites or social profiles in the absence of serious violations of the law. Any cancellations must however be promptly notified and justified. The removal of ideas and opinions just because they are different from the official mainstream is not worthy of a civilized country.
The prohibition for law enforcement agencies to interpret the public order rules established by decrees at their discretion. Any abuse, even minimal, must be prosecuted.
The ban on the radiation of doctors for the sole expression of ideas other than those of ordinary medicine. Dialogue and comparison between different ideas has always enriched science, which changes and evolves. We do not overestimate our current poor knowledge.
The timely activation of new treatment protocols in all Covid19 hospitals which, in addition to guaranteeing the health of the healthcare personnel, include the use of vitamins, minerals, ozone therapy and all effective and documented natural and low-cost treatments, accompanying via away with drugs more at risk of side effects only in case of aggravation, and activating the use of immunosuppressant drugs and heparin only for the crisis or pre-crisis phase.
The immediate availability and for the whole population of IgM and IgG serological tests that can immediately allow both to monitor the state of spread of the virus in the different areas, and to give the possibility to whom is IgG + to resume their life without any limitation.
In a hypothesis of gradual diffusion of viral immunity, particular attention will have to be paid to the fragile population: elderly, obese, hypertensive, diabetic, infarcted (the most affected categories). In compliance with the right of choice of treatment, no obligation can be given except temporarily, but only strong recommendations and detailed information on the risks of infection. A fragile individual must be able to choose whether to risk dying by embracing his grandchild, or to remain alive imprisoned in the house without seeing anyone.
A strong information campaign on the risks associated with a bad lifestyle and how this style increases the risk of being infected. Or do we want to be forced to keep masks all our lives and not be able to embrace each other to allow someone to smoke and swell up with sugary drugs and snacks, disdaining any type of physical movement? Each will remain free to harm himself but at least the state cannot be said to be an accomplice.
The ban, at least in this period, on advertising on television networks and newspapers on drugs and greasy confectionery products, as is the case with smoking.
Immediate help to the many families in crisis who because of this total lockdown have stopped working and producing income, in very simple ways (for example, value tickets for food purchases). The best help for companies, instead of begging, will be a timely reopening.

Better doctors, in a better country

AMPAS