Difference between revisions of "VA Hospital, asked for medical justification for mask policy, consults lawyers"

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(Thirteenth VA Contact: My response to John R. Groves, Compliance Officer)
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“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” ~ Jesus Christ, John 8:32 
 
“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” ~ Jesus Christ, John 8:32 
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=Veterans Administration the Last Federal Agency to lift Vaccine Mandates=
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[https://www.theepochtimes.com/major-us-agency-to-keep-covid-19-vaccine-mandate-despite-white-house-announcement_5236080.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&src_src=Morningbrief&utm_campaign=mb-2023-05-03&src_cmp=mb-2023-05-03&utm_medium=email&est=6OEl7zBNhGDcPQt8USIdG2wELkIZh74nXbPoxkpnb8FfbWOJGkznVoXyoCCC1zo%3D Epoch Times, May 3, 2023]
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'''Major US Agency to Keep COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Despite White House Announcement'''
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By Zachary Stieber (The following verbiage is excerpted from the Epoch Times article)
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The White House’s announcement that many mandates are ending “will not impact” the VA, McDonough said. “To ensure the safety of Veterans and our colleagues, VA health care personnel will still be required to be vaccinated at this time,” he told workers.
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“As we transition to this new phase of our response to the pandemic, the vaccine (including booster shots) remains the best way to protect you, your families, your colleagues, and Veterans from COVID-19.”
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A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data consulted when choosing to keep the mandate in place.
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The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that indicate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.
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No clinical trial efficacy data has been made public for updated shots from Moderna and Pfizer, and none of the vaccines prevent infection or transmission.
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The VA is the second-largest federal agency, employing nearly 400,000 people.
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The VA was the first U.S. agency to mandate vaccination for its workers.
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“We’re mandating vaccines for Title 38 employees because it’s the best way to keep veterans safe, especially as the Delta variant spreads across the country,” McDonough, an appointee of President Joe Biden, said in a statement on July 26, 2021.
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The mandate was later expanded to most Veterans Health Administration employees and volunteers. It covers personnel such as psychologists, pharmacists, housekeepers, social workers, volunteers, and contractors.
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The mandate does not cover employees deemed to be VA health care personnel.
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Mandates imposed by two other agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Indian Health Service, are also remaining in place while the agencies review the requirements, the Biden administration said.
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Most of the administration’s mandates are ending on May 12, the White House said this week. That includes mandates for federal workers and contractors imposed by Biden that were struck down by courts as likely illegal, a mandate for foreign travelers arriving by air, and the requirement that some foreigners arriving by land present proof of vaccination.
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Biden had ruled out such requirements before taking office but later claimed that not enough people were getting vaccinated. The mandates were imposed after evidence began emerging that indicated the protection bestowed by the vaccines waned over time, and officials have since cleared multiple booster shots in a bid to restore the flailing protection.
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=Next Step: Newspapers=
 
=Next Step: Newspapers=

Revision as of 16:59, 3 May 2023

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INTRODUCTION: This is a record of my interaction with the Veterans Administration Hospital of central Iowa about their requirement that everyone wear a mask all the time they are in the hospital. I showed them the research proving masks are completely ineffective at stopping covid, but they do a magnificent job of blocking oxygen so that wearers' oxygen levels drop and carbon dioxide levels rise, causing a wide variety of serious medical issues.

I had a few exchanges with VA staff, followed by attempts to involve newspapers to report it, and lawyers to sue in federal court.

The basis of my complaint is in two parts: Section One explains in what sense blind faith in rituals proved by research to accomplish nothing, loaded with social rejection of anyone who questions them, runs towards the essence of the False Gods of primitive paganism and offends the Biblical importance placed on Truth. Section Two summarizes tons of research showing that masks and vaccines don't help but harm, while covid tests are very unreliable.

Contents

500 words news article version

If the Veterans Administration Hospital is able to assure its patients that its mask requirement slows covid, without causing a host of other medical harms, why won’t they?

Why did they consult with their lawyers instead of their doctors before answering? I asked them October 29, “Why are masks still required to enter your hospital for everyone, all the time, this long after the best peer reviewed studies (Netherlands, Bangladesh) find no “statistically significant” benefit from them, while other studies (Germany, Cato Institute) document serious physical harm they cause? If your answer is that you know about studies in favor of obsessive masking that I have overlooked, can you refer me to them?”

This question was completely ignored, which strongly implies they indeed cannot justify their policy from any evidence. Their December 23, response: “...After reviewing your request with both the Medical Center Director as well as the Regional Counsel, it was determined that the facility mask policy is in line with Executive Order 13991 and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Therefore the Facility Director will not grant your request.... Laurel S. Williamson, Central Iowa Health Care System Privacy Officer.”

I read Executive Order 13991, by Biden, January 20, 2021. It begins with an assertion (made without any support) that masks in fact slow covid. Never does it prohibit hospitals from discussing research with patients.

In fact it says hospitals should “address obstacles” to mask requirement enforcement. Isn’t it an obstacle to mask requirement enforcement, that the best research says masks accomplish little or nothing? Shouldn’t that be “addressed” by the hospital?

The EO also says hospitals should “incentivize” mask wearing. Wouldn’t it “incentivize” mask wearing, to tell patients about all the wonderful research proving masks help?

But if there is indeed no such research, is any hospital prohibited by Biden from so informing its patients?

Although these concerns apply in every federal facility, you would think in a hospital, there would be several doctors who know the research and can easily correct me if I am wrong or interact with the CDC if I am right. But then I had thought a hospital would treat a question about mask research as a medical question to be answered by consulting with doctors, not lawyers.

In order to give my request firmer legal standing, I framed it not only as a request to address research of concern, but as a request for a religious exemption from their mask requirement. Did you know Jesus refused to obey a health regulation on the ground it accomplished nothing? Mark 7:1-16.

“Doing truth”, John 3:21, and challenging lies, is a fundamental Christian calling. Bowing down to a false god is our #1 “thou shalt not”. A mandate not supported by evidence or science but by censorship describes a state-established religion. Especially when “unbelief” is treated like blasphemy. It reeks of superstition equal to the magical powers attributed by our ignorant ancestors to bowing down to a carved tree.

My application for an exemption for myself: denied. My request for research cites in support of their policy: ignored.

Appeal? The VA said I could appeal through the VA’s External Complaints program, if I will claim I am discriminated against for being an unpopular color, gender, etc.

Religious discrimination isn’t on their list.

Denial of Informed Consent isn't on their list.

Subjection to a treatment proven to be harmful to everyone and beneficial to no one isn't on their list.

Denial of critical medical care unless I bow before a superstitious ritual whose pretense of scientific legitimacy can only survive with the support of heavy censorship of evidence - that's not on their list.

Medical Fraud isn't on their list.


Resources: The 15 page Application for a religious exemption from all covid mandates that I submitted to the VA: Part One includes Biblical and legal arguments. (http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Religious/Secular_Exemption_from_Mask_Vaccine_%26_testing_Mandates) Part Two has my summaries of research. (It is updated frequently.) (http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption _from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence)

A little more detail about the mask studies, from my application to the VA: CATO. On November 8, the Cato Institute published a review of mask studies, (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-paper-64.pdf) finding that “The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence [Netherlands, Bangladesh] has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, [reviews of other studies] eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.” [Let’s mandate masks as a precaution, in case they turn out to be effective.]

The Denmark study, November 2020, compared nearly 6,000 masked with nearly 6,000 unmasked.

After two months the difference in cases between the two groups was only 4, which the authors said was not “statistically significant”. (https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817) The Bangladesh study, November 8, 2021, found that only one percent fewer mask wearers got sick compared with the maskless, when patients submitted their own reports, but that advantage dropped to a tenth of one percent when patient reports were double checked with PCR tests. (https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817)

The German study, April 20, 2021, documents the multitude of diseases triggered by mask wearing. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/) It reviewed 42 studies of specific medical harms, from mild to fatal, from mask wearing. (See my summary of the study. http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence#Masks_Harm_More_than_they_Help) Most of those serious consequences have been paid too little attention to to put numbers on the likelihood of suffering them, but the buildup of carbon dioxide and lowering of oxygen saturation, which is universally accepted as contributing to them, is suffered by everybody.

Everybody.

You included.

First Contact October 29 2022

My first contact with the hospital was October 29, on the hospital website. I asked these questions:

My note to hospitals. To the Veteran's Hospital in Des Moines October 29, 2021: (My answers to multiple choice questions on their contact form: Which category best describes your question? VA health care. Which topic best describes your question? Medical care concerns at VA Medical Facility. Tell us the reason you're contacting us? Service complaint. My inquiry is: a general question. What is your question?)

Why are masks still required to enter your hospital for everyone, all the time, this long after peer reviewed studies find no statistically significant benefit from them, (for example the Netherlands study published last November), while other studies document physical harm they cause - some harm for most people after long use, and significant harm for some people after even a little use?

If your answer is that you know about studies in favor of obsessive masking that I have overlooked, can you refer me to them?

Is there any place in your medical system where the evidence for and against mask and vaccine obsession is compared, so that we may understand the basis of your policy?

If not, can you refer me to any forum in the world where doctors on all sides of the controversy can interact without fear of censorship?

If not, will you consider being the first to create such a resource, which will restore the confidence that your policies are in the best interests of our health, of people like me who read so much evidence from censored world class doctors that masks and vaccines are not beneficial?

In the absence of any such resource anywhere, the policy of any hospital that is so far contrary to science, apparently to appease bureaucrats and politicians with zero medical credentials, raises questions how many other medical decisions are made at your institution so contrary to the best interests of our health.

I have posted just a few of the studies that concern me, at (this http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence). I assume the information will not fit in your online form.

Second Contact: November 9, 2021

Then on November 9, I met with the hospital’s “Patient Advocate”, Lori Clair. Or Lori Sinclair. (She wrote "Clair" on the business card she gave me, but said "Sinclair" in the phone message she left for me later.] I gave her a print copy of my Application for a Religious Exemption from their mask mandate.

She said she would read my 40 page application and pass it to others. Actually the 40 pages is just the legal and Biblical argument that the issue is religious because mask benefits are a lie. I explained, and my printout said, that Part Two is the medical research showing that mask benefits are a lie. That’s probably another 40 pages; it changes every day. She said the VA doesn’t do its own research on the issue; it trusts the CDC.

Third Contact: November 18, 2021

November 18, I emailed a followup to Lori (Sin)Clair, but it bounced back. The email address on the business card she gave me said "VHACIHOA_PATIENT_ADVOCATES@va.gov", but it bounced back with the message that I was not authorized to email her. Hmmm.

November 20, 2021. (I'm still counting this as the third contact.) Lori left a phone message for me. She said she had talked with the Ethics Board chair, Suzanne Tavor, and the hospital administrator, Lora Williamson, and my application was denied. Later another VA employee was unable to confirm that either name went with those titles.

Fourth Contact: December 11, 2021

I snail-mailed the following "Motion to Reconsider to Lori (Sin)clair, and on the 23rd, to Suzanne Tavor, Infectious Disease Nurse, the title given me by another VA employee.

Dear Lori Clair,

Thank you for processing the Application I submitted November 9 for a Religious Exemption from mask wearing, (following my October 29 entry on your website), for reading it, and for sharing it with your Ethics Board chair, Suzanne Tabor, and your hospital administrator, Lora Williamson. (According to the phone message you left Friday, November 20.)

I have delayed responding to you until I could process recent developments. CATO. On November 8, the day before I met you, the Cato Institute published its own review of mask studies, finding that “The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.” My summary of the study, with more detail, is enclosed.

BANGLADESH. I had already told you about the Denmark study last November which finds no “statistically significant” Covid reduction from masks. The other major “well done” study was in Bangladesh, Aug. 31, 2021, which I had read about but hadn’t read. I wanted to double check news reports about it by reading it myself. The CATO report increased my curiosity.

The authors of the study glow with praise for the covid reduction achieved by masks in their research. They found a whopping 1% greater chance of infection without a mask! That’s according to biased self-reporting of symptoms. When self-reporting was double checked by testing blood samples, that whopping 1% benefit dropped to only a 0.09% greater chance of infection without a mask. Less than a tenth of a percent benefit! Does that degree of benefit justify, in your mind, mask mandates for all your patients? Or any mask mandate anywhere outside an operating room or dusty work environment? My notes on the Bangladesh study are enclosed.

GERMANY. I also learned, a week ago, about a German study published April 20, 2021, that reviewed 42 studies that documented specific medical harms, from mild to fatal, from mask wearing, especially long term masking. Most of those serious consequences have been paid too little attention to to put numbers on the likelihood of suffering them, but the buildup of carbon dioxide and lowering of oxygen saturation, which is universally accepted as contributing to them, is suffered by everybody.

Everybody.

You included.

My notes on that report are also enclosed. Don’t remain ignorant of that study, if you care about your own health.

The Bible is obsessed with Truth. It is at war with superstition and its false gods. Blind faith in a ritual that does no more for you than bowing down to a carved tree, enforced by censorship of strong evidence and marginalization of those who follow it, and validated by a New Morality that treats disagreement like blasphemy, meets every reasonable definition of a False God. It makes nations ignorant, Isaiah 30. It blinds science and medicine. It pauses the centuries of progress under our Christian ancestors.

Empowered by today’s tracking technology, this surrender of individual scrutiny to whatever some anointed expert dreams up is a vote for the greatest tyranny ever to exist on this planet, this Footstool of God.

Give your patients a reason to trust your medical judgment. Don’t require, or even accept, blind faith in you. Inform your patients. Don’t surrender your own policies to blind faith in a bureaucrat. Don’t just tell me you follow the CDC and the Mayo Clinic, without telling me where, among their resources, they seriously address these studies. If you look, you will find they do not, unless you can get a lot more out of their search engines than I could.

Don’t be irritated when your patients want to be well informed. Inform them. If you think you follow the research better than your patients, don’t keep that knowledge to yourself. Direct us to your evidence that masks significantly help and do not significantly harm. And if you don’t follow the research, trusting the CDC to do all your studying for you, stop! Change course! Medicine did not advance as it has by doctors ignoring research!

You told me the VA Hospital relies on the CDC for research, and does no research of its own. That’s what you told me November 9, but on the phone message you left for me November 20 you threw in the Mayo Clinic website. Did you think those two institutions address the best research? I can’t imagine how anyone could feel their position well informed who does not address the Denmark, Bangladesh, and German studies. Yet my following attempts to find them addressed on either site came up dry: Mayo Clinic

RE Germany: No relevant results for “April 20, 2021”. No results at all for “Germany, masks”. “Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose” gets a couple of results that warn, “Faculty must wear approved masks properly covering the mouth and nose.”

RE Denmark: No return for “Danish Mask Wearers”. Nothing relevant for :November 18, 2021”. Or “Denmark, masks”.

RE Bangladesh: No results for "Bangladesh masks". “August 30, 2021 Bangladesh” or "Impact of Community Masking".

“Mask Research” gets “How well do face masks protect against coronavirus?” which doesn’t cite a single study. Its authority, the CDC. August 24, 2021. It is presented the way a parent presents duties to children, omitting evidence which experience confirms children either can’t understand anyway or don’t want to think so hard about anyway. Mayo Clinic research.

It lists 25 “references” which include neither the German nor the Denmark study. Nor was it updated to include the Bangladesh study which was published 6 days later. 6 references were to CDC posts, one to the WHO, one to the FDA.

A large number of returns come up for “mask research”, but only the first one seems relevant to mask research.

CDC searches: results Mayo search results

RE Germany: No relevant results for “April 20, 2021 Germany” or for “Germany, masks”. “Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose”, searching for the exact phrase, gets three results which do not include the German study.

RE Denmark: Four irrelevant returns for “Danish Mask Wearers”. Nothing relevant for “November 18, 2021 Denmark”. For “Denmark, masks”, the closest to an article relevant to the Denmark mask study was “If you must travel to Denmark, make sure you are fully vaccinated before travel.”

RE Bangladesh: No relevant results for "Bangladesh masks". “August 30, 2021 Bangladesh” only got two “travel health notices”. "Impact of Community Masking" + Bangladesh, zero returns.

“Mask Research” gets a lot of “guidance” of what to do, but I didn’t spot anything that looked like it included any evidence that any of its guidance was good. The first return was “Improve How Your Mask Protects You” Updated Apr. 6, 2021. It didn’t even list any references or footnotes.

Although I couldn’t find the studies addressed at all by searching, there was another time when I happened upon a paragraph in a CDC post that dismissed the Denmark study as “inconclusive”, when its finding of no “statistically significant” benefit was definite, and as “small”, though it followed nearly 6,000 participants for two months. I address that paragraph at Section Two of my Application.

I had hoped that with a rejection of my application, you would have given some rationale for your decision. Like, some evidence that masks accomplish anything, to counter the highest quality studies which show they don’t. I had hoped that the reputation of your hospital would mean enough to you that you would defend it (I am snailing a response because the email address on the business card you gave me responds with “VHACIHOA_PATIENT_ADVOCATES@va.gov. Your message couldn't be delivered because delivery to this group is restricted to authenticated senders.”.)

I move to update my application with a recent review of all previous mask studies which was unavailable when I met with you, published by the Cato Institute. The study was published the day before I talked to you but I only learned of it later. In light of this new evidence, I submit this Motion to Reconsider.

From the abstract:

The Cato abstract states: "...evidence of facemask efficacy is based primarily on observational studies that are subject to confounding [To cause to become confused or perplexed; To fail to distinguish; mix up] and on mechanistic studies [mechanical measurements by various contraptions] that rely on surrogate endpoints [substitute things measured, other than actual infection rates with or without masks] (such as droplet dispersion) as proxies for disease transmission. The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.”

Dr. Martin Kulldorff, senior scientific director of the Brownstone Institute, summarized the Cato study:

“The truth is that there have been only two randomized trials of masks for COVID. One was in Denmark, which showed that they might be slightly beneficial, they might be slightly harmful, we don’t really know—the confidence interval kind of crossed zero,” he said. “And then there was another study from Bangladesh where they randomized villagers to masks or no masks. And the efficacy of the masks was for reduction of COVID was something between zero and 18 percent. So either no effect or very minuscule effect.”

I searched the CDC website for some acknowledgment of the Denmark study. All I found was a very strange half paragraph six months later. The CDC denigrated the study as “inconclusive” when its finding of no statistically significant benefit was quite conclusive. It called the study “too small”, which is a strange way to describe a study of 6,000 subjects over two months. Here is my analysis of it. If my analysis is wrong I will appreciate correction.

You told me the VA hospital doesn’t do its own research in support of policies like mask wearing, but trusts the CDC. Later you added, the Mayo Clinic. Don’t most of your doctors follow a lot of research? Isn’t research what doctors rely on to advice patients about the risks they face with all manner of treatments and operations? Aren’t your doctors a huge pool of knowledge about every kind of research? On a matter affecting all your patients, like masks, wouldn’t it be an easy thing for you to ask your doctors for volunteers to assemble some responses to studies like those I cite, to make available to any patient who asks about the evidence for your policy? And not just for the benefit of patients, inquiring about your mandate for masks, but for your doctors and nurses, when your mandate stretches to the deadly covid vaccines? When that seemingly inevitable day arrives, will you doggedly fire them for “resisting”, yet still without addressing the research that alarms them?

I am curious: are VA hospitals legally bound by CDC guidelines?

If so, I want to learn what laws govern. This would be a more serious problem than I thought, because if medical errors by a government bureaucracy can only be corrected by an act of Congress or a Constitutional Amendment, before doctors are allowed to exercise their best judgment for their patients, the healing of modern medicine will take far more work than I was hoping. Are you not legally allowed to do your own research? Or to publicly interact with the CDC in reviewing evidence?

If not – if CDC statements are non-binding guidelines, then you have important reasons to do your own research, address alternative views, and publish it in language accessible to lawmakers and voters. Not only to assure patients that your policies are in our best interests, and to build public confidence in your grasp of medical facts, but to keep your doctors and nurses from quitting when your mandate stretches to covid vaccines, as is already happening.

Which assures me that it is not just my medical ignorance that supports my concern, nor can the resistance of doctors be accounted for by profits from serving the ignorance industry, since way too many medical professionals are forsaking everything and gaining nothing. The CDC has obviously not earned their respect.

Why should it? Was I wrong when I told you the CDC doesn’t seriously address evidence that doesn’t support its guidelines? Is it not true that vaccine manufacturers “contribute” significantly to the CDC foundation? Could this help explain why a significant number of doctors and nurses are leaving medicine rather than take “the jab”? (Even a 1% quit rate is overwhelming, when that many are ready to take such a costly step.)

As my application makes clear, standing for truth, and exposing lies, is a fundamental Christian duty. And when mandates are supported not by evidence or science but by censorship, and with moral outrage over noncompliance as indignant as ancient responses to blasphemy, we are dealing with a state established religion. The Bible is pretty clear how readily we should bow down to a false god.

Fifth Contact: December 23, 2021

I received a rejection letter from Laurel S. Williamson, who gave her title, not as hospital administrator, but as Privacy Officer.

A photocopy of her letter is posted as a response Dec 23 2021.pdf PDF.

Also here:

Laura Williamson letter small.jpg

Laurel Williamson page 2 small.jpg

She wrote, "Thank you for your inquiry regarding your second request for a religious exemption to the facility policy which requires a face mask be worn by all staff, volunteers, veterans and visitors.

"After reviewing your request with both the Medical Center Director as well as the Regional Counsel, [our lawyers], it was determined that the facility mask policy is in line with Executive Order 13991 and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Therefore, the Facility Director will not grant your request.

"If you wish to pursue your request you may contact the External Complaints Program to discuss other possible avenues to address your concerns.


"Office of Resolution Management Diversity and Inclusion (ORMDI)
External Complaints Program
Attention: Sterling Akins, External Complaints Program Manager
1575 I Street NW, 10th Floor
Washington DC

Sixth Contact: Dr. Liang Cheng, surgeon, after she removed my cataracts. May 29, 2022

Veterans Administration Medical Center, Des Moines, IA

First I want to thank you for awesome vision. I thought my right eye, which you fixed 2 weeks ago, was awesome, being equal, uncorrected, to my better left eye corrected. But now my new left eye is back to being my best eye, much better than it had been, corrected. What beautiful colors, what fine detail! I can see “seas” on the moon again! Everybody I work with is so much better looking than I thought! Except when I looked in the mirror I was horrified.

About mask research: you told me you are persuaded by a JAMA article very early in the covid experience, that masks are effective in reducing covid infection. You said you couldn’t remember any other details – date, doctors or institution conducting the research, except that it was published by JAMA. Look it up, you advised me. You said you had not heard of the Bangladesh or the Netherlands mask studies, (which CATO judges the only “well done” studies), but the JAMA article is all you need to know. You spoke in the singular, as if JAMA had published only one mask study.

