norman deutsch the brain that changes itself

We put our faith in the vaccines, while other approaches – such as drugs for early treatment, or a role for our natural immunity, or lowering our personal risk factors, for instance – got comparatively less attention. Gates articulated what became our master narrative: Public health would stop the spread with extemporizing measures such as lockdowns, discouraging social functions and travel, and closing schools and businesses until the vaccines arrived, all of which would protect us until we achieved vaccine-induced herd immunity everywhere, which, we were told, would eliminate the virus. Arnd Wiegmann/ReutersĬonsider how things appeared in April, 2020, when Bill Gates, whose foundation is the largest private contributor to the World Health Organization, said: “The ultimate solution, the only thing that really lets us go back completely to normal and feel good … is to create a vaccine.” His “only” meant, that in practice, our chief hope and focus – in research, policy, in the media, and even emotionally, for many – became the vaccines.

Then a partnership co-led by a team of Canadians conducted the large randomized trial that proved what it could do. The discovery of its anti-COVID properties came after impressive sleuthing in France and the United States.

The drug has had two randomized control trials, or RCTs (the highest level of evidence) and four observational studies showing it keeps people with COVID out of hospital, from requiring intubation, and helps prevent death. It is an antidepressant used most commonly to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder. The December 20 announcement, coming at a time when Canadians were preoccupied with Omicron, and the fear hospitals would soon be overwhelmed, received hardly any news coverage.įluvoxamine is a “repurposed drug,” and comes from what might seem like a most unlikely source – psychiatry. Just before Christmas, without much fanfare, the Ontario Science Table became the first to recommend fluvoxamine – a decades-old drug few had heard of – for the early treatment of COVID-19. He is executive director of Health and the Greater Good. Norman Doidge, MD, is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and author of The Brain That Changes Itself. Editorial: Yes, vaccines are silver bullets.Rebuttal to this column by Fahad Razak, Arthur Slutsky and David Naylor.

Norman deutsch the brain that changes itself