My review of the earliest mask and vaccine studies (2020) is posted at: http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Covid_Updates. Unfortunately I was not good about reporting the publishers of the research I reviewed. I reported authors, links, and titles. So

I can’t search the file for “JAMA” to see which research was theirs. The list, in chronological order, includes, along with research reviews, articles by doctors. Some of them peer-reviewed.

There have been mask studies over many years, including their effectiveness with previous coronaviruses. Those studies showed masks ineffective, which helps explain why masks were not previously mandated in past decades – although a century ago masks were required to stop Spanish Flu, when authorities were satisfied if you wore gauze with quarter inch holes.

Not until November 2020, the Denmark study, did a study measure actual covid-19 infections in real people wearing, and not wearing, masks. Although the research was completed in April, there were actual news articles about the difficulty of the authors in getting a peer-reviewed publisher before November. My review of this and other current research: (http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence)

Although you showed some irritation at my concerns, I thank you, in addition to your fine surgery, for agreeing to let me send you links to the later, larger studies. You said the check-in desk would give me your contact info, although they said they couldn’t, so we’ll see if this letter gets through.

Summaries and links close this letter. I want to make some strong statements, premised on this evidence. But everything I write is subject to being shown evidence that I am wrong. Please, someone, correct me if I am wrong. Don’t just tell me “there is nothing I can do” while you continue behaving as if the whole world is insane and that is a good thing. A nurse was afraid my mask not being properly above my nose would trigger some vulnerability she had. She didn’t want to know about any research that everybody else’s masks weren’t protecting her. When I made the mistake of using the word “truth” she interrupted with something like “MY truth is truth FOR ME”. No, truth doesn’t flit back and forth to accommodate our notions of what it is. If it did every lie would become “truth”. Truth is a correct grasp of reality. It is documented by an endangered process we call “evidence”.

I’m actually more concerned for your sake, and for the millions of others younger than I, than for myself. I trust Jesus to give me all the health I need to do His will, and I am near enough to the end of my life anyway. I have had a satisfying life, and now thanks to you I can even see more clearly the people I want to help.

I am astonished that hospitals, of all places, are the last institutions in Iowa to respond to the overwhelming medical research (see below) that masks accomplish too little reduction of infection to be sure they accomplish anything, (Bangladesh, Netherlands) while causing a lowering of oxygen saturation which is a measurable factor in a wide range of serious conditions. (Germany)

I am also very concerned that Biden has submitted amendments to the WHO which, if adopted and not vigorously challenged by Congress, could reduce the freedom in your profession to about that of China. Surely you are following that development. This breathtaking surrender of freedom is made comfortable by the “frog in boiling water” principle, after two years of mask and vaccine mandates without evidence, continuing over a year since mask research has conclusively shown they have as much scientific support as false gods.

I am apoplectic that the VA administration has responded to my concerns, not by consulting their doctors to inform me about research supporting mask use that negates the Bangladesh and Netherlands studies, but by consulting their lawyers to tell me what you told me: they can’t do anything about it anyway. Their lawyers cited Biden’s executive order from his first day on the job.

I responded that the order doesn’t prohibit doctors from supplying honest, research-based “informed consent”. Since the order cited no research or other evidence whatsoever in support of its mandate, the order does not prevent informed doctors and hospitals from taking political steps to reverse the mandate, including full disclosure to the public.

For example, the hospital could include somewhere on its website the evidence for and against masks, and any other issue that divides public opinion. The website could allow doctors on both sides of the controversy to interact with each other, without fear of censorship, where “peer review” would not preemptively censor but would simply subject errors to scrutiny. I have urged the governor to establish such a website as the basis for her emergency mandates: http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Cure_for_Covid_Censors

In fact, Biden’s Executive Order explicitly orders institutions to use persuasion to overcome resistance to the mandate, so that if I am wrong, the hospital administration is required by the EO to show me the evidence that I am wrong.

Not just tell me the president makes us all mask up and there is nothing they can do.

My record of interaction with VA administration is at: http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/VA_Hospital,_asked_for_medical_justification_for_mask_policy,_consults_lawyers

It has now been over a year since the Bangladesh study which, along with the Netherlands study the year before, proves there is no statistically significant benefit to masks, while a German review documents terrible ailments that are contributed to by the lowering of oxygen levels in the blood. (See below.)

I lack the medical credentials to tell a hospital about the medical evidence against its requirements, and doctors who have the credentials are censored. But I do have the credentials as a believer in the Holy Bible to apply to the VA for a religious exemption from the requirement, because truth is the essence of Christian faith and your mask requirement is far enough from the truth to qualify as a False God, which Christians are warned not to submit to.

My printed application to the VA, explaining what is “religious” about truth, that examines law and Scripture, is posted at:

http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Religious/Secular_Exemption_from_Mask_Vaccine_%26_testing_Mandates


Here is a brief summary:

On November 8, 2021, the Cato Institute published a review of mask studies, (https://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-paper-64.pdf) finding that “The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence [Netherlands, Bangladesh] has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, [reviews of other studies] eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.” [Let’s mandate masks as a precaution, in case they turn out to be effective.] 

The Denmark study, November 2020, compared nearly 6,000 masked with nearly 6,000 unmasked. After two months the difference in cases between the two groups was only 4, which the authors said was not “statistically significant”. (https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817) The Bangladesh study, November 8, 2021, found that only one percent fewer mask wearers got sick compared with the maskless, when patients submitted their own reports, but that advantage dropped to a tenth of one percent when patient reports were double checked with PCR tests. (https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817)

Even that meager benefit must be balanced against the notorious levels of false positives from PCR tests.

The German study, April 20, 2021, documents the multitude of diseases triggered by mask wearing. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/) It reviewed 42 studies of specific medical harms, from mild to fatal, from mask wearing. (See my summary of the study. http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence#Masks_Harm_More_than_they_Help) Most of those serious consequences have received too little attention from researchers to put numbers on the likelihood of suffering them, but the buildup of carbon dioxide and lowering of oxygen saturation, which is universally accepted as contributing to them, is suffered by everybody. Everybody. You included.

Dave Leach



Or
1-888-566-3982 Option 4

"Included with this letter is an information sheet about the External Complaints Program for your information.

"Sincerely, Laurel S. Williamson, Central Iowa Health Care System Privacy Officer."

The second page offers help for people whose cross dressing is "discriminated against". But if all that is discriminated against is religious freedom, no help is offered.

I read Executive Order 13991, signed by President Biden on his first day in office. Indeed, it requires the VA hospital to require masks. It does NOT prohibit the hospital from informing patients about mask and vaccine research. It does NOT prohibit the hospital from granting religious exemptions.

You can read EO 13991 here. This copy has portions highlighted in red that I refer to in my report below about its contents.

Seventh Contact: 8/12/22 External Complaints Program

Williamson’s second page lists the kinds of discrimination which the office addresses, to which she said I could appeal, and religious discrimination is not listed. For that reason I did not write to them for eight months. I figured Williamson referred me to them, not expecting they even did anything with religious discrimination, but just to get me to leave her alone. But August 12, 2022, I finally submitted my issue to them anyway: the Seventh Contact. (No response as of September 10)

August 12, 2022 Dave Leach 137 E Leach Avenue Des Moines IA 50315 515-244-3711

Office of Resolution Management Diversity & Inclusion (ORDMI) External Complaints Program

Attention: Sterling Akins, External Complaints Program Manager

1575 I Street, NW, 10th Floor

Washington DC

Mr. Akins:

Laurel S. Williamson, Central Iowa Health Care System Privacy Officer, directed me to write to you about the religious exemption that she denied me December 23, 2021. I haven’t written until now because your program info [which she attached to her letter and which I found posted at External Complaints lists kinds of discrimination your office addresses, and religious discrimination isn’t on your online list. I assumed she was just “blowing me off”, as the idiom goes, sending me to an office that doesn’t deal with anything like what I need. I write now to see if that is the case, or if you really are able to help.

Enclosed is a record of my dialog with VA authorities, including her letter and a copy of my application for the exemption which explains the religious character of a mask mandate which lacks any support in any medical evidence which any hospital authority is able to cite, yet which is enforced with the zeal our ancestors attached to charges of blasphemy.

In the colored pages of the enclosure are my reviews of “masks don’t help” research that I have posted at SaveTheWorld.Saltshaker.US, then select "Application for Secular/Religious Exemption from Mask/Vaccine Mandate - Section Two, The_Evidence". The post also includes “Masks contribute to serious medical harm” research reviews, and vaccine and PCR research reviews, which are not printed here.

I am astonished at the ignorance of these studies by every doctor I have talked to, and alarmed at the lack of curiosity about them when I cite them.

My application explains how your mask mandate meets every reasonable legal element of a Religion which no government may “establish”, and every reasonable Biblical element of a False God to whom no Christian may bow.

To require me to bow to this superstition as a condition of receiving medical care is very serious discrimination, besides the general degradation of medical care by mandatory medical treatments which not even top hospital authorities can justify with any research or other evidence, and which is refuted with the best research on the subject.

Williamson’s letter said: “...After reviewing your request with both the Medical Center Director as well as the Regional Counsel, it was determined that the facility mask policy is in line with Executive Order 13991 and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Therefore the Facility Director will not grant your request.”

I read Executive Order 13991, by Biden, January 20, 2021. It begins with an assertion (made without any support) that masks in fact slow covid, and ends with getting the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms to enforce masks! But never does it prohibit hospitals from discussing research with patients.

In fact it says hospitals should “address obstacles” to mask requirement enforcement. Isn’t it an obstacle to mask requirement enforcement, that the best research says masks accomplish little or nothing against covid, while causing harm? Shouldn’t that be “addressed” by the VA hospital?

The EO also says hospitals should “incentivize” mask wearing. Wouldn’t it “incentivize” mask wearing, to tell patients about all the wonderful research proving masks help?

But if there is indeed no such research, is any hospital prohibited by Biden from so informing its patients?

Although these concerns apply in every federal facility, you would think in a hospital, there would be several doctors who know the research and can easily correct me if I am wrong or correct the CDC if I am right. You would think a hospital would treat a question about mask research as a medical question, to be answered by consulting with doctors, not lawyers.

The order doesn’t prohibit doctors from supplying honest, research-based “informed consent”. Since the order cited no research or other evidence whatsoever in support of its mandate, the order does not prevent informed doctors and hospitals from taking political steps to reverse the mandate, including full disclosure to the public.

For example, the hospital could include somewhere on its website the evidence for and against masks, and any other issue that divides public opinion about medical issues. The website could allow doctors on both sides of the controversy to interact with each other, without fear of censorship, where “peer review” would not preemptively censor but would simply subject errors to scrutiny. I have urged the governor to establish such a website as the basis for her emergency mandates.

In fact, Biden’s Executive Order explicitly orders institutions to use persuasion to overcome resistance to the mandate, so that if I am wrong, the hospital administration is required by the EO to show me the evidence that I am wrong.

Not just tell me the president makes us all mask up and there is nothing they can do.

The EO does NOT prohibit the hospital from granting religious exemptions.

In fact the EO says “Heads of agencies may make categorical or case-by-case exceptions in implementing subsection (a) of this section to the extent that doing so is necessary or required by law....” A religious exemption for me is both necessary and required by the First Amendment “establishment of religion” clause.

The EO even establishes a “Safer Federal Workforce Task Force” whose mission includes identifying “circumstances under which exemptions might appropriately be made to agency policies in accordance with CDC guidelines, such as for mission-critical purposes.” Surely compliance with the Constitution is a “mission-critical purpose”.

But will your office address religious discrimination? If not will you direct me to an office which will?

Dave Leach

Executive Order 13991

This is the EO that Williamson referenced. This copy has portions highlighted in red that I refer to in my reports about its contents. It is posted online.

EXECUTIVE ORDER13991- - - - - - -PROTECTING THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE AND REQUIRING MASK-WEARING

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including section 7902(c) of title 5, United States Code, it is hereby ordered as follows:

Section 1. Policy. It is the policy of my Administration to halt the spread of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) by relying on the best available data and science-based public health measures. Such measures include wearing masks when around others, physical distancing, and other related precautions recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Put simply, masks and other public health measures reduce the spread of the disease, particularly when communities make widespread use of such measures, and thus save lives.

Accordingly, to protect the Federal workforce and individuals interacting with the Federal workforce, and to ensure the continuity of Government services and activities, on-duty or on-site Federal employees, on-site Federal contractors, and other individuals in Federal buildings and on Federal lands should all wear masks, maintain physical distance, and adhere to other public health measures, as provided in CDC guidelines.

Sec. 2. Immediate Action Regarding Federal Employees, Contractors, Buildings, and Lands. (a) The heads of executive departments and agencies (agencies) shall immediately take action, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, to require compliance with CDC guidelines with respect to wearing masks, maintaining physical distance, and other public health measures by: on-duty or on-site Federal employees; on-site Federal contractors; and all persons in Federal buildings or on Federal lands. This document is scheduled to be published in theFederal Register on 01/25/2021 and available online atfederalregister.gov/d/2021-01766, and ongovinfo.gov

(b) The Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), the Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and the Administrator of General Services, in coordination with the President's Management Council and the Coordinator of the COVID-19 Response and Counselor to the President (COVID-19 Response Coordinator), shall promptly issue guidance to assist heads of agencies with implementation of this section.

c) Heads of agencies shall promptly consult, as appropriate, with State, local, Tribal, and territorial government officials, Federal employees, Federal employee unions, Federal contractors, and any other interested parties concerning the implementation of this section.

(d) Heads of agencies may make categorical or case-by-case exceptions in implementing subsection (a) of this section to the extent that doing so is necessary or required by law, and consistent with applicable law. If heads of agencies make such exceptions, they shall require appropriate alternative safeguards, such as additional physical distancing measures, additional testing, or reconfiguration of workspace, consistent with applicable law. Heads of agencies shall document all exceptions in writing.

(e) Heads of agencies shall review their existing authorities and, to the extent permitted by law and subject to the availability of appropriations and resources, seek to provide masks to individuals in Federal buildings when needed.

(f) The COVID-19 Response Coordinator shall coordinate the implementation of this section. Heads of the agencies listed in 31 U.S.C. 901(b) shall update the COVID-19 Response Coordinator on their progress in implementing this section, including any categorical exceptions established under subsection (d) of this section, within 7 days of the date of this order and regularly thereafter. Heads of agencies are encouraged to bring to the attention of the COVID-19 Response Coordinator any questions regarding the scope or implementation of this section.

Sec. 3. Encouraging Masking Across America.

(a) The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), including through the Director of CDC, shall engage, as appropriate, with State, local, Tribal, and territorial officials, as well as business, union, academic, and other community leaders, regarding mask-wearing and other public health measures, with the goal of maximizing public compliance with, and addressing any obstacles to, mask-wearing and other public health best practices identified by CDC.

(b) The COVID-19 Response Coordinator, in coordination with the Secretary of HHS, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the heads of other relevant agencies, shall promptly identify and inform agencies of options to incentivize, support, and encourage widespread mask-wearing consistent with CDC guidelines and applicable law.

Sec. 4. Safer Federal Workforce Task Force.

(a) Establishment. There is hereby established the Safer Federal Workforce Task Force (Task Force).

(b) Membership. The Task Force shall consist of the following members: (i) the Director of OPM, who shall serve as Co-Chair; (ii) the Administrator of General Services, who shall serve as Co-Chair; (iii) the COVID-19 Response Coordinator, who shall serve as Co-Chair; (iv) the Director of OMB; (v) the Director of the Federal Protective Service; (vi) the Director of the United States Secret Service; (vii) the Administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency; (viii) the Director of CDC; and(ix) the heads of such other agencies as the Co-Chairs may individually or jointly invite to participate.

(c) Organization. A member of the Task Force may designate, to perform the Task Force functions of the member, a senior-level official who is a full-time officer or employee of the member's agency. At the direction of the Co-Chairs, the Task Force may establish subgroups consisting exclusively of Task Force members or their designees, as appropriate.

(d) Administration. The General Services Administration shall provide funding and administrative support for the Task Force to the extent permitted by law and within existing appropriations. The Co-Chairs shall convene regular meetings of the Task Force, determine its agenda, and direct its work.

(e) Mission. The Task Force shall provide ongoing guidance to heads of agencies on the operation of the Federal Government, the safety of its employees, and the continuity of Government functions during the COVID-19 pandemic. Such guidance shall be based on public health best practices as determined by CDC and other public health experts, and shall address, at a minimum, the following subjects as they relate to the Federal workforce:

(i) testing methodologies and protocols;

(ii) case investigation and contact tracing;

(iii) requirements of and limitations on physical distancing, including recommended occupancy and density standards;

(iv) equipment needs and requirements, including personal protective equipment;

(v) air filtration;

(vi) enhanced environmental disinfection and cleaning;

(vii) safe commuting and telework options;

(viii) enhanced technological infrastructure to support telework;

(ix) vaccine prioritization, distribution, and administration;

(x) approaches for coordinating with State, local, Tribal, and territorial health officials, as well as business, union, academic, and other community leaders;

(xi) any management infrastructure needed by agencies to implement public health guidance; and

(xii) circumstances under which exemptions might appropriately be made to agency policies in accordance with CDC guidelines, such as for mission-critical purposes.

(f) Agency Cooperation. The head of each agency listed in 31 U.S.C. 901(b) shall, consistent with applicable law, promptly provide the Task Force a report on COVID-19 safety protocols, safety plans, or guidance regarding the operation of the agency and the safety of its employees, and any other information that the head of the agency deems relevant to the Task Force's work.

Sec. 5. Federal Employee Testing. The Secretary of HHS, through the Director of CDC, shall promptly develop and submit to the COVID-19 Response Coordinator a testing plan for the Federal workforce. This plan shall be based on community transmission metrics and address the populations to be tested, testing types, frequency of testing, positive case protocols, and coordination with local public health authorities for contact tracing.

Sec. 6. Research and Development. The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, in consultation with the Secretary of HHS (through the National Science and Technology Council), the Director of OMB, the Director of CDC, 6the [sic] Director of the National Institutes of Health, the Director of the National Science Foundation, and the heads of any other appropriate agencies, shall assess the availability of Federal research grants to study best practices for implementing, and innovations to better implement, effective mask-wearing and physical distancing policies, with respect to both the Federal workforce and the general public. (Research, not to validate policies, but on how to enforce policies)

Sec. 7. Scope. (a) For purposes of this order:

(i) "Federal employees" and "Federal contractors" mean employees (including members of the Armed Forces and members of the National Guard in Federal service) and contractors (including such contractors' employees) working for the executive branch;

(ii) "Federal buildings" means buildings, or office space within buildings, owned, rented, or leased by the executive branch of which a substantial portion of occupants are Federal employees or Federal contractors; and

(iii) "Federal lands" means lands under executive branch control.

(b) The Director of OPM and the Administrator of General Services shall seek to consult, in coordination with the heads of any other relevant agencies and the COVID-19 Response Coordinator, with the Sergeants at Arms of the Senate and the House of Representatives and the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts (or such other persons designated by the Majority and Minority Leaders of the Senate, the Speaker and Minority Leader of the House, or the Chief Justice of the United States, respectively), to promote mask-wearing, physical distancing, and adherence to other public health measures within the legislative and judicial branches, and shall provide requested technical assistance as needed to facilitate compliance with CDC guidelines.

Sec. 8. General Provisions.

(a) Nothing in this order shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:

(i) the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or

(ii) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.

(b) This order shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.

(c) Independent agencies are strongly encouraged to comply with the requirements of this order.

(d) This order is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.

THE WHITE HOUSE, January 20, 2021.[FR Doc. 2021-01766 Filed: 1/22/2021 11:15 am; Publication Da (sic)

Broadlawns Medical Center Application

I sent almost the same application for a religious exemption from mask wearing, to Broadlawns, that I had sent to the VA hospital. Broadlawns is a taxpayer-subsidized teaching hospital with a Board of Trustees that is elected every two years, though I think individual trustees serve four year terms, like Iowa state senators. (U.S. senators serve six year terms.)

So my application should be taken more seriously, right? Because the trustees, being elected, are more accountable to the public, right?

We'll see. I sent the following cover letter, with the complete printout of part one of my Application, May 26. I am posting this June 9. No answer yet. But it was May 25 that I called the office of the Trustees. No one was there. I left a message, simply asking how to contact the trustees. I'm still waiting for an answer. (When I snail-mailed this letter and Application, I addressed it to their names, at the hospital's general address.)

Then June 3 while my wife was having therapy I walked to the door where the lady checks your forehead and makes you put on your mask and asks where you are going. I told her I wanted to talk to someone in the office of the Board of Trustees. She made a phone call and then told me someone from the office would come down to get me. I waited 45 minutes, until my wife was done, and gave up.

Anyway, here's the cover letter I sent to Broadlawns trustees J. Marc Ward, Dave Miglin, Mary Krieg, Emily Webb, Kavi Chawla, Janet Metcalf, Andy McGuire, MD, MBA

First Broadlawns Contact

Is your Board of Trustees reconsidering its mask requirement? If it will continue, this is an application for a religious exemption.

It has now been over a year since the Bangladesh study which, along with the Netherlands study the year before, proves there is no statistically significant benefit to masks, while a German review documents terrible ailments that are contributed to by the lowering of oxygen levels in the blood. (See below.)

I will be glad to be shown these studies are wrong, or have been superseded. But in the absence of any such justification for your policy – I don’t see any discussion of evidence anywhere in your system and your doctors that I have talked with haven’t been interested in the subject – it is an enormous scandal that hospitals are the last places in Iowa to respond to the medical evidence.

I lack the medical credentials to tell a hospital about the medical evidence against its requirements, and doctors who have the credentials are censored. But I do have the credentials as a believer in the Holy Bible to apply to you for a religious exemption from your requirement, because truth is the essence of Christian faith and your mask requirement is far enough from the truth to qualify as a False God, which Christians are warned not to submit to.

I am not a patient at Broadlawns, being a veteran, but I bring my wife here; it is for those times that I apply for a religious exemption.

The enclosed booklet lays out my reasoning for classifying my concerns about the research as religious. My review of the research itself takes up more space, and is posted here.

Here is a brief summary of the relevant research:

On November 8, 2021, the Cato Institute published a review of mask studies, finding that “The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence [Netherlands, Bangladesh] has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, [reviews of other studies] eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.” [Let’s mandate masks as a precaution, in case they turn out to be effective.] 

The Denmark study, November 2020, compared nearly 6,000 masked with nearly 6,000 unmasked.

After two months the difference in cases between the two groups was only 4, [out of nearly 6,000 - less than a tenth of 1%] which the authors said was not “statistically significant”. [Meaning that besides being a negligible difference, it was within the "margin of error", so that the existence of any benefit at all is uncertain.]

The Bangladesh study, November 8, 2021, found that only one percent fewer mask wearers got sick compared with the maskless, when patients submitted their own reports, but that advantage dropped to a tenth of one percent when patient reports were double checked with PCR tests. (https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817)

Even that meager benefit must be balanced against the notorious levels of false positives from PCR tests.

The German study, April 20, 2021, documents the multitude of diseases triggered by mask wearing. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/) It reviewed 42 studies of specific medical harms, from mild to fatal, from mask wearing. (See my summary of the study. http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence#Masks_Harm_More_than_they_Help) Most of those serious consequences have received too little attention from researchers to put numbers on the likelihood of suffering them, but the buildup of carbon dioxide and lowering of oxygen saturation, which is universally accepted as contributing to them, is suffered by everybody. Everybody. You included.

Dave Leach

If you would like to help me get a response from Broadlawns' Trustees, write to each of the board members: J. Marc Ward, Dave Miglin, Mary Krieg, Emily Webb, Kavi Chawla, Janet Metcalf, and Andy McGuire, MD, MBA. Address: Board of trustees <> Broadlawns Medical Center <> 1801 Hickman Road <> Des Moines IA 50314-1597. Or call: 515-282-2200, the general hospital number.

Second Broadlawns Contact: Trustee Janet Metcalf Response

Metcalf letter.jpg

Trustee Janet Metcalf wrote that the Board makes no individual exceptions but only considers policies that affect everyone. Surely this is a mistake. Can it be a “for real” hospital policy to ignore the needs of anyone whose needs are unique?! Over how many human needs could such a policy stretch? I had expected that it would be the board’s role to develop a policy for anyone whose needs are not met by existing policies, which can then be in place for a future patient with the same need; and in that way, policy grows towards the ability to meet everyone’s needs.

Third Broadlawns Contact: CEO Anthony Coleman Response

CEO Broadlawns letter small.jpg

The other response I got was from Anthony B. Coleman, DHA, President and CEO. He wrote, July 5, (I received it July 9), “While we cannot quantify how effective it is to wear a mask, we know it offers some protection, while not wearing one offers none.” This was his response to research I pointed out which shows that wearing masks offers no measurable protection, while lowering oxygen levels which contributes to a wide variety of serious conditions. How can he “know” what the best evidence refutes? Is science made irrelevant by its conflict with intuition? How can he make such a claim without offering a single bit of research or other evidence to mitigate the research I presented?

He is the CEO of the hospital. He knows a lot of doctors. Can it be that if he can’t answer about the research himself, that there is no doctor on your staff who has read the research and can answer me? Indeed, is it possible that your hospital could establish such an intrusive mandate, about which your switchboard operator receives numerous patient complaints, without himself, or you, or anyone you know, having reviewed the research that your mandate implies exists somewhere?

But if you have sound answers to my concern that justify your policy, can it be that you would withhold it from the public when asked for it? Does “informed consent” not belong in this discussion?

Fourth Broadlawns Contact: My letter to the Chief Medical Officer

August 9, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711 <> music@saltshaker.us


Dr. Yogesh Shah
Chief Medical Officer
Broadlawns Medical Center
1801 Hickman Road
Des Moines IA 50314-1597

Sir:

On May 26 I applied to the Board of Trustees for a religious exemption from mask wearing when I come to your hospital, on the ground that truth is a passion of Christianity, and the carefully done research shows the claims of mask effectiveness are simply not true; benefits are not documentable, but harm is.

The Biblical concern goes beyond merely wanting to expose, if not correct a lie. The obsession with a ritual, reaching such a fervor as to demonize people resisting it with all the stigma of “unbelievers”, and maintained by censorship of research and the actual delicensing of doctors who stand by the best research, raises this lie towards that status of a False God, which no Christian may accommodate, and what American law calls “establishment of religion”, which no government- or taxpayer-supported institution may enable.

I appeal to the First Amendment and the First Commandment. A copy of my Bible study and reasoning is enclosed.

The research that concerns me, and should concern you, which I presented to the Board, is summarized at the end of this letter, with links to the research itself.

I had hoped to receive a response about the research, either to show me that I don't correctly understand it, or that research was flawed, or displaced by newer, better research. Either that, or that the Board will indeed drop this mask requirement now that medical science has established its uselessness.

But instead Trustee Janet Metcalf wrote that the Board makes no individual exceptions but only considers policies that affect everyone. Surely this is a mistake. Can it be a “for real” hospital policy to ignore the needs of anyone whose needs are unique?! Over how many human needs could such a policy stretch? I had expected that it would be the board’s role to develop a policy for anyone whose needs are not met by existing policies, which can then be in place for a future patient with the same need; and in that way, policy grows towards the ability to meet everyone’s needs.

But if it is actually your policy to leave unique needs unaddressed, fine; I will set aside my application for a religious exemption and ask you to drop your mask requirement for everyone. I had thought an application for myself alone would be easier for the hospital.

I am alarmed that Janet, who was the only board member who responded, expressed no knowledge of, concern for, or curiosity about the research indicating your hospital’s most visible and pervasive medical intervention has no scientific basis.

The other response I got was from Anthony B. Coleman, DHA, President and CEO. He wrote, July 5, (I received it July 9), “While we cannot quantify how effective it is to wear a mask, we know it offers some protection, while not wearing one offers none.” This was his response to research I pointed out which shows that wearing masks offers no measurable protection, while lowering oxygen levels which contributes to a wide variety of serious conditions. How can he “know” what the best evidence refutes? Is science made irrelevant by its conflict with intuition? How can he make such a claim without offering a single bit of research or other evidence to mitigate the research I presented?

He is the CEO of the hospital. He knows a lot of doctors. Can it be that if he can’t answer about the research himself, that there is no doctor on your staff who has read the research and can answer me? Indeed, is it possible that your hospital could establish such an intrusive mandate, about which your switchboard operator receives numerous patient complaints, without himself, or you, or anyone you know, having reviewed the research that your mandate implies exists somewhere?

But if you have sound answers to my concern that justify your policy, can it be that you would withhold it from the public when asked for it? Does “informed consent” not belong in this discussion?

Indeed, how can there be no information source, in the whole world apparently, at least that I have found, where experts can interact with each other, in public view, in language understandable to lawmakers and voters, without fear of censorship? Your hospital could establish such a website and make it the basis of your distancing, masking, and vaccination policies. You would be the first. People all over the world would come to you.

The CDC website should be that source, but it has abdicated that role. The CDC is great about making up one-size-fits-all rules for everybody, but really bad about addressing and reporting on all sides of contested issues. The research I cite isn’t even addressed there. My efforts to search there for the some acknowledgment of the critical Bangladesh and Denmark studies are posted at [www.savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/VA_Hospital,_asked_for_medical_ justification_for_mask_policy,_consults_lawyers#Fourth_Contact:_December_11.2C_2021 SaveTheWorld.Saltshaker.US]

“Science”, American society was told until two years ago, consists of perpetually challenging conclusions. Endless testing. Not dismissing reasonable criticism but through testing, either validating it or refuting it.

Now “science” has come to mean censoring critics no matter how impressive their expertise or how pathetic your own, deplatforming them, censoring them, taking their medical license. No more testing of your own assumptions. Someone dares disagree? Protect the public from such brazen “misinformation”.

What now is called “science” was called, only two years ago, “cover up”. As I write now I am in one of your waiting rooms. A man came in who is really struggling to breathe. He is taking a deep breath about every two seconds, very loud, and your policy requires him to keep on that mask!

What else but research distinguishes modern medicine from the snake oil road shows of a century ago? What is left of modern medicine to the extent its research is ignored? I have been astonished that none of the doctors I have asked are familiar with the research I cite, and am alarmed than none were curious about it. This is not an obscure medical matter: it is a medical intervention that every doctor is required, by you, to obey, and to enforce on every patient. Yet they don’t know? And don’t want to know? A common response is fatalism: “we can’t do anything about it anyway. What’s the use of knowing?”

Wrong. Knowledge enables humans to do much. Ecclesiastes 9: 16 “Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. 17 The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. 18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.”

Have you read any of the research concerning the effectiveness of your one-size-fits-all mask policy, enough to show me that the “well done” research I have shown your Board of Trustees is actually flowed, or outdated, and does not in fact prove that your requirement provides zero benefit while causing some harm?

Hebrews 10:24 describes as a Christian goal to “provoke unto love and good works.” Proverbs 9:8 says rebuke a fool and he will hate you for it, but rebuke a wise man and he will love you for it. [I presume Solomon’s scenario assumes a reasonable, respectful rebuke.]

I pray you are wise, and that something I have written will provoke you to (1) familiarize yourself with the research relating to your obsessive mask wearing requirement, (2) make that information available to anyone who asks, (3) Unless you can produce research more decisive than your CEO’s intuition that shows masks actually do more good than harm, end your mandate, and (4) if there are legal obstacles to ending your mandate, explain what they are, and publicly state the medical support for removing them.

Enclosed beginning on p. 13 is the application I sent to your Board of Trustees. I had sent them only a 1½ page summary of relevant research, but the enclosure adds to that the colored pages which are my complete reviews of the “masks don’t work” research that I have studied. Not enclosed are my reviews of the “masks harm” research posted at

[www.SaveTheWorld.Saltshaker.US/wiki/Forum SaveTheWorld.Saltshaker.US/Forum], then select Application for Secular/Religious Exemption from Mask/Vaccine Mandate - Section Two, The_Evidence.

In Jesus’ Name (Col 3:17) Dave Leach

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The members of the Broadlawns Board of Trustees are: J. Marc Ward, Dave Miglin, Mary Krieg, Emily Webb, Kavi Chawla, Janet Metcalf, and Andy McGuire, MD, MBA. Address: Board of trustees, Broadlawns Medical Center, 1801 Hickman Road, Des Moines IA 50314-1597. Or call: 515-282-2200

Iowa Senator Grassley (no response yet)

Subject: Please help me get the VA hospital to answer a very important question
Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2021 19:37:05 -0600
From: Dave Leach <daveleach@saltshaker.us>
To: caseworker_grassley@grassley.senate.gov

Dave Leach
Family Music Center
The Partnership Machine Inc.
4110 SW 9th St, Des Moines IA 50315; home, 137 E. Leach zvenue
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711
www.saltshaker.us, www.SaveTheWorld/Saltshaker.US

Honorable Senator Grassley:

If the Veterans Administration Hospital is able to assure patients that its mask requirement slows covid without causing a host of other medical harms, why won’t they? Will you help me get them to answer?

I asked them November 9, “Why are masks still required to enter your hospital for everyone, all the time, this long after the best peer reviewed studies (Netherlands, Bangladesh) find no “statistically significant” benefit from them, while other studies (Germany, Cato Institute) document serious physical harm they cause? If your answer is that you know about studies in favor of obsessive masking that I have overlooked, can you refer me to them?”

This question was completely ignored, which strongly implies they indeed cannot justify their policy from any evidence. Their December 23, response: “...After reviewing your request with both the Medical Center Director as well as the Regional Counsel, it was determined that the facility mask policy is in line with Executive Order 13991 and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Therefore the Facility Director will not grant your request.... Laurel S. Williamson, Central Iowa Health Care System Privacy Officer.”

I read Executive Order 13991, by Biden, January 20, 2021. It begins with an assertion (made without any support) that masks in fact slow covid, and ends with getting the U.S. Senate Sergeant at Arms to enforce masks! But never does it prohibit hospitals from discussing research with patients.

In fact it says hospitals should “address obstacles” to mask requirement enforcement. Isn’t it an obstacle to mask requirement enforcement, that the best research says masks accomplish little or nothing? Shouldn’t that be “addressed” by the VA hospital?

The EO also says hospitals should “incentivize” mask wearing. Wouldn’t it “incentivize” mask wearing, to tell patients about all the wonderful research proving masks help?

But if there is indeed no such research, is any hospital prohibited by Biden from so informing its patients?

Although these concerns apply in every federal facility, you would think in a hospital, there would be several doctors who know the research and can easily correct me if I am wrong or correct the CDC if I am right. You would think a hospital would treat a question about mask research as a medical question, to be answered by consulting with doctors, not lawyers.

In order to give my request firmer legal standing, I framed it not only as a request to address research of concern, but as a request for a religious exemption from their mask requirement. Did you know Jesus refused to obey a health regulation on the ground it accomplished nothing? Mark 7:1-16.

“Doing truth”, John 3:21, and challenging lies, is a fundamental Christian calling. Bowing down to a false god is our #1 “thou shalt not”. A mandate not supported by evidence or science but by censorship, and with moral outrage over noncompliance as indignant as ancient responses to blasphemy, sounds a lot like the superstitious attribution of magical powers by our ignorant ancestors to bowing down to a carved tree.

My application for an exemption for myself: denied. My request for research cites in support of their policy: ignored.

Timeline:

October 29: original application on the VA website.

November 9: I talked in person to Patient Advocate Lori Claire (or Sinclair; her business card says one, her phone message said another).

November 20: first rejection, left in a phone message. The message said she had shown my application to Suzanne Tavor, Ethics Board chair, and Lora Williamson, hospital administrator.

December 11, I mailed Lori a motion to reconsider, with research not available with my original application.

December 19, I mailed a similar package to Tavor, although I could not confirm that there is an ethics board or that she is its chair, but VA staff told me she is an Infectious Disease nurse.

December 23, I received a rejection letter from Laurel S. Williamson, who gave her title, not as hospital administrator, but as Privacy Officer. I will gladly send you, of course, copies of as much of this as you can stand.

A little more detail about the Netherlands, Bangladesh, German, and Cato Institute studies, from my application to the VA:

CATO. On November 8, the day before I met Lori, the Cato Institute published its own review of mask studies, finding that “...evidence of facemask efficacy is based primarily on observational studies that are subject to confounding [To cause to become confused or perplexed; To fail to distinguish; mix up] and on mechanistic studies [mechanical measurements by various contraptions] that rely on surrogate endpoints [substitute things measured, other than actual infection rates with and without masks] (such as droplet dispersion) as proxies for disease transmission. The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, [reviews of other studies] eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.” [Let’s mandate masks as a precaution, in case they turn out to be effective.]

GERMANY. I also learned, a week ago, about a German study published April 20, 2021, that reviewed 42 studies that documented specific medical harms, from mild to fatal, from mask wearing, especially long term masking. Most of those serious consequences have been paid too little attention to to put numbers on the likelihood of suffering them, but the buildup of carbon dioxide and lowering of oxygen saturation, which is universally accepted as contributing to them, is suffered by everybody.

Everybody.

You included.

The study   The title of the study: "Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?" Published online 2021 Apr 20. Paul B. Tchounwou, Academic Editor. Authors: Kai Kisielinski, Paul Giboni, Andreas Prescher, Bernd Klosterhalfen, David Graessel, Stefan Funken, Oliver Kempski, and Oliver Hirsch.

My summary of the study, with its long list of medical consequences of obsessive masking, is posted at Two of my application to the VA Hospital.

Dave Leach

I received no answer from Senator Grassley.

Iowa’s U.S. Senator Joni Ernst

On Tuesday, August 9, 2022 I had a couple of minutes to talk with Senator Ernst at an Iowans for Israel meeting. Her face expressed sympathy with my description of mask research as showing no benefit, and with my brief explanation of the religious dimension of a ritual based not on any evidence but on superstition yet enforced with all the religious zeal that our ancestors loaded onto charges of blasphemy.

She said I should understand that the resistance to getting an answer from officials in the Biden administration will be very difficult. They will resist.

The help I asked of her was not specified very well by either of us. It is more than to just “get an answer.” I have already received “an answer”. I don’t want to be subjected to a “treatment” whose benefits are documented not at all by evidence but only by religious zeal. So if a hospital can show me evidence, fine. I will be happy. But if not, don’t make me play along with a fraud.

Senator Ernst’s aide, John Hollinrake, gave me his card so I can follow up to see what progress is being made. 733 Federal Building, 210 Walnut Street, Des Moines IA 50309. The card also listed his phone number and email.

Followup to John Hollinrake, Regional Director

September 10, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach Avenue
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711 <> music@saltshaker.us

John Hollinrake, Regional Director
Senator Joni K. Ernst, Iowa
733 Federal Building, 210 Walnut St
Des Moines IA 50309

Mr. John Hollindrake:

I met you Tuesday, August 9, at an AIPAC meeting where Senator Ernst spoke, as I talked to Senator Ernst about my application to the VA hospital for a religious exemption from mask wearing. The help I asked about was “getting an answer” from them. Meaning, an answer that addressed the medical research I pointed out finding that it cannot be proved that masks slow covid even a tiny little bit, while harm from masks is well established.

Have you communicated with the VA hospital director yet? It’s been a month. I will be grateful for any progress report.

In my mind there are only two responses that count as “addressing” such evidence: either (1) Dave, here is where you misunderstand the evidence, or (2) you are right. We will take the following steps to correct that policy, and meanwhile we will grant your exemption.

In my mind, “Biden’s executive order says we need to require masks” doesn’t address evidence of that importance. The Order doesn’t prohibit doctors from discussing research with patients, and it doesn’t prohibit acceptance of a religious exemption. And the evidence demands prompt, vigorous steps toward its reversal.

I found out the VA hospital got a new director, I think last May. Darwin Goodspeed. So I have re-submitted my application to him. (In my email version of this letter to you, a pdf of my letter to him is attached.)

It will be very helpful if you will forward the following questions to Mr. Goodspeed:

~ ~ ~ ~

I will appreciate any evidence you can provide that your mask mandate for your hospital patients protects patients from covid at a rate significantly greater than the tenth of one percent Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) found by mask research in Denmark and Bangladesh and so reported in the meta-analysis by the Cato Institute.

I will also appreciate your thoughts on the finding of both studies that even that 0.1% benefit might be due to chance; an actual covid reduction of zero can’t be ruled out. The Denmark researchers honestly admit this in plain English in their abstract.

The Bangladesh researchers admit it in their abstract too, but only in their statistics math which few voters and lawmakers understand. The CDC repeated the damning statistic, in a table at the bottom of the page just above the footnotes, along with its glowing claim in English that masks reduce covid 9%. Here’s how they said it: “(adjusted prevalence ratio 0.91, 95% CI 0.82-1.00)”

(When the 95% Confidence Interval includes 1.00, the reduction is classified as “statistically insignificant”. Translation: in the Bangladesh trial, mask wearers had a sick rate 91% that of non-wearers. But maybe the difference wasn’t because of masks; maybe it was just due to chance. Probability calculations tell us that we can be 95% Confident that the Interval within which the true effect of masks lies is somewhere between a sick rate 82% of that of those without masks, and 100%.)

I understand that the Bangladesh researchers claimed a 9% covid reduction for mask wearers, and at another time they reported a 10% reduction, and they projected that if 100% of the people wore masks covid would be reduced 26.41%. The 9% claim was featured by the CDC But it is obvious from the sick rate of the “controls” not wearing masks – 0.76% – that there is no room below 0.76% (the rate of risk) for the risk rate to drop another 26.41%, 10%, 9%, or even 1%. The sick rate of those wearing masks was 0.68%, which is 9% lower than 0.76%, but is an actual risk reduction of only 0.08%. Obviously, the 9% reduction was only in the relative sick rate, not in the actual Risk Reduction.

If you are persuaded by other studies with more positive results, I will appreciate your thoughts on why you find them more credible than the only two RCT’s that measure actual covid infection in people. Please also comment on the meta-analysis of the Cato Institute that concludes,

“...evidence of facemask efficacy is based primarily on observational studies that are subject to confounding [To cause to become confused or perplexed; To fail to distinguish; mix up] and on mechanistic studies [mechanical measurements by various contraptions] that rely on surrogate endpoints [substitute things measured, other than actual infection rates with or without masks] (such as droplet dispersion) as proxies for disease transmission.

“The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials [including trials addressing covid predecessors before 2020] comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations.

“Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle. [We have no evidence they help, but lets wear them because they might.] Although weak evidence should not preclude precautionary actions in the face of unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, ethical principles require that the strength of the evidence and best estimates of amount of benefit be truthfully communicated to the public.”


Please also share any reasons I should not be concerned about research documenting serious harms from mask wearing, not only for patients but for doctors and other staff. See www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/ (Obviously no mild poison hurts everyone, but those not hurt should not declare them harmless.)

If you are unable to refute this research finding that no covid benefit from your mask mandate can be proved, while masks exacerbate serious medical conditions, please tell me what you believe your response should be to these facts.

Dave Leach has shown you this information. On its basis, combined with his analysis of Scripture explaining what has turned mask mandates into a religious issue, he asks that you honor religious exemptions for himself and all other veterans who reverence Truth as he does.

He further urges “informed doctors and hospitals [to take] political steps to reverse the mandate, including full disclosure to the public. For example, the hospital could include somewhere on its website the evidence for and against masks, and any other issue that divides public opinion about medical issues. The website could allow doctors on both sides of the controversy to interact with each other, without fear of censorship, where peer review would not preemptively censor but would simply subject errors to scrutiny.”

If you do not consider either of these actions appropriate, please explain your reasoning. I look forward to your presentation of solid evidence corroborating the public benefits of your mask mandate – some substantial benefit, not some “statistically insignificant” benefit at around the 0.1% range, which probability calculations indicate may be as high as 0.2%, but with an equal chance that it is 0.0%.

Please also explain why you refuse, if you still do, a religious exemption for Mr. Leach, in view of the First Amendment, general case law about religious exemptions, and the provision for acting “as appropriate and consistent with applicable law” in the Biden EO.

Letter to new administrator of Veteran’s Hospital: Darwin Goodspeed

September 10, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach Avenue
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711 <> music@saltshaker.us

Director Darwin Goodspeed
VA Central Iowa Medical Center
3600 30th St
Des Moines IA 50310

Sir:

(I mailed most of this letter to you three days ago. Afterward I noticed where the CDC actually certified that the best mask research shows that the range of probable mask wearing impact includes zero. I wanted to add that explanation. It is on page 2.)

Your predecessor rejected my application for a religious exemption from your mask mandate. Her response did not challenge my Biblical analysis, my explanation of what has turned mask mandates into a religious issue, (the first section of the enclosed bound record, which is mostly unchanged from what I submitted before), or my analysis of medical research proving masks worsen many serious conditions while failing to prove masks reduce covid transmission even a little. (The second section of the enclosure, which is updated, with new research as well as more detailed explanations of the statistics calculations, which confuse even doctors according to peer-reviewed articles. For example, I explain how the nearly identical mask stats from Bangladesh and Denmark are spun as opposite by the CDC.)

Her response was simply that an executive order signed by President Biden in his first day in office makes you make us all wear masks on your premises so my application is denied. A copy of that response is in the first section of the enclosed bound record, page 53.

I write to you today with the prayer that you will take more seriously the issues I present. I am a 76-year-old Vietnam-era veteran of the Lackland Air Force band, a current member of the Iowa Veterans Military Band, and a patient of your Des Moines Veterans Administration Medical Center.

I have just had excellent cataract surgery which improved my eyesight, making it easier to write to you. I rely on your otherwise top quality medical service. I do not lightly risk annoying you with my concerns.

President Biden’s executive order doesn’t prohibit you or any of your doctors from discussing medical research with me. Or from accepting my application.

Evidence can’t be forever ignored

You should not ignore the research establishing that masks cause much harm, 4/21/21 German study, while it is impossible to prove any benefit because the results of the only two mask RCT’s, (RCT’s are called “the gold standard” of medical research), in Bangladesh and Denmark can’t rule out the possibility that the impact of masks is zero. The Denmark results were that the impact might even be negative: masks might cause covid.

Even the CDC admits that the Bangladesh results include zero. (“Table: Summary of Studies...” admits the study found that the average percentage of covid cases that mask wearers will experience, compared to the sick rate of those without masks, lies somewhere between 82% and 100%. Here is how this fact is admitted, in a table at the bottom of the page just above the footnotes, in language unfamiliar to most voters and lawmakers: “(adjusted prevalence ratio 0.91, 95% CI 0.82-1.00)”

This meets the definition in statistics of “statistically insignificant”, since “A relative risk is considered statistically significant when the value of 1.0 is not in the 95% confidence interval.”

Unfortunately the statistical insignificance of the Bangladesh results was not admitted in plain language by either the Bangladesh researchers or the CDC. Neither did either admit the context of their claimed “9%” fewer cases counted among Bangladesh maskers than among nomaskers: the fact that only three quarters of a percent of nomaskers got sick. 0.76%. 9% fewer cases than that are a 0.68% sick rate. That isn’t even a one tenth of a percent reduction of the sick rate experienced by maskers. The Denmark researchers honestly admitted their similar findings in plain language.

So the only two mask RCT’s find that wearing a mask all the time reduces the risk of getting covid by one tenth of one percent. (Or maybe two tenths! Or maybe zero.) If one tenth, then one thousand people need to wear masks all the time to prevent one person from catching covid. If one out of a hundred who get covid die from it, then 100,000 people need to wear masks all the time to prevent one covid death.

By contast, the chance of being struck by lightning during your life is one in 15,300, and one in ten who are struck by lightning die therefrom, but government doesn’t make us all wear rubber suits our whole lives to reduce that risk. (Yet.)

If I am wrong, you or someone you authorize should correct me, along with thousands of your patients, and some of your staff similarly deceived; if I am right, you need to grant my application at the very least, and you should grant the applications of all other veterans who reverence Truth as I do.

Religious Aspect of my Application

Your mask mandate lacks any support in any medical evidence which any hospital authority is apparently able to cite, (including your predecessor, the Broadlawns CEO, and every doctor I have asked about it) yet is enforced with the zeal and moralizing that our ancestors attached to charges of blasphemy.

Establishment of Religion

My Application explains how your mask mandate meets every reasonable legal element of a Religion which no government may “establish”, and every reasonable Biblical element of a False God to whom no Christian may bow. Mask mandates thus violate both the First Amendment and the First Commandment. To require me to bow to this superstition as a condition of receiving medical care is very serious discrimination, besides the general degradation of medical care by mandatory medical treatments which not even top hospital authorities can justify with any research or other evidence, and which is decisively refuted by the best research on the subject: the only two relevant RCT’s, the “gold standard” of research.

Truth

is a value uniquely honored by the Bible. What other religion or philosophy even grants that such a thing exists, much less calls upon men to speak it even when it exposes liars and tyrants who will persecute you for it? This reverence for Truth lifted civilization out of cruel paganism and made America possible.

Evidence is uniquely valued by Christianity

The Bible tells us to “prove (test, scrutinize, investigate) all things”. 1 Thessalonians 5:21, Romans 16:19, 1 John 4:1, Revelation 2:9. To expose baseless superstitions. Including “masks reduce covid transmission”. And especially when superstitious practices are enforced by censorship of evidence, and by emotions reminiscent of the dehumanizing zeal driving blasphemy trials of the past. These are markers, not of science, but of a False God. Therefore my appeal is both to the First Amendment and the First Commandment.

Revulsion for fraud is uniquely Biblical

Many people think a compulsion to expose lies and fraud is a part of secular America, and is therefore not “religious”. It seems so only because so much of the fabric of American freedom is no longer credited to the Bible, which was Freedom’s only source. But when Jesus told us to shine our Light in the “Darkness”, Matthew 5:13-16, that was a metaphor primarily of proclaiming Truth where there are lies.

One of the many places I document the shaping of American law by the Bible is at http://www.1620.US www.1620.US]. When the Pilgrims set up their government, “They got freedom of speech and religion, and a vote for all, from the Bible.” That message is on the side of my parade float.

Grimes June 8 2019 Governors Days.jpg

By “freedom of speech” we mean freedom to tell the truth; there has always been freedom to lie. Other religions aren’t even sure there is such a thing as truth. And we mean freedom to tell the truth, safely, even to religious and political leaders who hate you for telling them; there has always been freedom to agree with tyrants. Other religions honor tyrants as “gods”; they don’t honor rebels who challenge that fantasy. (After all, it was tyrants who made up the religions.) Only the Bible makes the tyrants the villains and honors those who correct them as “prophets”.

Other religions honor the “strong”. The Bible honors “prophets” who correct the “strong” at the risk of persecution from the “strong”. The Bible promises victory to Truth over “strength”.

The Bible, uniquely, calls us to speak the truth, even where it is dangerous, as not just our “right” but as our duty. Ezekiel 3:18-20, Jonah, Hebrews 11, and throughout the Bible warns of the harm to my soul if I do not vigorously and publicly genuflect to mask worship.

We call these three freedoms – speech, religion, voting – “secular”, but even that is a fraud. They did not arise where the Bible had no influence. They couldn’t. At www.1620.US you will see some of the very Bible verses upon which the Pilgrims founded these three freedoms. I got interested in the history when I learned I am descended from Mayflower passenger Richard Warren. His wife, Elizabeth, was the first woman to vote in America, as head of household, after he died in 1627. Their catechism lists the verses that outline the right to vote.

Through interviews with a few world experts on Plimoth Plantation, whom I met at the 2008 triennial convention of the General Society of Mayflower Descendants, I found that the Separatists, as they called themselves, pioneered freedom of speech through their “Sabbath Afternoon Prophesying Services”. The test of how free speech is, is whether you can safely correct, publicly, religious and political leaders. They did that, respectfully. It was a forum where community issues were resolved, a forum where all could speak freely and introduce topics. It was a laboratory of relationship skills where they developed freedom of speech, of religion, and a vote for all.

Just like in a legislature today. In fact, it was that kind of forum that spread across the legislatures of America, while it died out of America’s churches. But my documentary also quotes from their catechism which shows the Scriptures that gave them the idea. A chief text is 1 Corinthians 14, which gives more detail about the format of a Christian meeting than any other chapter, and which describes just such a forum where “all”, it says in seven verses, should “prophesy”. Hence the name “Prophesying Service”, although verse 3 defines the word as simply the elements of good Christian communication.

The Pilgrim’s Catechism also describes, citing verses, our Christian duty to correct each other when we err, which is a duty of freedom of speech. I cite some of those same verses to explain my own religious duty to object to mask fraud and worship.

“The Book that Made Your World” by Mangalwadi documents, century by century, how Christian influence progressively nudged mankind towards the freedom, technology, and prosperity we take for granted today, culminating in America. He wrote from the perspective of a former Hindu scholar from India, who came to realize that only Christian influence made possible modern India, and that what we call progress was never possible under the Hindu view of the meaning of life, the devaluing of truth, and the thorough rejection of equal rights through its caste system.

(I want to touch on an objection I expect to my claim that the Bible pioneered elections and Freedom of Religion, because not even many American Christians know it. Freedom to elect our own leaders likewise came from the Bible: Deuteronomy 1:13 documents that all the people elected all their leaders in the whole nation under Moses, 600 years before about 10% of the people elected about a dozen of their leaders in just the city of Athens. The New Testament likewise establishes elections of elders: the word “ordain” comes from a Greek word meaning to raise the hands ro vote. As for Freedom of Religion, the Bible uniquely shuns “swordpoint conversions” or any physical penalty for believing bizarre theology. Deuteronomy 13:1-10 makes it a crime to conspire to “serve” other “gods”, but not for merely believing them. To “serve” meant doing what that pagan theology honored but what Moses’ laws called crimes. Thus Moses’ laws are like our laws do today: we let Moslems believe it is a holy act to behead a Christian; our penalties don’t kick in until he does so. We also prosecute “conspiracy” to commit crime.)

“Truth” can’t be separated from what is True

My application for a religious exemption rests on the interaction between Scripture and current medical science. The two can’t be separated because the existence of, and reverence for, Truth, which is a bedrock principle of Christianity, is not just abstract mental fluff divorced from reality, or that applies only to Heaven, but is principles God gives us for our benefit beginning here and now, which He calls us to apply to the facts of our changing circumstances.

This is the explicit lesson of the Parable of new wine in old wineskins, Matthew 9:17, Mark 2:22, Luke 5:37. Examples of this broad application of the underlying principles of God’s laws to every area of our actions, words, and even thoughts are given by Jesus in Matthew 5.

Paul’s writings similarly urge a distinction like what we idiomatically call “the spirit of the law vs. the letter of the law”. Circumcision, then, was like masks now. He said there is nothing wrong with circumcision per se, Galatians 5:6. Just as there is nothing wrong with masks where the particles to be filtered are actually bigger than the holes in the masks. But there was something terribly wrong, then, about enforcing it through social pressure, which likely grew at times and in some contexts to legal pressure.

Paul called it a rejection of Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross for us, to play along with “letter of the law” authorities who will persecute you for not publicly performing their rituals unrelated to “justice, mercy, and the love of God”. Matthew 23:23, Luke 11:42. Paul demands we defy those authorities even at the cost of suffering their persecution! Galatians 5:11, 2:12, 6:12-17.

Why is that so important, if circumcision, per se, is harmless? Why not “go along to get along”?

Because, he said in so many words, mass compliance with laws and rules not based on facts or reason, but only created by authorities arbitrarily to condition the population to submit without questioning, is “bondage”. 2 Corinthians 11:20, Galatians 2:4, 4:9. It is so vitally important to visibly, publicly, defy such bondage, for the sake of others as well as ourselves, that Paul calls us to suffer persecution for the Truth if need be, and to be willing to give the ultimate sacrifice for it, as he did. Galatians 2:4, 4:3, 4:9, 24-25, Hebrews 2:15, 2 Peter 2:19.

It is the natural inclination of tyranny to cover its inattention to “justice, mercy, and the love of God” Proverbs 21:3, Matthew 23:23, with visible tokens of submission which are presented as good for everybody, Matthew 15:20, so that noncompliance is depicted as evil. As wanting to murder your neighbors. God blasts this inclination throughout the Bible. Matthew 23:24-30.

“The Walking Dead” is featured currently on EpochTV.com. It is a discussion between a movie maker and a news editor, both of whose parents escaped communism, about interviews with 13 top ranking Chinese communist leaders who defected and were willing, at unthinkable risk, to appear on camera. One was a prison camp commander. One was a police chief. It is also a book. “The Walking Dead” was their description of life as a communist leader. Several of them knew the phrase. Truth will get you killed. You have to lie. You have to torture. You have to agree with what you know is absurd. You have to use every available means to destroy anyone who won’t.

America’s survival, so far, has been due to its vigilance to “nip tyranny in the bud” while we still can. Before it can blossom. Before mask and vaccine mandates can grow into the mature tyranny prophesied in Orwell’s “1984” and in Revelation 13. America got that vigilance from the Bible. Our culture’s increasing marginalization of the Bible is increasingly costing us our freedoms.

God wants us to be free. Galatians 5:1  Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage. Galatians 4:26, 31, 1 Peter 2:16. To a world bent under robust tyranny, God introduced the antidote: the cross. We must take up our cross and follow Jesus, speaking the truth where people with the power to hurt us want us to shut up. Only because saints before us for centuries have done so, can we today speak the truth with far less cost, on half the planet. But when we shrink, tyranny expands again.

Arbitrary rules: tools of tyrants

Of course, the power of tyrants rests on citizens’ willingness to obey their rules without arguments, without questions. Arbitrary rules that don’t make sense are valuable tools of tyrants to test the strength of that unthinking willingness.

The time for unquestioning obedience is on the battlefield under fire, where there is not time for a lot of discussion. But to the extent a commander’s orders don’t make sense and he will not address questions as there is opportunity, his command will be short. Hopefully.

God wants you freed

Do you see the application of these verses to obsessive science-defying mask wearing? Surely you, too, feel the weight of bondage to a mandate which I expect you are as unable to defend from medical research as was your predecessor, even though you are a cog in the Fauci-Gates enforcement machine. A well paid cog. A respectable, honored by society, cog. But surely you, personally, if privately so far, feel the weight of the irrationality. Though far, so far, from the soul-killing existence of “The Walking Dead”, (which not that long ago was the kind of government all over the world), surely you have winced under enough bureaucratic irrationality to feel a bit of empathy for those former Communist leaders.

God wants to set you free, also. The cost of freedom to you and me. As military recruiting ads often acknowledge, freedom bears a cost. I shudder to imagine what you will face if you suddenly agree with me publicly. You might well be given the power by God to heal our whole nation, but not without cost. I am aware, as I write, of a potential cost to myself. I trust that whether I am hurt or helped will be decided ultimately by God, so I believe the safest thing I can do is what He sets before me to do. That is another religious aspect of my Application. But if I lacked that faith, I would surely be as afraid of retaliation for bothering a bureaucrat as have been hundreds of people I have talked with in the course of my political candidacies and publication of the Prayer & Action News. Even people who had lost almost everything from bureaucracy run amok, with little left to lose, feared further retaliation more than they longed to right great wrongs. Without my faith in God, I too would be afraid to reach out to you. I have received excellent care over the years from your hospital. I depend on it. But what if there is retaliation for bothering you, and the doctors who serve me, with my questions? From your doctors, or from you? I will be very vulnerable. Many articles I have read report the murderous treatment by hospitals of covid patients in retaliation just for them not having been vaccinated. I am bothering people more than they.

My guess is that however annoyed you will be with the additional thinking I require of you added to your schedule, you will feel insulted that anyone would think you capable of such petty vindictiveness. But don’t take it personally. Paranoia goes with being human. Especially about people we haven’t met, who have the power to help us or hurt us.

The Bible uniquely honors as “prophets” those who spoke the truth to tyrants supported by lies. Not all were punished. But all risked all.

Wisdom and masks

Wisdom is a ubiquitous Bible word, where it means not just abstract “spiritual” ideas, but also practical skills. It means effective interaction with reality. In Proverbs 8 it is what God used to create the universe.

Other religions use the word but mean the opposite by it. For example Hindu meditation seeks to empty the mind of any rational thought, and to not prefer truth over lies, success over failure, etc. (B’hagavad Gita Chapter 14, Verse 22-25 “The Blessed Lord said: He who does not hate illumination, attachment and delusion when they are present, nor longs for them when they disappear; who is seated like one unconcerned, being situated beyond these material reactions of the modes of nature, who remains firm, knowing that the modes alone are active; who regards alike pleasure and pain, and looks on a clod, a stone and a piece of gold with an equal eye; who is wise and holds praise and blame to be the same; who is unchanged in honor and dishonor, who treats friend and foe alike, who has abandoned all fruitive undertakings-- (actions with the goal of being successful) such a man is said to have transcended the modes of nature. )

We are called to exercise wisdom in all we do. Which includes “right judgment” about masks. We need to test our “common sense” and be careful about what we assume. John 7:24  Judge not according to the appearance, but judge righteous judgment.

I have seen Applications for Religious Exemptions from vaccine mandates that rest on things like their development via tissue from murdered babies. I have not seen any which rely as I do on Biblical reverence for Truth. But my sense is that the deadly fraud that enables covid vaccines is their greater spiritual concern also.

Legal analysis

In case you are going to get an answer for me from your lawyers instead of your doctors, as your predecessor did, and then report to me their answer, as your predecessor did, here are a few points about which I would love to get their feedback.

Scientific evidence forbidden

I see that the West Des Moines Schools, and the West Des Moines Fire Department, has a condition on applications for an exemption from vaccines: there must be no reliance on “science”! They must be purely “religious”! Evidence from “science” will be automatically disqualified!

I wonder if that can survive a lawsuit? I can’t imagine someone suing in court, saying “evidence shows your vaccine will likely kill me and my religion forbids suicide”, and the school superintendent telling the court “the fact that our vaccine is likely to kill you is irrelevant, because we won’t allow you to present facts. Citing facts will only get you fired. We don’t want anyone working for us who will do that. You may have a fundamental right to choose your religion, but not to choose to live. Either get poisoned or get fired. It’s up to you.” I’m just not sure how a judge would respond to that reasoning. Would he agree that reality is irrelevant?

Fundamental right, or “rational basis”?

I heard Civil Liberties attorney Jenin Younes say at the end of her Epoch Times interview that her lawsuits against hospital vaccine mandates faced a difficult burden while the CDC was encouraging vaccine mandates, because courts applied the “rational basis” test and as long as the CDC recommended the mandates then who could say the employers were not “rational”?

That tells me courts are not treating the right to refuse dangerous vaccines as a “fundamental right”. Because when a law (or an employer) restricts a “fundamental right”, then courts demand “the least possible restriction that will achieve a compelling government interest”. And the rights violater can’t get away with merely sounding vaguely “rational”. They have to put up their expert witnesses to establish that the “government interest” is fact-based and that the restriction does in fact serve that interest, and serve it in what is in fact the least possible restrictive manner.

The right to manage our own health, not fundamental?

What amazes me: how does our right to refuse a deadly vaccine (or mask) escape being treated as a “fundamental right”? For 50 years the right of a woman to control her own health was treated as a right so “fundamental” that the murder of the person growing within her was called “irrelevant” by lower appellate courts. (Casey, 1992, downgraded “fundamental” to “undue burden”, but as late as Hellerstedt, Justice Thomas complained that he couldn’t tell the difference.) How can a right to manage our own health, without even having to murder anyone, escape “fundamental rights” analysis?

During those same years, we watched many documentaries that treated as a scandal during the prior 50 years, of medical experiments done on unsuspecting Blacks and people with low IQ’s. Forced sterilizations, lobotomies, poisonous chemicals, etc. How have we returned to those Dr. Mengale days? Claims were made then to justify those scandals, claims without evidence. Just like now. Don’t we need evidence of necessity before we return to experimenting on people without their consent? How has reality become irrelevant both in courts of law and in the Court of Public Opinion?

The very distinction between “fundamental rights” analysis and “rational basis” analysis is an invention of SCOTUS, according to Justice Thomas in Dobbs v. Jackson. I’ve read cases where it makes perfect sense to defer to the judgment of legislatures, especially in their establishment of facts justifying their restriction of a right, before overturning a law. (Yet even the facts established by legislatures were not accepted when legislatures established the fact that unborn babies of humans are humans.)

But in a lawsuit? Where there is no law enacted by lawmakers and a governor at issue but the ruling of an employer? (Often motivated by fear of lawsuits?) Should the same deference be given to violators of rights who are not elected lawmakers but unelected federal bureaucrats? Where the facts alleged to justify the restriction of rights (the alleged endangering of others by not wearing masks, in my case, or by not getting vaccinated, in Younes’s cases) is not the finding of elected lawmakers involving pubic debate whose contributors are a public record but the finding of the CDC through a process entirely opaque to voters and lawmakers, whose reviews of medical evidence are breathtakingly sparse, slanted, and such a surprise after reading the research itself, and which has a vested interest in receiving millions in contributions from pill and vaccine manufacturers through its publicly opaque CDC Foundation?

Really? The violation of the rights of Americans to manage their own health only has to sound vaguely rational? Evidence that the supporting alleged facts are erroneous is irrelevant?

Peer-reviewed research publishes comments by doctors and other researchers so that critics are given some voice, where they are able to respond in detail, besides a process of scrutiny by others just to get published. The CDC has none of this accountability. No comments allowed. No authors are identified. No conflict of interest statement.

SCOTUS’ Perversion of 14th Amendment Rights

Justice Thomas’ concurrence in Dobbs v. Jackson (which overturned Roe v. Wade) gives quite a history of how SCOTUS garbled rights analysis, starting with Cruikshank which emasculated the 14th Amendment protection of blacks from slavery and lesser terror, so recently enacted, from penalizing the murderers of scores of blacks for the “crime” of meeting together!

SCOTUS made errors then which haunt rights analysis to this day, which make any rights challenge unpredictable and may apply to a mask challenge, making those errors ripe for challenge

In Thomas’ Dobbs concurrence, he cites his concurrences and dissents in several previous cases which expand on his theory that the engine of SCOTUS’ power to arbitrarily overrule both states and Congress is its use of the “due process” clause as its authority for rights analysis, instead of the “privileges and immunities” clause. The latter was the expectation of the authors of the 14th Amendment. That clause had a long history of association with the rights specified (“enumerated”) in the Constitution and in the Bill of Rights, while the “due process” clause came with no guidance about what constituted protectable “rights”. (His earlier analyses didn’t make headlines like when he repeated them in Dobbs.)

Thomas explains the progressive bastardization of the 14th Amendment by SCOTUS, to the point where SCOTUS says Congress can only protect rights which have been declared to be rights by SCOTUS, and can only protect them to the extent that SCOTUS already has. (Hmmm. Did I read Thomas right? Indeed, does that mean SCOTUS permits Congress to do nothing that SCOTUS has not already done? I must be missing something.)

Thomas is working towards an America in which SCOTUS limits itself to protecting enumerated rights, basing its authority on the “privileges and immunities” clause. Although he did not absolutely rule out recognition of previously undefined rights from falling within that clause. Lawyers should help bring cases that help Thomas succeed; that would make lawmaking a lot more predictable and more sensible.

Do we not have a fundamental, “enumerated” right to live? Is not “life” the first listed right in our Declaration of Independence? Do we not therefore have the right to oppose any measure that threatens our very lives, such as covid vaccines and masks? Do we have no right of Self Defense to defend our lives against deadly laws?

Hard to tell, in a court which applies a “rational basis” test to my right to avoid threats to my life, and accepts as “rational” any reliance on a two-sentence review of a mask RCT by the CDC, never mind what the RCT itself says, which becomes irrelevant in court!

Until now Congress’ hands have been tied by SCOTUS’ rights analysis from correcting these abuses. I would like to see Congress’ hands untied to fix our covid anarchy. Congress has better fact finding ability than courts, presidents, and bureaucrats.

A plain reading of Article 5 of the 14th Amendment would untie Congress’ hands. While Thomas was explaining how SCOTUS gutted the 14th Amendment, why did Thomas pass over the fact that Section 5 of the 14th Amendment authorizes Congress, not courts, to enact legislation as needed to enforce the 14th Amendment? Doesn’t the power to enforce rights necessarily carry with it the authority to define rights? (Which doesn’t mean to invent whole new rights or to eviscerate enumerated rights; a danger avoided by reverting to the “privileges and immunities” clause.)

How did SCOTUS neutralize Section 5 by replacing the authority of Congress with its own? How can anyone read Section 5 to approve of what SCOTUS has done to it?

There is an amazing debate on the subject between Professor Schleuter and Judge Bork. Much of the debate is specific to abortion, but Section 5 is covered. Schleuter takes the position which I think I have taken, although fleshing it out with many precedents and arguments. Bork disagrees about almost everything, to the extent of insulting Schleuter rather than sticking to the merits of the issue. Bork had been my hero ever since he was “borked” - I even had a chance once to have my picture taken with him – but I find Schleuter’s analysis far more compelling, and Bork’s, not at all. How do you find them?

Emergency laws

I know that Iowa law gives the governor emergency powers for at least a month, though after that time the Executive Council – legislative leaders – can end it. The problem has been that there is no provision in law for establishing the facts justifying emergency intervention. This was never previously a problem, as long as the only declared emergencies were floods and tornadoes, where no one disputed the facts.

I assume plenty of laws prevent you from requiring everybody to wear masks, but somehow they were forgotten under the mantle of an emergency. Suddenly the CDC found itself with the power to make life miserable for almost all Americans. What a temptation for any bureaucrat! But where was the system in place, commensurate with that expanded authority, to hold the CDC accountable for a review of facts that fully addressed all expert testimony on all sides, just as a court does, theoretically?

The lack of any such system, with the record of the CDC’s failure to so act on its own, should disqualify reliance on the CDC as automatically being legally recognizable as “reasonable”.

Are we legal humans?

One other thing that surprises me about Dobbs v. Jackson, and Thomas’ concurrence in it, which I hope is not relevant to my mask case, but I wonder.

Why did even the most conservative justices, in Dobbs, or for that matter in any other abortion precedent in the past 50 years, treat “it’s a baby” as a matter of opinion for voters to decide based on the “social value” they place on babies? Why did no justice treat babies as human beings, as every court-recognized fact-finder has ruled over the past 50 years? No American legal authority has declared any later time than fertilization as when protectable “life begins”. The FACT that babies are people makes killing them legally recognizable as murder, which NO state can be allowed to legalize.

The right to life was recognized as a right more fundamental even than that of a mother to kill her child, in Roe’s clause that begins “of course”. “Life” is an enumerated right in the “due process” clause of the 14th Amendment, and in the Declaration of Independence where it is listed first and is called “unalienable” (by any law, judgment, or constitution of man), being “endowed” in us by “our Creator”.

But if even the most conservative SCOTUS justices can’t tell if the baby of a human is a human, what security is there for an old over-the-hill veteran?

This should not be hard for you

Because my Application rests on both medical research and Scripture, all you have to do is show me I am wrong about the medical research and my Application will no longer be needed.

Producing this information for me should not occasion any more work for anybody in the VA beyond reading my letter and responding with a link. Because it is inconceivable that a national mask mandate could go into effect in America without first assembling the evidence that it serves the best interests of Americans, and without making that information readily available to all Americans who want to know.

I should be able to walk up to any information desk in any hospital, ask “can you show me the evidence that these masks which you require reduces covid infection, in the face of the Bangladesh and Denmark RCT’s which find they don’t?” and the receptionist should be able to hand me a stack of research as she says “Sure!”

Not, “we follow the CDC and the Mayo Clinic” without even a link to where they seriously address those studies, and only then in response to my exhaustive documentation of the anti-science of masks. (In my December 11 letter to Lori Clair – she called herself “Sinclair” in another place – I listed the search results from the CDC and Mayo Clinic websites. I found no serious account of either study. That letter is reproduced in the enclosed record. )

Don’t doctors summarize research for patients to help them understand treatment options? Why no “informed consent” about an intervention not just offered but imposed on every patient?

I don’t find it on your hospital website. I haven’t found it from any doctor I have talked with, though it should be available from every doctor, since every doctor enforces it. No doctor I have asked has even heard of either the Denmark or Bangladesh studies, which are the only two RCT’s measuring real covid infection in real people. I am astonished at the ignorance of these studies by every doctor I have talked to, and alarmed at the lack of curiosity about them when I cite them. Can I be the only patient asking about them, that doctors should remain so unprepared to this day, two years after your mandate began?

Ignoring reality is what drunks do

It doesn’t make reality go away. What distinguishes modern medicine from the cocaine-laced “snake oil” sold by the bottle in “medicine shows” a century ago? Isn’t it attention to research? To the extent hospitals ignore research, and not on some obscure intervention [treatment] but an intervention imposed on everybody, what is happening to modern medicine? How many other interventions have no rational basis, even before you consider alarming side effects?

If there is no accountability for malpractice that threatens everybody, how will there be accountability for malpractice that affects only a few? What will be left of modern medicine for my grandchildren?

My qualifications to evaluate my own medical choices

I may lack “standing” to go into court as an expert witness that your mask mandate is harming everybody and must be ended. But hospitals have until now given their patients standing to exercise “informed consent” over their own medical treatments. The First Amendment gives me legal standing to choose my own religion, and to resist a government-“established” religion. I have “standing” to evaluate the evidence I have studied. I have “standing” to conclude from the evidence, especially when no doctor will inform me otherwise, that masks have as much power to keep anyone healthy as bowing down to a carved tree. I have “standing” to be spiritually alarmed by the obeisance of masking up, enforced by irrational zealous evidence-defying faith that will censor and “cancel” me, because of its resemblance to Nebuchadnezzar ordering everyone to bow down to his golden image or be thrown into a furnace.

But if someone, anyone, in the VA hospital, or actually in any hospital, will show me evidence that refutes the evidence I present, or correct my understanding of the evidence, I will be happy. But so far none of the answers I have received from hospital administrators (I also got a response from the Broadlawns CEO) has even suggested that my review of the research is incorrect or unbalanced. For as long as the evidence that mask mandates are a great fraud seems overwhelming to me, and unrefuted, and unaddressed by the VA, I am losing interest in any appearance of endorsing the fraud.

Do not eat meat sacrificed to idols, Paul warns. The principle applies here. He explained that the meat per se is not the problem. It’s others seeing you endorsing the idols, and being led astray from God, thinking it must be OK.

The CDC

The CDC was put forward as the information source which guides VA decisions, but when I used the CDC search engine I could not find any serious attempt to address the largest, most thorough studies of masks: the Denmark and Bangladesh studies. I found only one article on the CDC website that mentions the Denmark and Bangladesh studies, but the CDC’s treatment is so sparse, so slanted, and such a surprise after reading the studies themselves, that I can’t classify its treatment as serious.

My research review, enclosed, quotes and addresses what I found.

Nor does the CDC address a German study that documents the serious medical harms exacerbated by masks. Or a similar review of medical literature published by the [www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7680614/ NIH] which was “retracted” months later without the required notice of the reason for the retraction. Suspicious.

Please forward me the CDC analysis of the Denmark and Bangladesh studies which intelligently refutes the findings seen in them by me and by the [www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-paper-64.pdf Cato Institute].

Biden’s Executive Order

The rejection letter I got did not give the answer of doctors, explaining where I misunderstands the evidence, but of lawyers: “...After reviewing your request with both the Medical Center Director as well as the Regional Counsel, it was determined that the facility mask policy is in line with Executive Order 13991 and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Therefore the Facility Director will not grant your request.”

What? My request was “reviewed” even by the Medical Center Director, yet not even that level of expertise was able to challenge his review of peer-reviewed mask research? No attempt was even made? He or she did not think an email to staff asking for volunteers to respond to the Denmark and Bangladesh studies would turn up anyone who had heard of them? There was no review by doctors but only by lawyers?

Executive Order 13991, by President Biden, January 20, 2021, begins with an assertion (made without any support) that masks in fact slow covid, but never prohibits hospitals from discussing research with patients.

The order doesn’t prohibit doctors from supplying honest, research-based “informed consent”. Since the order cited no research or other evidence whatsoever in support of its mandate, the order does not prevent informed doctors and hospitals from taking political steps to reverse the mandate, including full disclosure to the public.

In fact it says hospitals should “address obstacles” to mask requirement enforcement. Isn’t it an obstacle to mask requirement enforcement, that the best research says masks accomplish little or nothing against covid, while causing harm? Shouldn’t that be “addressed” by the VA hospital?

The EO also says hospitals should “incentivize” mask wearing. Wouldn’t it “incentivize” mask wearing, to tell patients about all the wonderful research proving masks help?

But if there is indeed no such research, is any hospital prohibited by Biden from so informing its patients?

Although these concerns apply in every federal facility, you would think in a hospital, there would be several doctors who know the research and can easily correct me if I am wrong or correct the CDC if I am right. You would think a hospital would treat a question about mask research as a medical question, to be answered by consulting with doctors, not lawyers.

The order doesn’t prohibit doctors from supplying honest, research-based “informed consent”. Since the order cited no research or other evidence whatsoever in support of its mandate, the order does not prevent informed doctors and hospitals from taking political steps to reverse the mandate, including full disclosure to the public.

For example, the hospital could include somewhere on its website the evidence for and against masks, and any other issue that divides public opinion about medical issues. The website could allow doctors on both sides of the controversy to interact with each other, without fear of censorship, where “peer review” would not preemptively censor but would simply subject errors to scrutiny. I have urged the governor to establish such a website as the basis for her emergency mandates.

In fact, Biden’s Executive Order explicitly orders institutions to use persuasion to overcome resistance to the mandate, so that if I am wrong, the hospital administration is required by the EO to show me the evidence that I am wrong.

Not just tell patients the president makes us all mask up and there is nothing they can do.

In order to increase my standing to object to your mandate, and to provide you with an easier outcome in between changing an entire nationwide system and doing nothing, I have couched my request as an Application for a Religious Exemption from Mask Mandates.

As I said, a lifelong love of and search for truth, and conversely a revulsion for lies and fraud, is a bedrock Christian principle, and is fairly unique to faiths based on the Bible. The zeal with which masks are enforced and the trust placed in them is very comparable with the elements of a “false god” which the First Commandment tells us to defy.

The EO does NOT prohibit the hospital from granting religious exemptions. In fact the EO says “Heads of agencies may make categorical or case-by-case exceptions in implementing subsection (a) of this section to the extent that doing so is necessary or required by law....” A religious exemption for me is both necessary and required by the First Amendment “establishment of religion” clause. That is “the law of the land”.

The EO even establishes a “Safer Federal Workforce Task Force” whose mission includes identifying “circumstances under which exemptions might appropriately be made to agency policies in accordance with CDC guidelines, such as for mission-critical purposes.” Surely compliance with the Constitution is a “mission-critical purpose.”

In conclusion, I look forward to your presentation of solid evidence corroborating the public benefits of your mask mandate – some substantial benefit, not some “statistically insignificant” benefit at around the 0.1% range with Confidence Intervals straddling zero. Please also explain why you refuse a religious exemption for me, in view of the First Amendment, general case law about religious exemptions, and the provision for exemptions in the Biden EO.

For your convenience in sharing copies of this information with others you may want to answer me on your behalf, it is posted online.

The enclosure is a printout of the information posted at “Application for a Secular/Religious Exemption from Mask/Vaccine Mandate”. As the printout is in two parts, so is the online post; there is a Section One, the religious and legal arguments, and a Section Two, reviews of the medical research. This cover letter is not posted there – at least not now.

In Jesus’ Name (Col 3:17)


Dave Leach


In Jesus’ Name (Col 3:17) Dave Leach

VA CEO Response Sept 21 2022

Goodspeed letter Sept 21 2022 web .jpg

My Sept 24 Response to VA CEO

September 24, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach Avenue
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711 <> music@saltshaker.us

Director Darwin Goodspeed
VA Central Iowa Medical Center
3600 30th St
Des Moines IA 50310

Sir:

In stating that “The facility policy requiring masks...is in accordance with Executive Order 13991...” you appear to have overlooked the fact, explained in my letter, that the EO requires you to “address any obstacles” to compliance with mask mandates. The consensus of the only two relevant RCT’s that the Actual Risk Reduction, if there is any at all, is about 0.1% (but the Prevalence Ratio includes 1.0, so zero benefit can be proved) is obviously an “obstacle” to mask mandate compliance.

Not to mention the evidence I reviewed that the oxygen reduction causes many serious conditions.

Neither you nor your predecessor have “addressed” that “obstacle”, though I don’t know how I could have more clearly explained the need.

Section 3 (a) The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), including through the Director of CDC, shall engage, as appropriate, with State, local, Tribal, and territorial officials, as well as business, union, academic, and other community leaders, regarding mask-wearing and other public health measures, with the goal of maximizing public compliance with, and addressing any obstacles to, mask-wearing and other public health best practices identified by CDC.

Your unwillingness to comply with the EO’s order to “address any obstacles” additionally leaves unsupported your claim that “The health and safety of our patients, staff, and visitors is our top priority, and the policy of requiring masks is just one example of our commitment.”

If you can refute the evidence that masks offer zero provable benefit against covid and contribute to many serious conditions, you should do so with evidence superior to the only two relevant RCT’s. You should not leave the world to guess what justifies, in your mind, your mandate: superstition? Intuition? Some dark destructive religion? Why such zeal without any support in science or logic, or even in law which you violate while claiming to rule in “accordance” with it?

The EO also requires you to “make exceptions in accordance with existing law”. Refusal to grant any exceptions at all would appear to violate not only EO 13991, but existing law, which absolutely includes the First Amendment “establishment of religion” clause, along with abundant relevant case law. We call that “the law of the land”.

EO 13991, Section 2 (d) Heads of agencies may make categorical or case-by-case exceptions in implementing subsection (a) of this section to the extent that doing so is necessary or required by law, and consistent with applicable law.

As I wrote earlier, a lifelong love of and search for truth, and conversely a revulsion for lies and fraud, is a bedrock Christian principle, and is fairly unique to faiths based on the Bible. The zeal with which masks are enforced and trust placed in them is very comparable with the elements of a “false god” which the First Commandment tells us to defy.

Such religious-level zeal is on display in your doubling down on a mandate with no support in medical science which you are able or at least willing to articulate. Your zeal even overcomes your obedience to the same EO 13991 with which you allege to be in “accordance”.

So for as long as you make no exceptions in accordance with “existing law”, and for as long as you will not address the evidence that any covid benefit from masks is somewhere between negligible and zero while harm is clear, it would appear to be incorrect for you to allege that your inflexible “policy...is in accordance with Executive Order 13991...” If you are under orders in the VA hierarchy which violate these commands of the EO, it would be helpful to me to know their source so I can better focus my concerns.

I want to express preemptive concern with:

If heads of agencies make such exceptions, they shall require appropriate alternative safeguards, such as additional physical distancing measures, additional testing, or reconfiguration of workspace, consistent with applicable law. Heads of agencies shall document all exceptions in writing.

(Should you consider “additional testing” as an “appropriate alternative safeguard”, please weigh any impression of its “appropriateness” against the fact that some 90 tests exist under emergency authorization, none of which have received FDA approval, which conveniently shelters their manufacturers from any liability.)

[Correction, not sent to Goodspeed: there aren't just 90 covid tests, but 301, none of which are FDA approved but only allowed under "emergency authorization".]

You invite me to appeal to External Complaints Program. I did, August 12. No answer yet which I expected, since [www.va.gov/ORMDI/docs/ExternalComplain] lists kinds of discrimination that office addresses, and religious discrimination isn’t on the list. Did you already know that?

If you have good solid answers to my concerns, articulating them to me will comply with Canon of Judicial Ethics #19. You sit as judge over my issue, and #19 reads,

#19, Judicial Opinions. In disposing of oontroverted cases,a judge should indicate the reason for his action in an opinion showing that he has not disregarded or overlooked serious arguments of counsel. He thus shows his full understanding of the case, avoids the suspicion of arbitrary conclusion, promotes confidence in his intellectual integrity and may contribute useful precedent to the growth of the law.

(The canons, along with their history through 1969, can be downloaded at www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/Digitization/15880NCJRS.pdf. It says “The non-unified Iowa State Bar Association adopted Canons 1-36 on May 28, 1948. On September 16, 1958, the Supreme Court of Iowa adopted the canons, as amended to that date, by Court Rule 119.” I recently found them relied on as authority in Iowa law; I will look up the reference if you are curious. I originally found them in my copy of Black’s Law Dictionary, 4th Edition.)

In Jesus’ Name (Col 3:17)

Dave Leach

Notes on October 3, 2022 Phone Call with J.R. Groves, Compliance Officer

This was my October 6 letter to Mr. Groves, reporting my notes on the phone call which he initiated on the 3rd:

October 6, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach Avenue
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711 <> music@saltshaker.us

J. R. Groves, Integrity & Compliance Officer
VA Central Iowa Medical Center
3600 30th St
Des Moines IA 50310

Here are my notes on our October 3 phone conversation. I welcome any corrections or clarifications.

[March, 2023: I never heard from him again.]

~ ~ ~ ~

Mr. Groves called at 2:49 pm, October 3, 2022, responding, he said, to my complaints registered through Senators Grassley and Ernst. We talked 56 minutes.

(Fortunately it was not recorded, at least not by me, because then a transcript would be even longer than this. Although really there was a LOT of repetition, so a transcript could be short with a lot of repeat signs.)

PROGRESS

The outcome was that he agreed to send some kind of notice to their medical staff asking for anyone who has read the research and is willing to discuss it with me. I told him that would be fantastic. He emphasized that meanwhile they would continue enforcing their mask mandate. I said I would eagerly await a response from any informed doctor.

(The order I put these notes in will be the order in which I remember the elements of the conversation.)

Not just one study

He kept referring to the “one study” I relied on, and I kept responding that there were two major RCT’s, one involving a third of a million participants, and dozens of other studies slightly less relevant, such as RCT’s of the efficacy of masks on the earlier versions of SARS.

He complained that he didn’t have the time to read the studies; I responded that it should be easy for him to put out an email to all their doctors asking who has already read them. He doesn’t have to be the one to research the issue from scratch. I asked him to do that a few times before he finally said he would.

RRR’s v. ARR’s in the CDC report

He told me that he had read my letters, but I wonder about that because he had no idea what Absolute Risk Reduction or Relative Risk Reduction means. I tried to explain. (In my research review I propose calling them “Relative Sick Rate” v. “Actual Risk Reduction” to make the terms more clear.) He had been talking about the CDC authority so I tried to explain how the CDC bragged up the RRR in English – a whopping 9% reduction in covid for mask wearers – but admitted the ARR in its statistics in a chart at the bottom of the CDC report – less than a tenth of a percent actual risk reduction.

Executive Order Responsibilities

We wrangled over and over the executive order’s requirement that the hospital give “exceptions” as required by “applicable law”, and that the hospital “address obstacles” to mask wearing. It surely is a serious “obstacle to mask wearing”, not seriously addressed by the CDC and not addressed at all by the CEO and doctors of the VA, that the evidence conclusively establishes that masks are useless.

Under “applicable law”, I mentioned the First Amendment prohibition of establishing a religion, laws about fraud, laws about informed consent, and laws providing for lawsuits for medical interventions that cause harm.

He called my quotes from the Executive Order my “interpretation”. I answered that I was quoting the EO.

FRAUD

More thoughts on fraud: A charge of Fraud always requires an investigation of the facts, a comparison of facts with the representation, and then evidence that those so representing knew the facts. The mask mandate rests on the claim that masks reduce covid. That claim is perpetually made by the VA, and uncomplaining patient compliance with the mandate requires that patients believe the claim.

That claim, still made a year and a half after the only two relevant RCT’s agree the Confidence Interval includes zero benefit, is easily proved in court to be fraud, unless expert witnesses can show the two RCT's are incorrect or inconclusive; but the likelihood that such expert testimony can be found seems remote, afte[r two consecutive VA CEO's have declined to challenge my evidence, and nor have, meanwhile, the Broadlawns CEO, Board of Trustees, or Chief Medical Officer.

He also didn’t remember reading about the Cato Institute meta-analysis which rates the studies and affirms my interpretation of the Bangladesh and Denmark studies.

The VA can’t say it didn’t know the evidence because it has been a year since I first brought it to the attention of the VA, as if that were necessary on top of the information being published in peer-reviewed journals read by the VA’s thousands of doctors. Continuing the mandate perpetuates the fraud.

I see that I skipped a step in my logic. The First Amendment prohibition of “establishment” of religion and protection of my “free exercise” of religion applies to my application for a religious exemption. So do laws about fraud, informed consent, and harmful treatments. But the latter are matters over which you are responsible even if I didn’t exist. Even if Christians didn’t exist. You shouldn't wait for a citizen complaint to correct those evils.

Religious Faith in Masks

But if he can’t answer me with any evidence in support of masks, and the CEO can’t either, nor can the CEO of Broadlawns – that is, is there no evidence that anyone is able to cite? If masks have no medical support, what supports them? What is left, but superstition, and with a fervor approaching the religious?

The First Amendment prohibits “establishment” of religion. While the First Commandment prohibits bowing to false gods. Why doesn’t he share my concern? Why does he double down defending superstition that he can’t defend with any evidence at all, nor does he even want to, calling it a waste of time since neither he nor his CEO can do anything about a distant bureaucrat’s “policy” anyway? His intellectual curiosity is zero, the same as the effectiveness of masks, and he defends the wisdom of keeping it that way.

He said, ignoring my concerns about masks accomplishing zero, that my religious beliefs are not impacted by wearing a mask. My concern, according to his reading of my letters, is mostly about the science. Not about my religion.

He said he had read about religious exemptions online, and had found nothing like my rationale. (Neither have I found any other exemption for masks on any basis. Nor have I found an exemption from anything where medical research was any part of its basis.)

I said he seems to have an argument from silence: that because he has not heard of such a rationale for a religious exemption, that none can possibly exist that is legally sound; the idea that Christians are focused on Truth, and opposed to fraud and to bowing to superstition, cannot be a legitimate rationale that can possibly stand in court.

I never asked him if he had read not just my letters but the entire application for a religious exemption. (About 170 pages, about 75 of which are my reviews of mask research.) Obviously he had not. It discussed a multitude of Scriptures, including where both Daniel and Jesus defied authority over erroneous health regulations.

I responded that I tried to be very clear (I was thinking of both my Sept 6 letter to CEO Goodspeed and in my 170 page Application) that my appeal rests on two legs that can’t be separated.

First, no evidence supports wearing masks to stop covid. Which leaves, for its support, superstition with a fervor approaching the religious (In my letter I described it as a fervor like that of our ancestors hearing blasphemy charges.)

Second, the First Commandment prohibits worshiping false gods. Fraud is a top concern of Christians. Truth is very important.

The prohibition against bowing to false gods has no force if we cannot analyze evidence for and against the things we bow to to determine which are false.

From my Application: “ “Truth” can’t be separated from what is True. My application for a religious exemption rests on the interaction between Scripture and current medical science. The two can’t be separated because the existence of, and reverence for, Truth, which is a bedrock principle of Christianity, is not just abstract mental fluff divorced from reality, or that applies only to Heaven, but is principles God gives us for our benefit beginning here and now, which He calls us to apply to the facts of our changing circumstances.”

I challenged his lack of curiosity about the evidence. Aren’t doctors supposed to talk to patients about the medical evidence for what they are doing or prescribing? Routinely? What is so different about masks? For a treatment required of all?

He objected to my calling masks a “treatment”. I clarified that anything designed to reduce medical issues is called a “medical intervention”, and “intervention” is a synonym of “treatment”.

Truth: Waste of Time

He said it would seem a waste of time for anyone at the hospital to study the research; whatever it is, even if it is that masks kill, the local hospital has no power to change “policy”, which is dictated at the national level. I asked if he could grasp the idea that should he, and CEO Goodspeed, look at the research and agree masks are useless, that that consensus, presuming a consensus among local doctors under them, would have the potential to impact a national “policy”?

I don’t think I got an answer to that. Except that the CDC sets policy. Doctors at the local level can’t change policy.

I didn’t address that idea during the phone call, but that may be the creepiest idea of all: that all the evidence in the world, affirmed by local doctors, is so impotent against a national policy dictator that it is a waste of time to even know the facts!

Lies are fragile things. Like Darkness. When even a little light shines, “darkness has never put it out.” John 1:5. A few doctors standing alone against covid fraud have lost their licenses and worse. But their persecutors took such wild action out of fear; they know that were a whole hospital to affirm the evidence, all their lies would unravel.

I said some of their doctors have already read the evidence I talk about. I mentioned Dr. Bloomberg, who did my cataract surgery.

Have doctors completely lost their authority to treat patients according to their best understanding of medical science? And not just individual doctors, but entire hospitals full of doctors?

When did medical dictatorship begin?

Another question I didn’t raise in the conversation: when did the CDC graduate to being a medical treatment dictator which doctors must obey without questioning? Hasn’t that been pretty recent? I know about insurance companies limiting what they will pay for, and various authorities contributing indirectly to what will pass for medical malpractice in court. But dictating a policy like masks, sanitizing surfaces, lockdowns, imposed on everybody? and vaccine mandates imposed on employees? When did that start?

I understand about the emergency authority of governors and the President. When did emergencies become both immune to evidence that the emergency is over or never existed, and become perpetual?

No Complaints?

Along with the two major RCT’s, I asked if he had read my letter which mentioned the German meta-analysis which established exacerbation of several serious medical conditions as a result of masks. He had earlier said he had read my letters, but he didn’t remember that.

He said the local hospital has received no complaints about harm from wearing masks, so there is no basis for questioning their policy. As if the lack of any scientific support for masks is insufficient to trigger questions.

I expressed my skepticism that they would acknowledge complaints if there were any. I guessed that they probably don’t acknowledge any deaths as a result of either their covid treatment protocols, such as use of remsdivir, or of their covid vaccines. He confirmed that no he has not heard of any. I mentioned that the VAERS system has recorded more deaths from covid vaccines than from all other vaccines combined since VAERS was set up.

(I read and reviewed the German meta-analysis. I didn’t read the roughly 100 studies it summarized, so I don’t know if those studies established that any serious medical condition was caused solely by wearing a mask. I have presumed that the thoroughly established reduction of oxygen and increase in CO2 is implicated as exacerbating many medical conditions. Like arsenic in our drinking water, the claim is not that in individual cases, it can be established that masks were “the cause”, but rather that in studies of thousands of people, a poisonous effect is established by people who take it suffering significantly more than those who don’t. Therefore Mr. Groves’ unawareness of any medical harm documented to be “caused” by masks is a “straw dog”. It does not disprove the established evidence that reducing oxygen is never healthy but, like other mild poisons, always causes some harm and sometimes causes a lot of harm.)

Doctors have nothing to fear?

He said nothing prevents me from talking to doctors. I’m not sure what his point was; that if they agreed with me they would do something about it? Meaning, that since none have yet, doctors must disagree with me? Or was he proposing that as a substitute for appealing to CEO Goodspeed?

I said I have, whenever I can, but most haven’t read the studies. I recall only one who said he had. And there is fear of losing their jobs if they complain about it.

He mocked that idea! That any doctor was in danger of losing anything by sharing what they know! I couldn’t help laughing at his notion that doctors are free from retribution for saying what they know. I said several doctors have already lost their medical licenses for agreeing with such conclusions as I have reached; I assume VA doctors know about this and take the threats seriously.

Alternative care

He said I don’t need an exemption because the VA can accommodate me with telemedicine – which I can’t imagine helping since I don’t have at home the equipment always used when I go to the hospital – and/or by referrals to some outside doctor of my choice.

I didn’t respond much about that. I appreciate everything about the hospital except the superstitious mask mandate. I will miss that service if I must go elsewhere. Especially since Dr. Bloomberg supervised the surgery and did one of the followup checks, giving me great confidence in his competence, and he knows it would be beneficial to return to him for the followup.

“You can find studies to prove anything you want”

This is an argument ignorant people make about the Bible. What’s the use of actually studying reality? You can find evidence for anything.

Fortunately people don’t apply this logic to things that are important, like how to make an app work, or make your car start. They just apply this excuse for mental laziness to frivolous matters, like drawing near to God, or keeping America Free. Though now we see it spreading to whether medical bureaucrats are allowed to be questioned.

One of the times he said I based my conclusions on only one study, I mentioned the German study of mask harms, and added that I have read dozens of other studies, and reviewed them on my website, not just two. In fact had he read my complete application he would have seen my reviews of many of those studies. He wanted me to say other studies countered the Danish and Bangladesh studies, but I answered, that isn’t my impression. There were much smaller studies that didn’t establish the same conclusions, but none come to mind that established a contrary conclusion.

Droplet Size

He asked if I challenged the usefulness of masks during operations? No, I said, because the purpose there is to keep doctors from sneezing on exposed hearts. Of course masks will stop large droplets, big enough to see, from dribbling down doctors’ mouths to patients. But they are not worn to stop viruses, because they can’t.

He asked about the earliest covid studies, if I remembered when we had to sanitize surfaces, then “the science” decided that didn’t help. I said the issue before the earliest researchers was how big the droplets were that carried covid. If most were very small, then they were like mosquitos flying through a chain link fence; too small for a mask to slow them down. But if most were carried on large droplets, then the masks would be effective. I said I don’t know that the ratio of small to large droplets carrying covid has ever been directly measured, but indirectly, when a third of a million people, half without masks and half with, experience no difference outside the possibility of chance, that indirectly says covid travels on enough very small droplets to nullify any urgency about learning how much more is carried on droplets large enough for masks to catch. (Actually “droplets” is the name for water globs 5 millionths of a meter and larger. Smaller than that, down to 20 billionths, they are called “aerosols”.)

Now that it has been established conclusively that masks are useless, the ratio of large to small is of only secondary interest anyway. No evidence exists that they help at all, beyond superstition and wishful thinking.

He tried to spin my statements as agreement that research has failed to establish droplet size, which means masks MIGHT help, but I was emphatic that research has conclusively established that masks cannot be shown to have helped at all; and that if there is any benefit at all it is microscopic. He also tried to spin my statements as agreement that since we agree masks are useful in operating rooms, they are useful in stopping covid. But I was emphatic that the only purpose of masks in operating rooms is to stop the flow of large droplets; the droplets that carry viruses are never expected in operating rooms to be stopped by masks.

CONCLUSION: I remain frustrated that Groves and Goodspeed

(1) see no need to justify or explain the medical inventions they impose on patients in light of RCT's that place frenzied obsessive masking in the category of baseless superstition;

(2) see nothing in Executive Order 13991 that pressures them to (a) address the research proving that masks are useless, which certainly strikes me as an “obstacle” to mask wearing; or (b) grant exceptions as required by “applicable law”, which I take to include the First Amendment prohibition of establishment of religion, laws against fraud, laws requiring “informed consent”, and laws enabling lawsuits for medical interventions that cause harm.

(3) see nothing in Christianity that is offended by fraud, or by being made to bow to superstition as compulsive as ancient reactions to charges of blasphemy.

How can any conversation about masks proceed 56 seconds, much less 56 minutes, that treats the evidence that masks don’t help as irrelevant?!

Mr. Groves said he hasn’t seen the research. He said it would be a waste of time for doctors to read the research. Because medical research is irrelevant to the hospital “policy”. No amount of reality can ever influence a bureaucrat’s ruling. Medical bureaucrats are not accountable to know medical research, or to address clashes between their policies and research.

Mr. Groves said he could send a note to doctors in case any want to educate me about the research, but will he? His heart isn’t in it, it didn’t sound like, research being irrelevant to modern medical practices when a bureaucrat disagrees.

Throughout the conversation it was me returning the conversation to the evidence, and him deflecting facts as being irrelevant. What’s another way of saying that? If the hospital’s draw for patients to happily wear their masks is not any evidence that masks help, it being irrelevant whether masks in fact help, what is it?

The hospital wants patients to believe masks help, and not just help but are so vital to health that they must be worn religiously. Yet the hospital considers it unnecessary to inculcating that belief in patients, to address research with patients. Not even in response to letters to CEO’s! Even when CEO’s respond, their response includes no reference to research, much less a defense of their mandate founded on any research.

When people want you to believe something but dismiss evidence as irrelevant to you believing it, what does that leave for why you should believe it?

Faith. They demand of you, faith. Faith in the hospital’s faith in a bureaucrat.

“Oh, the CDC”, cries J.R. Groves. “Oh, Biden’s executive order”, cries CEO Darwin Goodspeed.

I was not actually given a link to any CDC ruling that binds hospitals to mask mandates. I didn’t think to ask Mr. Groves. If there is such a place I would like to see it.

All I have talked about is where I found that the CDC alludes to both the Denmark and Bangladesh studies. It was hard to find, and I don’t know if the CDC says more about them elsewhere.

Let me review the CDC’s glancing blow again, in the link I found and that I give in my Application and in my September 6 letter to CEO Goodspeed.

The CDC dismisses the Denmark study as small and inconclusive. Both claims are ridiculous. It established almost exactly the same results as the Bangladesh study which the CDC praised as showing masks reduce covid by 9%. Except that the CDC contradicts itself, just as the Bangladesh abstract itself does. On the same web page, the CDC admits that for all the evidence shows, the covid reduction of masks might be zero. As I wrote to CEO Goodspeed:

“Even the CDC admits that the Bangladesh results include zero. See Masking Science. (“Table: Summary of Studies...” admits the study found that the average percentage of covid cases that mask wearers will experience, compared to the sick rate of those without masks, lies somewhere between 82% and 100%. Here is how this fact is admitted, in a table at the bottom of the page just above the footnotes, in language unfamiliar to most voters and lawmakers: “(adjusted prevalence ratio 0.91, 95% CI 0.82-1.00)”
This meets the definition in statistics of “statistically insignificant”, since “A relative risk is considered statistically significant when the value of 1.0 is not in the 95% confidence interval.” 32/suppl_2/ii13/3056571#64437158 Academic.OUP
“Unfortunately the statistical insignificance of the Bangladesh results was not admitted in plain language by either the Bangladesh researchers or the CDC. Neither did either admit the context of their claimed “9%” fewer cases counted among Bangladesh maskers than among nomaskers: the fact that only three quarters of a percent of nomaskers got sick. 0.76%. 9% fewer cases than that are a 0.68% sick rate. That isn’t even a one tenth of a percent reduction of the sick rate experienced by maskers. The Denmark researchers honestly admitted their similar findings in plain language.
“So the only two mask RCT’s find that wearing a mask all the time reduces the risk of getting covid by one tenth of one percent. (Or maybe two tenths! Or maybe zero.) If one tenth, then one thousand people need to wear masks all the time to prevent one person from catching covid. If one out of a hundred who get covid die from it, then 100,000 people need to wear masks all the time to prevent one covid death.
“By contrast, the chance of being struck by lightning during your life is one in 15,300, and one in ten who are struck by lightning die therefrom, but government doesn’t make us all wear rubber suits our whole lives to reduce that risk. (Yet.)”

Back to treating evidence that masks are useless and even harmful as irrelevant in the process of ordering patients to wear them: No! Reality is not irrelevant! You ask me to believe you, with no interest on your part in discussing the evidence I read that masks only harm.

You ask me to have faith. Faith in your faith in an anonymous CDC bureaucrat. (The CDC doesn’t even identify the author(s) of its articles.) You make an idol of something with no more power to help than a carved tree, Isaiah 44:12-20, 46:1-9, Jeremiah 10:3-5. yet you ask me to BELIEVE, and as to publicly wear a symbol of my endorsement of your fraud.

You want blind faith.

You can’t have it! I am a Christian! Truth matters to Christians! Fraud is exposed by Christians! Jesus commands us to shine our light in darkness. Jesus, our example, refused to obey a health regulation about washing hands before eating, for no better reason that the ritual was useless. Paul tells us to avoid meat sacrificed to idols, not because it will hurt us, but for the sake of others who are watching us and are weighing how they should respond to the fraud. 1 Corinthians 10:23-30.

I pray Mr. Groves will indeed contact doctors and find one or two willing to address the evidence with me, and that this will happen before my next scheduled VA appointment two months from now. Because if by then there is STILL no one willing to address evidence, I don’t like any of my options.

In Jesus’ Name (Col 3:17) Dave Leach

=October 7, Friday, 2022 Notes To Myself[

In my conversation with Mr. Groves he said doctors aren't in danger of losing anything for stating the facts they know. I said not so, some have lost their licenses, and many notice. Today an email from AFLDS, America's Frontline Doctors, has the latest:

"while there are only three physicians listed who have met great sacrifice for standing for our freedoms, many more will likely follow them. Typically, actions take quite some time to process through the medical board and for a final decision to be rendered. This is why we have seen so few physicians' licenses revoked. Do not let these numbers fool you, thousands of physicians across the country (but especially in states like California) are under investigation for “disinformation” and will likely lose their ability to treat patients. If this tragedy is completed, we will have honest doctors that truly seek to cure patients not practicing medicine while those that will compromise and turn a blind eye for personal gain as the only options in healthcare." AFLDS.org


I sent a paper copy to CEO Darwin Goodspeed, and PDF’s emailed to the senators’ offices. I had previously sent a copy of my notes to the senators’ office, and got this reply from Grassley’s staffer: “We’re glad you were able to speak with someone at the VA regarding your concerns. Unfortunately, our office cannot ask an agency to do anything outside of its policies and procedures. If you are dissatisfied with the VA’s response, you may utilize its External Complaints Program. I will also pass your concerns on to Senator Grassley’s policy staff for review.”

I replied the same day: “I know I have written a lot - the more complicated lies are, the more study it takes to unravel them - so you can't be expected to have read it all.

“So here are some points I have written about which I pray you will consider as you are tempted to dismiss my concerns as beyond your authority to address.

“Your office can certainly ask an agency to adjust its policies and procedures as necessary to comply with law. EO 13991 is the ONLY authority mentioned to me by CEO Goodspeed for VA's mask mandate. The EO provides for "exemptions" as required by "applicable law". Doesn't that include the First Amendment which we call "the law of the land"? Doesn't that include laws about fraud, informed consent, and interventions that cause harm?

“Do you mean to say you can't ask an agency to change policies and procedures that violate law, when even the authority they rely on also says "applicable law" should be followed?

“A charge of "Fraud" always requires an investigation of the facts, a comparison of facts with the representation, and then evidence that those so representing knew the facts. The facts of mask research which must be investigated intimidate most voters and some lawmakers, being in the area of medicine. But I know that this investigation is not complicated at all compared with matters which Senator Grassley routinely takes on.

“Hmmm. I just skipped a step in my logic. The First Amendment prohibition of "establishment" of religion applies to my application for a religious exemption. Laws about fraud, informed consent, and harmful treatments are matters over which you have the authority to demand correction, even if I didn't exist. Even if Christians didn't exist. You shouldn't wait for a citizen complaint to correct those evils.

“As for your assumption that "External Complaints" is an avenue of correction, this is from the letter I sent to CEO Goodspeed Sept 24:

“ ‘You invite me to appeal to External Complaints Program. I did, August 12. No answer yet which I expected, since [www.va.gov/ORMDI/docs/ExternalComplain] lists kinds of discrimination that office addresses, and religious discrimination isn’t on the list. Did you already know that?’

“This reminds me that my conversation with Mr. Groves included that same suggestion to appeal to them, and my answer above. He did not question my answer: he did not say "Oh no, Dave, they will surely address your issue. Just because their website doesn't say they will, doesn't mean they won't. You will hear back from them any day now."

“I didn't just send External Complaints a letter. I also sent them the entire 100+ page Application, a third of which was my reviews of relevant mask research.”

Final Broadlawns Contact: October 24, 2022

It wasn’t easy, but I got the email addresses of the six candidates for Broadlawns Board of Trustees on the November 8 ballot. I emailed them the following, at about 12:30 pm Monday. I learned several days later that Broadlawns had lifted their mask mandate that same day, allegedly earlier than my emails. Allison Oscar, secretary to the Board, told me November 1, the following Monday, that their reason was scaling back of the mandate by the CDC. But here for the record is my email anyway:

October 24, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach Ave
Des Moines IA 50315

To Candidates for Broadlawns Board of Trustees

If you are elected, will you take a serious look at the RCT evidence showing Broadlawns’ mask requirement is useless against covid, while its lowering of oxygen levels exacerbates many serious conditions according to a review of nearly 100 studies?

If you can defend the mandate, I will appreciate any evidence you can provide that it protects patients from covid at a rate significantly greater than the tenth of one percent Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) experienced during mask research in Denmark and Bangladesh and so reported in the meta-analysis by the Cato Institute. I will also appreciate your thoughts on the finding of both studies that even that 0.1% benefit might be due to chance; an actual covid reduction of zero from masking is consistent with the findings. (More detail below.)

This deserves an answer if anything does.

It has now been a year and a half since the Bangladesh Randomized Controlled Study which, in agreement with the Netherlands RCT the year before, proved there is no statistically significant benefit to masks, while a German review documents terrible ailments that are significantly exacerbated by the lowering of oxygen levels in the blood, and by the buildup of bacteria breathed by wearers. (Linked below.) It has been five months since May 26 when I first contacted Broadlawn’s Trustees, and two and a half months since I wrote to the Chief Medical Officer at the suggestion of Broadlawns’ CEO. (Dr. Shah has not answered me.)

I will be glad to be shown these studies are wrong, or have been superseded. But neither Broadlawns’ CEO, nor Chief Medical Officer, nor any Trustee, gave any such justification for Broadlawns’ mask mandate, nor can I find any discussion of evidence anywhere in Broadlawns’ system, while the doctors I have talked with both at Broadlawns and the VA hospital haven’t been interested in the subject except for one at the VA who had read the evidence and agreed with me.

In the absence of any fact-based justification for obsessive masking, it is an enormous scandal that hospitals are the last places in Iowa to respond to the medical evidence. It is a scandal which, along with similarly unsupported vaccine mandates, are already driving doctors and nurses from hospitals, worsening their shortage. (But maybe that will even out, because it is also driving away from hospitals the growing numbers of patients who want a better response to the evidence they read than “Fauci Sez”. An answer for which I have waited in vain, so far, these five months. And for a year, from the VA.)

I had expected to receive a response about the research, either to show me that I don't correctly understand it, or that the research was flawed, or displaced by newer, better research. Either that, or that the Board will indeed drop this mask requirement now that medical science has established its uselessness.

Metcalf’s Answer – no interest in evidence

But instead Trustee Janet Metcalf, the only board member who responded, expressed no knowledge of, concern for, or curiosity about the research indicating Broadlawns’ most visible and pervasive medical intervention has no scientific basis.

She wrote on June 28 that the Board makes no individual exceptions but only considers policies that affect everyone. “The Board of Trustees does not make decisions for individual patients, but I know your information was given to the medical staff.”

Surely this is a mistake. Can it be an actual hospital policy to ignore the needs of anyone whose needs are unique?! Over how many human needs could such a policy stretch? I had expected that it would be the board’s role to develop a policy for anyone whose needs are not met by existing policies, which can then be in place for a future patient with the same need; and in that way, policy grows towards the ability to meet everyone’s needs. Yet Metcalf shows the issue doesn’t just affect me, but affects all patients, by deferring to “medical staff”. In so doing, she addresses only the part of my letter about medical research that asks “explain how this isn’t fraud”. That affects all Broadlawns’ patients. And staff.

The other part of my appeal was, in a nutshell, “if you can’t or won’t deny it is fraud with something to back up your denial, I want a religious exemption from participating in your fraud.”

The Biblical concern goes beyond merely wanting to expose, if not correct a lie. The obsession with a ritual, reaching such a fervor as to demonize people resisting it with all the stigma of “unbelievers”, with the outrage our ancestors attached to charges of blasphemy, and maintained by censorship of research and the actual delicensing of doctors who stand by the best research, raises this lie towards that status of a False God, which no Christian may accommodate, and what American law calls “establishment of religion”, which no government- or taxpayer-supported institution may enable.

I had framed my request as an “application for a religious exemption” on the grounds that (1) I am a Christian, for whom Truth is bedrock important, (2) the Bible warns of judgment for participating in fraud – compare 1 Corinthians 8:4-13 with Revelation 2:14, 20 – and (3) both Jesus and Daniel refused to follow hygiene laws simply on the grounds that they were useless. Those are highlights from the 45-page religious application portion of my appeal, which compares God’s laws with American law. My appeal is to the First Amendment and the First Commandment. I sent a printout to all the Trustees, and later to the CEO and the Chief Medical Officer. The document is posted at Application_for_Religious/Secular_Exemption_from_Mask_Vaccine_&_testing_Mandates.

The other part of my appeal is my 68 pages of reviews of medical research. (See highlights below.) This section is posted at Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence.

Copies of my correspondence with Broadlawns and VA Medical Centers are posted at VA_Hospital,_asked_for_medical_justification_for_mask_policy,_consults_lawyers

But if it is actually your policy to leave unique needs unaddressed, fine; I will set aside my application for a religious exemption and ask you to drop your mask requirement for everyone. I had thought an application for myself alone would be easier for the hospital. That was one reason for this approach.

My other reason for this approach was that I lack the medical credentials to tell a hospital about the medical evidence against its requirements, and doctors who have the credentials are censored. But I do have the credentials as a believer in the Holy Bible to apply to you for a religious exemption from your requirement based on the facts available to me, because truth is the essence of Christian faith and your mask requirement is far enough from the truth to qualify as a False God, to which Christians are warned not to submit.

CEO Anthony Coleman apparently didn’t notice the evidence

The other response I got was from Anthony B. Coleman, DHA, President and CEO. He wrote, July 5, (I received it July 9), “While we cannot quantify how effective it is to wear a mask, we know it offers some protection, while not wearing one offers none.” This was his response to research I pointed out which shows that wearing masks offers no measurable protection, while lowering oxygen levels contributes to a wide variety of serious conditions. How can he “know” what the best evidence refutes? Is science made irrelevant by its conflict with his intuition?

How can he make such a claim without offering a single bit of research or other evidence to mitigate the research I presented?

He is the CEO of the hospital. He knows a lot of doctors. He can email doctors any time there is a need. Mine is not your only complaint; your switchboard operator fields many. Doctors and nurses roll their eyes in agreement when I ask if they are tired of masks yet. Can it be that if he can’t answer about the research himself, that there is no doctor on his staff who has read the research and can answer me? Indeed, is it possible that Broadlawns could establish such an intrusive, unpopular mandate, without himself, or you, or anyone you know, having reviewed the favorable research whose existence somewhere the mandate implies? But if you have sound answers to my concern that justify your policy, can it be that you would withhold it from the public when asked for it? Does “informed consent” not belong in this discussion?

Science responds to challenges with reason and evidence, not censorship

“Science”, American society was told until two years ago, consists of perpetually challenging its own conclusions, not to mention challenges from others. Endless testing. Not dismissing reasonable criticism but through testing, either validating it or refuting it.

Now “science” has come to mean censoring critics no matter how impressive their expertise or how pathetic your own, deplatforming them, censoring them, taking their medical license. No more testing of your own assumptions. Someone dares disagree? Protect the public from such brazen “misinformation”.

What now is called “science” was called, only two years ago, “cover up”.

I should be able to walk up to any information desk in any hospital, ask “can you show me the evidence that these masks which you require reduces covid infection, in the face of the Bangladesh and Denmark RCT’s which find they don’t?” and the receptionist should be able to hand me a stack of research as she says “Sure!”

Not, “we follow the CDC, the Mayo Clinic, and Biden’s Executive Order 13991” (I got that response from the VA hospital) without even a link to where they seriously address those studies, in response to my exhaustive documentation of the anti-science of masks.

Don’t doctors summarize research for patients to help them understand treatment options? Why no “informed consent” about an intervention not just offered but imposed on every patient?

I don’t find it on your hospital website. I haven’t found it from any doctor I have talked with, though it should be available from every doctor, since every doctor enforces it. No doctor I have asked has even heard of either the Denmark or Bangladesh studies, which are the only two RCT’s measuring real covid infection in real people. I am astonished at the ignorance of these studies by every doctor I have talked to, and alarmed at the lack of curiosity about them when I cite them. Can I be the only patient asking about them, that doctors should remain so unprepared to this day, nearly three years after Broadlawns’ mandate began?

Testing assumptions: Jesus’ Example

Jesus set an example for us of testing our own conclusions at the age of 12, when he interacted with the world’s experts on the subjects that most concerned him – experts who, if any human could, were able to refute any error in His reasoning, and who were highly motivated to do so if they could. They were “astonished at his understanding and answers”, Luke 2:47 tells us. Real science follows that example.

I have followed that example by presenting my understanding of the relevant research to hospital authorities which has led to responses from two compliance officers and two consecutive CEO’s at Veterans Hospital, as well as Broadlawns’ CEO and one Trustee. Surely all these were highly motivated to refute any error in my grasp of mask research if they could. None found any error in my grasp of mask research, which is strong evidence that they couldn’t. Which in turn is strong evidence that the research, as I say, proves that masks are completely useless against covid, while dangerously exacerbating many serious medical conditions through their lowering of oxygen levels and their buildup of bacteria breathed by wearers. Another harm I have not mentioned elsewhere is environmental: the daily disposal of billions of masks around the world significantly raises worldwide microplastic pollution.

Ignoring reality is what drunks do. It doesn’t make reality go away

What distinguishes modern medicine from the cocaine-laced “snake oil” sold by the bottle in “medicine shows” a century ago? Isn’t it attention to research? To the extent hospitals ignore research, and not on some obscure intervention [treatment] but an intervention imposed on everybody, what is happening to modern medicine? How many other interventions have no rational basis, even before you consider alarming side effects?

If there is no accountability for malpractice that threatens everybody, how can the public trust that there is accountability for malpractice that affects only a few? What will be left of modern medicine for our grandchildren?

You could be world leaders

Indeed, how can there be no information source, in the whole world apparently, at least that I have found, where experts can interact with each other, in public view, in language understandable to lawmakers and voters, without fear of censorship? Your hospital could establish such a website and make it the basis of your distancing, masking, and vaccination policies. You would be the first. People all over the world would come to you. The CDC website should be that source, but it has abdicated that role. The CDC is great about making up one-size-fits-all rules for everybody, but really bad about addressing and reporting on all sides of contested issues. Below I quote the little tiny bit that the CDC says about the Denmark and Bangladesh RCT’s.

Yet Broadlawns’ CEO doesn’t know? And doesn’t want to know? Nor do Broadlawns’ doctors? A common response is fatalism: “we can’t do anything about it anyway. What’s the use of knowing?”

Wrong. Knowledge enables humans to do almost anything. Ecclesiastes 9: 16 “Then said I, Wisdom is better than strength: nevertheless the poor man’s wisdom is despised, and his words are not heard. 17 The words of wise men are heard in quiet more than the cry of him that ruleth among fools. 18 Wisdom is better than weapons of war: but one sinner destroyeth much good.”

Hebrews 10:24 describes as a Christian goal to “provoke unto love and good works.” Proverbs 9:8 says rebuke a fool and he will hate you for it, but rebuke a wise man and he will love you for it. [I presume Solomon’s scenario assumes a reasonable, respectful rebuke.]

I pray you are wise, and that something I have written will provoke you to (1) familiarize yourself with the research relating to Broadlawns’ obsessive mask wearing requirement, (2) make that information available to anyone who asks, (3) Unless you can produce research more decisive than your CEO’s intuition that masks actually do more good than harm, end your mandate, and (4) if there are legal obstacles to ending your mandate, explain what they are, and publicly state the medical support for removing them.

Highlights from the Research

I will appreciate any evidence you can provide that Broadlawns’ mask mandate protects patients from covid at a rate significantly greater than the tenth of one percent Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR) found by mask research in Denmark www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M20-6817 and Bangladesh. www.poverty-action.org/sites/default/files/publications/Mask_Second_Stage_Paper_20211108.pdf.pdf and so reported in the meta-analysis by the Cato Institute. www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-paper-64.pdf (Actually the risk reduction experienced in Bangladesh was only 0.08%.) My 68 pages of mask research reviews reports on several more studies. See http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence

I will also appreciate your thoughts on the finding of both studies that even that 0.1% benefit might be due to chance; an actual covid reduction of zero can’t be ruled out. The Denmark researchers honestly admit this in plain English in their abstract, even adding that the “Confidence Interval” crosses into negative territory, indicating the actual effect of masks may include causing MORE covid.

The Bangladesh researchers admit a possible actual effect of zero in their abstract too, but only in their statistics math which few voters and lawmakers understand. The CDC reported the damning statistic, but only in a table at the bottom of the page just above the footnotes, far below its glowing claim in English, which voters and lawmakers can read, that masks reduce covid 9%! Not 0.08%, but 9%! CDC Here’s how they “admitted”, in their statistics math, that the risk reduction they experienced was only 0.08%, rounded up to 0.09%:

“(adjusted prevalence ratio 0.91, 95% CI 0.82-1.00)”

(When the 95% Confidence Interval includes 1.00, the reduction is classified as “statistically insignificant”.)

Translation: in the Bangladesh trial, mask wearers had a sick rate 91% that of non-wearers. But maybe the difference wasn’t because of masks; maybe it was just due to chance. Probability calculations tell us that we can be 95% Confident that the Interval within which the true effect of masks lies is somewhere between a sick rate 82% of that of those without masks, and 100%.

The Bangladesh abstract claimed, in plain English, a 9% covid reduction for mask wearers, and at another time a 10% reduction. A table towards the end of the study projected that if 100% of the people wore masks covid would be reduced 26.41%. The 9% claim was featured by the CDC at CDC.gov. But it is obvious from the sick rate of the “controls” not wearing masks – 0.76% – that there is no room below 0.76% (the rate of risk) for the risk rate to drop even 1%, much less 26.41%, 10%, or 9%. The sick rate of those wearing masks was 0.68%, which is indeed 9% lower than 0.76%, but that is an actual risk reduction of only 0.08%. Obviously, the 9% reduction was only in the relative sick rate'Italic text, not in the actual Risk Reduction.

In other words masks, during that study, were associated with an actual reduction of the sick rate of less than a tenth of one percent, from an already low 0.76% of study participants to 0.68%, an actual risk reduction of only 0.08%. Mask wearers experienced such a microscopic reduction of covid in both Denmark and Bangladesh that chance could fully account that reduction, leaving us unable to prove that masks were responsible for any reduction at all. For all the studies show, masks might slightly increase covid.

How Denmark and Bangladesh did their research

The Denmark study, November 2020, compared nearly 6,000 masked with nearly 6,000 unmasked.

After two months the difference in cases between the two groups was only 4, [out of nearly 6,000 - less than a tenth of 1%] which the authors said was not “statistically significant”. [Meaning that besides being a negligible difference, it was within the "margin of error", so that the existence of any benefit at all is uncertain.] ACP Journals.org.

The Bangladesh study, November 8, 2021, involved a third of a million people in several villages. It found that only one percent fewer mask wearers got sick compared with the maskless, when patients submitted their own reports, but that advantage dropped to a tenth of one percent when patient reports were double checked with PCR tests. ACP Journals.org.

Not discussed in either study was that the unreliability of the tests exceeds the difference between sick rates, before we can even start talking about probability. 281 tests have been given emergency authorization; not one has FDA approval. That means manufacturers face no liability when their tests don’t work. [['http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence#What.3F.3F.3F

The German study, April 20, 2021, documents the multitude of diseases triggered by mask wearing. (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8072811/) It reviewed 42 studies of specific medical harms, from mild to fatal, from mask wearing. (See my summary of the study.  http://savetheworld.saltshaker.us/wiki/Application_for_Secular/Religious_Exemption_from_Mask/Vaccine_Mandate_-_Section_Two,_The_Evidence#Masks_Harm_More_than_they_Help) The buildup of carbon dioxide and lowering of oxygen saturation, which is universally accepted as contributing to them, is suffered by everybody. Everybody. You included.

If you are persuaded by other studies with more positive results, I will appreciate your thoughts on why you find them more credible than the only two RCT’s that measure actual covid infection in people. Please also comment on the meta-analysis of the Cato Institute, www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/2021-11/working-paper-64.pdf, that concludes,

“...evidence of facemask efficacy is based primarily on observational studies that are subject to confounding [To cause to become confused or perplexed; To fail to distinguish; mix up] and on mechanistic studies [mechanical measurements by various contraptions] that rely on surrogate endpoints [substitute things measured, other than actual infection rates with or without masks] (such as droplet dispersion) as proxies [substitutes] for disease transmission.

“The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials [including trials addressing covid predecessors before 2020] comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations.

“Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle. [We have no evidence they help, but lets wear them because they might.] Although weak evidence should not preclude precautionary actions in the face of unprecedented events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, ethical principles require that the strength of the evidence and best estimates of amount of benefit be truthfully communicated to the public.”

If you can’t or won’t refute this evidence, please share any other reasons I should not be concerned about research documenting serious harms from mask wearing, not only for patients but for doctors and other staff. See NCBI.NLM.NIH.gov

Elevated CO2 levels are poison. Obviously no mild poison hurts everyone, but those not hurt should not declare it harmless.

Again, my reviews of the “masks harm” research is posted at www.SaveTheWorld.Saltshaker.US/wiki/Forum, then select Application for Secular/Religious Exemption from Mask/Vaccine Mandate - Section Two, The_Evidence.

Dave Leach

Broadlawns’ Response: (not to just me)

Their mask mandate ended the same day! Monday, October 24, 2022!

Now wearing masks is optional! I went to Broadlawns only the week before with my wife. The mask dispenser was empty on the main floor but as I followed my wife, a doctor brought me a mask to put on.

But my friend Don Burgmaier said he went to Broadlawns Monday, the 24th, and the lady with masks at the front door was still offering masks but said they are now optional! He told me that Friday evening at our weekly meetings, October 28. I called Broadlawns the 29th. The first person answering the phone thought they were lifted but transferred me to someone who confirmed that is true. I asked, “when was it lifted?” “Monday, I believe.”

One mountain down! The rest of the range to follow! Thank you, Jesus!

My emails to Broadlawn’s Board of Trustees candidates were sent out about noon, but later I confirmed that the mandate had ended earlier that morning.

So did I waste my time with that last email? Did my earlier contacts have any effect? Was God whispering "Sometimes, Dave, I answer your prayers despite your help"? Or "I have others on this besides just you"? Should I flatter myself that at least my emails will slow down any thoughts of renewing their mandate? Or shall I just be content to do God's will as well as I know how, without always knowing which seed I sow will come up?

Twelfth VA Contact: VA Hospital response October 19

Our letters “crossed”. I wrote my letter to Director Goodspeed, above, dated October 24, posted under “Eleventh VA Contact”, 5 days after Goodspeed had written to Senator Grassley who had tried to intercede on my behalf. On the same day as my letter of the 24th, Grassley’s office forwarded me Goodspeed’s letter, which I didn’t receive until a couple of days later.

Here is CEO Darwin Goodspeed’s letter to Grassley, (which Grassley forwarded to me), preceded by Grassley’s cover letter to me:

Cover Letter from U.S. Senator Grassley (Iowa, Republican)

Oct 24 2022 Grassley cover letter web.jpg


Goodspeed Oct 24 2022 A web.jpg


Goodspeed Oct 24 2022 B web.jpg

Thirteenth VA Contact: My November 14 response to John R. Groves, Compliance Officer

In between October 26 when I received Goodspeed’s letter, and November 14 when I finally responded to it, there was the November 8 election, for which I doorknocked about 200 homes. Plus other writing, our music store, and the final acceptance by our house insurance company of our claim for a new roof because of hail damage, a claim begun 8 months earlier. But the main reason I have been slow to respond is that I had run out of anything more to say. So I wrote a response, didn’t like it, a few days later worked on it more, didn’t like that either, etc.

I sent a copy of this letter to Director Goodspeed, and will soon mail copies to Senators Grassley and Ernst.

Here is the final draft:

November 14, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach Avenue
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711 <> music@saltshaker.us

John R. Groves, Integrity & Compliance Officer
VA Central Iowa Medical Center
3600 30th St
Des Moines IA 50310

Sir:

I learned from Director Goodspeed’s letter to Senators Grassley and Ernst, which the Senators forwarded to me, that you consider me satisfied with your offer of online appointments or with care from another doctor than one working for the VA.

Normally this is designed to accommodate a veteran’s preference for another doctor, but in my case my preference is for Dr. Bloomberg at your hospital. He supervised my eye surgery, he remembers my case, with the inflammation that required eyedrops two additional months, and medical best practices would have him be the one to do the final checkup which is scheduled for soon. I don’t know where to begin to look for another doctor offering those advantages.

Meanwhile the glasses I got through his department have a stripped screw, so one lens falls out. I expect it would be a simple matter to bring it to your eyeglass repair department. Where else can I go? If the stripped threads are in the frames, your repair department has the same frames. Who else does, without requiring whole new glasses and lenses?

But what is most unsatisfying is how dismissive you are of medical science, a disinterest you share with Director Goodspeed. You actually told me over the phone, “you can find studies to prove anything you want.” What is this but an excuse to make up any myth you fancy, call it proven fact, and require patients to genuflect to it, because whatever you make up, you can “prove” it because you ‟want” it? As a Bible student I have heard many say the same thing about the Bible: “You can prove anything you want by the Bible.” It is a lie, both of the Bible, and of medical research. Sure, some issues are less certain than others, but where even critics agree, it is irresponsible to dismiss their consensus with “I don’t have time to read those studies” which would be such a waste of time since “you can prove anything you want” with medical science. (Those quotes are from your phone call to me.)

I hope few at VA hospital see so little value in research, because research/scientific testing is what distinguishes modern medicine from the snake oil medicine shows of a century ago.

What I expressed satisfaction with, in our phone call, was your pledge to ask doctors who is willing to interact with me about the evidence, especially about the RCT’s in Denmark and Bangladesh, the CATO overview which compares them with non-RCT’s and declares them the ‟best done studies”, and the German review of medical harm from masks. I even called your pledge “fantastic”.

But have you asked any doctors yet? You made that pledge October 3, 6 weeks ago. I am anxious to interact with someone who will talk to me about the evidence. I hope it will be someone who actually believes evidence has the power to establish facts.

Meanwhile if you really believe you can “prove” that a general mask mandate helps and does no harm, won’t you please “prove” it? I have told you about the only two mask RCT’s that deal with real covid cases in real people which found that if there is any benefit at all, it is too microscopic and close to zero and within the ‟95% confidence interval” to be sure whether its actual effect is slightly positive or slightly negative. Now won’t you show me the studies which “disprove” these two RCT’s? My friends wonder why I fuss so much over mask harm when vaccine harm is so much greater. You have several people on your staff who are as convinced as I am about the harm of both, who were ready to quit over vaccines when that mandate seemed around the corner but who wear masks without complaint, because they correctly see masks as much less dangerous.

My research began in earnest about masks, not covid vaccines, because no one was requiring me to take a vaccine. So my reading of vaccine research has been less thorough. But the disinterest in research that I encounter from you, Laurel Williamson, CEO Goodspeed, and Goodspeed’s predecessor (whose name I was never told but Williamson told me her ruling) concerns me more than the vaccines and masks themselves. I see medicine veering away from science. I am apoplectic that you dismiss any importance to even following the science the same way many dismiss the importance of reading the Bible. (‟You can find research that will support anything.”)

I wonder if our phone conversation has stirred in you any curiosity about RRR’s v. ARR’s. You told me October 3 that you had no idea what Absolute Risk Reduction or Relative Risk Reduction means. I tried to explain. (In my research review I propose calling them “Relative Sick Rate” v. “Actual Risk Reduction” to make the terms more clear.) You spoke about CDC authority so I tried to explain to you how the CDC bragged up the RRR in English – the microscopic number of covid cases among mask wearers was 9% lower than the microscopic number of covid cases among nomaskers – but admitted the ARR in its statistics in a chart at the bottom of the CDC report – because the risk itself is less than one percent, the actual risk reduction is less than a tenth of a percent.

Maybe the Denmark study was too “small” to tell us anything. It “only” involved 6,000 people. Maybe you know of a study favoring masks that is not so “small”. Maybe the Bangladesh study, which found the same result, was too “small”. It “only” involved a third of a million people. Maybe you know a better, larger study. Or maybe you can point out mistakes in the RCT’s. I am anxious to see your “proof”.

I’m not asking just for myself. I’m asking on behalf of your staff who are too afraid to ask too many questions.

Which reminds me of another thing you told me in our phone call: that no doctor on your staff is in danger of losing anything by raising these questions!

I suppose you will deny that many of the world’s top doctors have been “deplatformed” by “fact checkers” who didn’t have enough medical education to read one of their hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, for the crime of warning against vaccine side effects, lockdowns, and masks? You can’t believe the editor of a peer-reviewed journal was fired without the legally required reviews and explanations? That the inventors of mRNA and the PCR test lost their careers over warning about their misuse?

Last night I read a study of censorship. It reads like a peer-reviewed study, with a multitude of citations to other published studies, but I don’t think it is published in such a journal, and I don’t expect it will be because the censorship it reports includes the censorship by journals of the world’s top doctors with hundreds of published studies under their belts until two years ago. The study is based on interviews with the world’s top doctors who have turned into the world’s top censorship targets. It describes the censorship they experienced, the futility of censorship, the public distrust of the censors which is generated, the steps those doctors took to bypass their censors, and the resulting support for new channels of communication and new systems of delivering medical care.

These were not “fringe doctors...these are mainstream scientists, many of them leading experts working in prestigious universities and/or hospitals, some of whom have authored books and published dozens or even hundreds of papers and whose studies have been widely cited. Some of them are editors of scientific/medical journals and some are heads of medical wards or clinics….and some had won significant awards….e-mails released from legal proceedings have documented the ways in which government officials directly coordinated with tech companies like Twitter and Facebook to censor doctors, scientists and journalists...In December 2021, an e-mail...released via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request...revealed a behind-the-scenes effort by...then head of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), to his colleague, Anthony Fauci, head of NIAID, to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration and disparage its authors. ...censorship and manipulation of information are inconsistent with the essence of science, since scientific inquiry requires discourse and vigorous debate….such diversion from ‛normal’ scientific praxis….is especially concerning when the voices silenced are those of a mounting number of leading and renowned scientists and doctors. The drive to censor and dismiss dissenting opinions by labeling them as ‛misinformation’...(and) out of bounds and discrediting them as essentially unscientific (creates)...a false consensus by censoring information and preventing scientific debates...lead(s) scientists, and thus also policymakers, to sink into the ruling paradigm, causing them to ignore other, more effective options to cope with the crisis or perhaps even prevent it. Such a ‛consensus’ leads to a narrow worldview, which impairs the public’s ability to make informed decisions and erodes public trust in medical science.” ‟Tactics of censorship and suppression described by our respondents include exclusion, derogatory labeling, hostile comments and threatening statements by the media, both mainstream and social; dismissal by the respondents’ employers; official inquiries; revocation of medical licenses; lawsuits; and retraction of scientific papers after publication” by processes so irregular, so contrary to academic rules, and so illegal that several of them are preparing lawsuits.

And you say your doctors have nothing to fear from frank discussion of covid interventions?

Why have neither two compliance officers, nor two VA CEO’s and one at Broadlawns, simply responded to my concerns about the two RCT’s I cite? What legitimate reason can explain it? Especially since EO #13991 which you cite requires you to ‟address...obstacles” to mask wearing, which must surely include medical research showing masks offer zero benefit but only harm? If you know evidence that supports your policy, is there a reason you shouldn’t share it with the public when you are asked? CEO Goodspeed’s response to Senator Grassley is about who holds the authority to require masks. That was also the substance of your response to me. Senator Grassley’s concern, I pray, is about the evidence that justifies your exercise of that authority. Doesn’t any mandate presume an evidence-based benefit for citizens? Isn’t any exercise of authority illegitimate, that is demonstrably harmful to citizens? Surely Senator Grassley’s interest is the best interests of citizens, and in this case veterans, so doubt whether your mask mandate benefits anyone, I pray, will make him want to take whatever action he can to end any policy that harms veterans. Director Goodspeed’s October 19 letter, “636A6”, says “VA remains committed to honoring our Nation’s Veterans by ensuring a safe environment to deliver exceptional health care”. Obviously the accuracy of that statement hinges on my being wrong about the evidence. Everyone wants to believe your statement is true. It will be much easier to believe for me, Senator Grassley, and the public if you will produce evidence in its support instead of a mere unsupported assurance.

Senators Grassley and Ernst can certainly ask any agency to adjust its policies and procedures as necessary to comply with law. EO 13991 is the ONLY authority mentioned to me by CEO Goodspeed for VA's mask mandate. The EO provides for "exemptions" as required by "applicable law". Doesn't that include the First Amendment which we call "the law of the land"? Doesn't that include laws about fraud, informed consent, and interventions that cause harm?

A charge of ‟Fraud” always requires an investigation of the facts, a comparison of facts with the representation, and then evidence that those so representing knew the facts. The facts of mask research which must be investigated intimidate most voters and some lawmakers, being in the area of medicine. But I know that this investigation is not complicated at all compared with matters which Senator Grassley routinely takes on.

The First Amendment prohibition of ‟establishment” of religion applies to my application for a religious exemption. But laws about fraud, informed consent, and harmful treatments are matters over which the Senators have the authority to demand correction, even if I didn’t exist. Even if Christians didn’t exist. They shouldn’t wait for a citizen complaint to correct those evils. As for CEO Goodspeed’s assumption that ‟External Complaints” is an avenue of correction, this is from the letter I sent to him Sept 24:

“ ‘You invite me to appeal to External Complaints Program. I did, August 12. No answer yet, [now it has been three months] which I expected, since [www.va.gov/ORMDI/docs/ExternalComplain] lists kinds of discrimination that office addresses, and religious discrimination isn’t on the list. Did you already know that?’

I made the same point with you in our October 3 phone call. You did not question my answer: you did not say ‟Oh no, Dave, they will surely address your issue. Just because their website doesn’t say they will, doesn't mean they won’t. You will hear back from them any day now.”


Had you heard that Broadlawns lifted its mask mandate October 24? I had previously challenged their CEO, Chief Medical Officer, and Trustees on their Board of Trustees. Their secretary, Allison Oscar, told me November 1 that it was because the CDC had scaled back its recommendations. She said Broadlawns was one of the last hospitals in Des Moines to lift its mandate. (I would feel safer for the future had she told me they dropped it because evidence demands it. The evidence-sidestepping CDC might change its mind again, unbound as it is to honestly report or to follow evidence.)

As I mentioned in previous correspondence, I have been unable to find anywhere on the CDC website that lays out its mandates for hospitals. A VA nurse recently told me she can’t find it either. She asked her nurse supervisor where it was, and she couldn’t find it either!

Since my previous letters have asked where it is, and my question went unanswered, I have a new theory: that there is no such thing as a CDC requirement for hospitals. All there is, is pages of simplistic logic-defying recommendations, and/or slanted summaries of evidence, which are not requirements, as in binding on hospitals, but hospital administrators upgrade CDC suggestions into mandates.

Am I right? If you can find actual requirements binding on hospitals, please tell me where. This doesn’t seem an appropriate fact to be kept secret from the public, or from your staff. A doctor in my family told me he found something, but it was buried in the CDC website and hard for him to find. Which makes me wonder if what he found, that he assumes is binding on hospitals, is the same thing that other doctors and hospital administrators take for CDC mandates. Especially since Broadlawns is now of the opinion that CDC no longer requires masks, yet you do, and you say you do because the CDC requires you to. If you would forward me a link to what you take for CDC requirements for hospitals, it would be very interesting to forward it to my brother to learn if what he found is the same page.

Meanwhile for as long as the VA hospital follows policies whose basis in science its ‟compliance officers” and CEO’s are unwilling or unable to defend, my confidence in the quality of care that I used to have is under attack, and my Bible tells me to not participate in fraud, (whose existence you are unwilling to dispel), yet I don’t know where to find the care you say you will enable elsewhere. My life and health, I know, are in God’s hands, so it is in obedience to Him, not in fanatic religious-level adherence to icons as unable to help as the carved tree stumps worshiped by our ancestors, that I rely for all the health and length of life I need to do His Will.

In Jesus’ Name (Col 3:17) Dave Leach

Fourteenth VA Contact: response to Senator Ernst

Director Goodspeed sent a copy of his letter to Senator Grassley, to Senator Ernst. Senator Ernst forwarded me a digital copy of the copy. Here is her cover letter:

11-4-2022 Dear Mr. Leach,

Thank you for contacting me to request assistance regarding the mask mandate with the VA Central Iowa Health Care System (VA-CIHCS) in Des Moines. Upon receiving your correspondence, I initiated an inquiry on your behalf with the Des Moines VA-CIHCS and requested they review your concerns with the mask requirement at the VA-CIHCS. Enclosed is the response I received.

I am pleased to see the VA-CIHCS Integrity & Compliance Officer reached out to you to discuss the mask requirements at the VA-CIHCS in Des Moines. Currently, all orders pertaining to the mask mandate throughout the VAMC facilities were handed down by the U. S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs. Therefore, if you desire a referral through Care in the Community (CITC), or virtual care as an option, the VA-CHICS will consider your request. Further details regarding your response are enclosed in the correspondence. If you have any questions or concerns about the response from the VA-CIHCS, please don't hesitate to give my office a call.

Thank you again for contacting me. It has been an honor and a privilege to assist a fellow veteran. Should any new developments arise in your case, please do not hesitate to contact Marvin Dixon in my Des Moines office at 733 Federal Building, 210 Walnut Street, Des Moines, IA 50309 or by phone at (515) 284-4574. Marvin may also be reached by email at Marvin_Dixon@ernst.senate.gov.

Sincerely,

Joni K. Ernst United States Senator

I won’t repost the copy of Goodspeed’s letter here because it is identical to the letter to Grassley posted above except that it is addressed to Senator Ernst. 

My response to Senators

I “snailed” the following letter to Senators Grassley and Ernst. They were identical except for the address and references to their gender.

November 21, 2022
Dave Leach
137 E Leach Avenue
Des Moines IA 50315
515-244-3711 <> music@saltshaker.us

Carol Olson, State Director
Office of Iowa Senator Charles Grassley
721 Federal Building, 210 Walnut St
Des Moines IA 50309

Dear Carol Olson,

Thank you for forwarding VA Director Goodspeed’s October 19 response to me. I read there that I was “appreciative” and “satisfied”. I read there also that a mere VA hospital CEO has no authority to comply with “applicable law”; only the “U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs” has that kind of power. I read that I received the contact information for said Secretary: no I didn’t, but I would sure like to have it.

Enclosed is my November 14 response to “compliance officer” [does that mean “policeman”?] John Groves with yet another attempt to explain my still-unaddressed concerns about the hospital’s separation of medicine from science, which are not “satisfied” by paying me to go find another hospital so I can stop asking them annoying questions.

Surely this separation of medicine from science is not a private concern of only myself, that Senator Grassley does not share. Surely Senator Grassley wants to end any policy supported only by censorship, superstition, and Nazi-era “we were just following orders”. Especially since uncensored science shows masks don’t reduce covid, but only oxygen. Surely he shares my concern independently of my Application for a Religious Exemption, independently of my own existence, and independently of the existence of religions.

Topics below:
Why won’t a hospital full of medical doctors answer a simple medical question?
EO #13991 doesn’t stop hospital CEO’s from obeying “applicable law”.
Goodspeed won’t even answer a U.S. Senator?
The EO adds to the obligation of Goodspeed to give a U.S. Senator a straight answer.
Goodspeed should address obstacles to mask wearing.
Why such fuss over mere masks? Aren’t there more deadly threats?
Why hasn’t Mr. Groves found a doctor to answer me, as he promised October 3?
CONCLUSION: Senator Grassley, please make my medical question YOUR question of Goodspeed and the national VA Secretary.
I didn’t plan to appeal to Senators Grassley and Ernst at the same time. Explanation.
APPENDIX

Why won’t a hospital full of medical doctors answer a simple medical question?

Surely if you ask Senator Grassley “Should we follow up with CEO Goodspeed and ask him...”,

We wonder why you didn’t simply respond to Dave’s central question about the efficacy of masks, upon which he admitted his entire application rested? As he wrote to you September 10: “Because my Application rests on both medical research and Scripture, all you have to do is show me I am wrong about the medical research and my Application will no longer be needed.”
Wasn’t the medical question simple enough for an organization of hundreds of medical doctors? As Leach wrote to you, “Producing this information for me should not occasion any more work for anybody in the VA beyond reading my letter and responding with a link. Because it is inconceivable that a national mask mandate could go into effect in America without first assembling the evidence that it serves the best interests of Americans, and without making that information readily available to all Americans who want to know.”
You answer from law like your predecessor, who turned to VA’s “regional counsel” rather than to VA’s doctors. (Laurel Williamson letter, 23 December 2021.) Why was a simple medical question addressed to an organization of hundreds of medical doctors answered instead by lawyers arguing why you should not have to answer?
Usually when people give a complicated reason why they should not have to answer a simple question, it is because the answer is embarrassing, if not incriminating. Should I therefore conclude from your avoidance of Leach’s simple medical question that Leach’s quotes from the research are correct? Which means that millions of veterans are being subjected to a medical intervention in the name of reducing covid which cannot be proved to reduce covid even a little, but which is proved to reduce oxygen enough to contribute to many serious conditions?

surely if you ask him about putting this question to CEO Goodspeed, he will answer you, “Do pigs have curly tails?”

I’ll wager he agrees that any doctor’s consultation with any patient normally includes discussion of the evidence for and against the patient’s options, so therefore the evidence for and against a mandate for every patient of every doctor must that much more be available to every patient. As I pointed out in my September 10 letter to Goodspeed:

I should be able to walk up to any information desk in any hospital, ask “can you show me the evidence that these masks which you require reduce covid infection, in the face of the Bangladesh and Denmark RCT’s which find they don’t?” and the receptionist should be able to hand me a stack of research as she says “Sure!”

Senator Grassley may even approve forwarding additional quotes from my letters to Goodspeed [see APPENDIX] showing my eager readiness to drop my concerns as warranted by evidence. Because the degree to which I am responsive to evidence is the degree to which his gaslighting any discussion of evidence becomes important evidence itself. It recalls the argument that established Freedom of the Press in the 1735 trial of John Peter Zenger: “The suppression of evidence ought always to be taken for the strongest evidence.”

Wikipedias definition of “gaslighting”: “manipulating someone so as to make them question their own reality.” “Gaslight” is a good word for Goodspeed’s statement about the irrelevance “of the research which Mr. Leach presents”. He said “no one locally can undermine the orders handed down” so it matters not what research shows. Millions of veterans subjected to a medical intervention which reduces nothing but oxygen, making people sicker? No hospital should have to think about that. That’s for important people to talk about, not patients. Not U.S. Senators. Our job is to follow orders.

Notice that Goodspeed does not challenge “the research which Mr. Leach presents” itself, but only its relevance to his covid interventions. He didn’t call that research my “opinion”. Had he, he would have been incorrect, because I did not challenge CEO Goodspeed with my opinion, but with quotes from research.

And yet he warns that any affirmation of those quotes by his doctors will be dismissed as “their opinion”. “Opinion” is a word we use for a statement not established as fact. We don’t dismiss as “opinion” “the earth is round” or “the Bible says to love your enemies” because those facts are beyond dispute. We can dispute what research concludes. But anyone who can read can follow a link attached to a quote and verify whether the quote is found in the research, which then settles the matter. Either the quote is in fact in the research or it is not. It is not “a matter of opinion”. Any doctor who steps forward to verify the quotes I present is not offering his “opinion”.

Nor is it irrelevant whether a hospital policy serves no good purpose while making patients sick. No one is obligated to follow orders which make people sick for no compelling reason, the world learned from the Nuremburg Trials.

Nor is there virtue to be found in nixing discussion of evidence that VA hospitals require measures that make patients sick. Any patient has a right to that discussion. Any U.S. Senator has a right to that discussion.

Yet Goodspeed says there is no point in that discussion, orders must be blindly followed, and nothing can be said about research which escapes the category of “opinion”. That is a manipulation of language and logic. That meets the definition of “gaslighting”. Goodspeed is trying to gaslight a U.S. Senator.

Goodspeed concludes, “We are hopeful you will see from this follow-up that VA Central Iowa Health Care System is dedicated to improving the lives of Veterans and their families every day.” Uh, as long as we can dodge incriminating answers to medical questions raised by concerned patients.

EO #13991 doesn’t stop hospital CEO’s from obeying “applicable law”. Goodspeed reads the EO’s instruction to agency heads to “make...case-by-case exceptions [as] required by law” to say mere hospital CEO’s can’t do what is “required by law”! The EO says:

(d) Heads of agencies may make categorical or case-by-case exceptions in implementing subsection (a) of this section to the extent that doing so is necessary or required by law, and consistent with applicable law.

This does not say Goodspeed can’t do what is “required by law”. Yet Goodspeed says:

Mr. Leach was reminded that the requirement of masks to be worn in all VA buildings where health care is provided is at the order of the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs. In the context of the heads of agencies specified in Executive Order 13991, this refers to the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs being the respective head of the agency permitted to make case-by-case exceptions [as “required by law”, the EO adds] and not a local facility director. Thus, regardless of the opinion of anyone locally of the research Mr. Leach presents, no one locally can undermine the orders handed down by the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs.

It doesn’t “undermine the orders handed down” to obey them with common sense exceptions and adjustments “required by law, and consistent with applicable law.” That is the way we understand all orders are supposed to be obeyed, in America, where we strive for a “rule of law”, not rule by orders exempt from laws enacted by the representatives of voters.

What “applicable law” besides the EO itself should guide CEO Goodspeed? In my September 24 letter to Goodspeed I mentioned “the First Amendment ‘establishment of religion’ clause, along with abundant relevant case law. We call that ‘the law of the land’”. When Compliance Officer John R. Groves called me October 3 (Goodspeed’s October 19 letter says the call was made October 4), I mentioned the First Amendment prohibition of establishing a religion, laws about fraud, laws about informed consent, and laws providing for lawsuits for medical interventions that cause harm.

Does Goodspeed imply that he is under orders to not process applications for religious exemptions? Or to not address “obstacles” to mask wearing? I would like to see those orders. I don’t know how to find them – maybe a Freedom of Information request, which I have heard about but never done. In my September 24 I asked Goodspeed, “If you are under orders in the VA hierarchy which violate these commands of the EO, it would be helpful to me to know their source so I can better focus my concerns.”

Goodspeed won’t even answer a U.S. Senator? “Thus, regardless of the opinion of anyone locally of the research Mr. Leach presents, no one locally can undermine the orders handed down by the U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs.” That is his reason to avoid my medical question. And because you have interceded for me, that is his reason to you, to avoid your medical question. (You have not shown me what you said to him on my behalf, but I assume you asked him to respond to my concerns, and that is my question upon which my entire Application rests.)

Though he is in charge of hundreds of medical doctors who could easily answer our medical question, he sees no point in it, because whatever the answer he must obey his agency head. He sees no need to even talk about it with a U.S. Senator whose duties include confirming (and when necessary, impeaching) agency heads!

The EO adds to the obligation of Goodspeed to give a U.S. Senator a straight answer. (1) a U.S. Senator qualifies as an “interested party” if a patient doesn’t. (2) “interested parties” are given authority to “consult” with “heads of agencies”; how much more U.S. Senators are given a right to question agency head underlings. (3) staffs of U.S. Senators help tens of thousands of constituents, which involves questioning authorities all up and down every federal chain of command, as you have interceded for me. (4) Senators need, and therefore have, fact-finding authority so they can hold agencies accountable through laws, review of agency rules, confirmation of agency heads, and those rare impeachments.

The EO reads:

EO 13991: Sec. 2....(c) Heads of agencies shall promptly consult, as appropriate, with State, local, Tribal, and territorial government officials, Federal employees, Federal employee unions, Federal contractors, and any other interested parties concerning the implementation of this section.

CEO Goodspeed should have answered our medical question.

Goodspeed should address obstacles to mask wearing. The EO says the HHS head should “engage” with “community leaders” (a U.S. Senator qualifies) “with the goal of maximizing public compliance with, and addressing any obstacles to, mask-wearing.” It doesn’t say HHS underlings must do that, but we normally presume that anyone under orders, whether in business, government, the military, school, or children in a family, is expected to communicate consistent with the mission of his superiors.

Sec. 3. Encouraging Masking Across America. (a) The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), including through the Director of CDC, shall engage, as appropriate, with State, local, Tribal, and territorial officials, as well as business, union, academic, and other community leaders, regarding mask-wearing and other public health measures, with the goal of maximizing public compliance with, and addressing any obstacles to, mask-wearing.

Besides that implication of the EO, discussion of the evidence for and against medical interventions is normally what doctors are supposed to offer for every patient, and is what doctors do provide.

I wrote to Goodspeed September 24:

In stating that “The facility policy requiring masks...is in accordance with Executive Order 13991...” you appear to have overlooked the fact, explained in my letter, that the EO requires you to “address any obstacles” to compliance with mask mandates. The consensus of the only two relevant RCT’s that the Actual Risk Reduction, if there is any at all, is about 0.1% (but the Prevalence Ratio includes 1.0, so zero benefit can be proved) is obviously an “obstacle” to mask mandate compliance.
Not to mention the evidence I reviewed that the oxygen reduction causes many serious conditions.
Neither you nor your predecessor have “addressed” that “obstacle”, though I don’t know how I could have more clearly explained the need.
/

Why such fuss over mere masks? Aren’t there more deadly threats? [that I should spend my energy solving?]

As I note in every letter and in my original Application, it is not only my own harm, annoyance, and infringement of freedom over which I appeal. It is not only to “satisfy” myself that I have exhausted so much time, research, writing, and prayer to this issue. It is the very separation of medicine and science, supported by censorship, fraud, and religious-grade zeal and judgmentalism, that my challenge to masks has allowed me to document. As this is confronted, greater harms than masks will fall.

As I wrote to Groves November 14:

My friends wonder why I fuss so much over mask harm when vaccine harm is so much greater. You have several people on your staff who are as convinced as I am about the harm of both, who were ready to quit over vaccines when that mandate seemed around the corner but who wear masks without complaint, because they correctly see masks as much less dangerous.
My research began in earnest about masks, not covid vaccines, because no one was requiring me to take a vaccine. So my reading of vaccine research has been less thorough. But the disinterest in research that I encounter from you, Laurel Williamson, CEO Goodspeed, and Goodspeed’s predecessor (whose name I was never told but Williamson told me her ruling) concerns me more than the vaccines and masks themselves. I see medicine veering away from science. I am apoplectic that you dismiss any importance to even following the science the same way many dismiss the importance of reading the Bible. (‟You can find research that will support anything”, you told me.)

Sure, the vaccines are more deadly. Masks are a small danger alongside. “Let’s take care of the big things first”, we say.

There is a principle in lawsuits that you can’t sue over harms to others which don’t affect yourself. You have to document a harm to yourself to have “standing”. This principle doesn’t just operate in lawsuits. Had I written to VA’s CEO about the covid vaccine that was almost imposed on VA staff, I would have been less likely to get an answer. It would have been “none of my business.”

But fortunately the record I have established about masks has the power to end vaccine mandates also, because it establishes the separation of medicine and science, with the suspicious refusal of medical doctors to answer medical questions.

Masks are a small harm; the separation of medicine and science are a profound harm. My only path to confronting this profound harm has been through confronting a small harm.

Yet though small, it is not unimportant. It’s like steps towards government tracking of citizens. The little steps lead to big steps. First the Real ID, then Facial Recognition, then E-Verify, the combining of state DOT databases with county birth and death certificates, etc etc until one day our government might be able to track its citizens.

When a small leak in a water pipe is ignored until the basement is full, we need to get a huge pump, but as we do we need also to stop the leak as opportunity allows or the basement will never be dry. We must never concede the “small” evils. We must not tell the devil, OK, you can have this little one. We’ll just focus on this other big one. The fraud and the separation of medicine and science obvious in the case of masks, must not be left out of our efforts to Make Medicine Safe Again.

Why hasn’t Mr. Groves found a doctor to answer me, as he promised October 3? From my November 14 letter to John R. Groves, “Compliance Officer”:

What I expressed satisfaction with, in our [October 3] phone call, was your pledge to ask doctors who is willing to interact with me about the evidence, especially about the RCT’s in Denmark and Bangladesh, the CATO overview which compares them with non-RCT’s and declares them the ‟best done studies”, and the German review of medical harm from masks. I even called your pledge “fantastic”.

But have you asked any doctors yet? You made that pledge October 3, 6 weeks ago. [Now it has been seven weeks.] I am anxious to interact with someone who will talk to me about the evidence. I hope it will be someone who actually believes evidence has the power to establish facts. [As opposed to your own view that “you can find studies to prove anything you want.”]

Meanwhile if you really believe you can “prove” that a general mask mandate helps and does no harm, won’t you please “prove” it? I have told you about the only two mask RCT’s that deal with real covid cases in real people which found that if there is any benefit at all, it is too microscopic and close to zero and within the ‟95% confidence interval” to be sure whether its actual effect is slightly positive or slightly negative. Now won’t you show me the studies which “disprove” these two RCT’s?

CONCLUSION: Senator Grassley, please make my medical question YOUR question of Goodspeed and the national VA Secretary.

One thing my appeals have accomplished so far is to establish the refusal of two compliance officers (Williamson, Groves), six Broadlawns Trustees, and three hospital CEO’s (two at the VA and one at Broadlawns) to discuss evidence with a patient of a medical intervention required for all patients.

Usually when people give a complicated reason why they should not have to answer a simple question which the questioner has every right to ask, it is because the answer is embarrassing, if not incriminating. At some point exertions made to dodge questions about evidence become evidence themselves.

I believe the record of question-dodging merits Senator Grassley making my medical question his medical question. I believe when he presses CEO Goodspeed more directly to give a straight answer to our medical question, his answer, or his refusal even then to answer, will further establish the separation of medicine from science that we feel, building tools to finally dismantle the fraud and heal modern medicine.

It is in that way that I believe the record I have established is not just a hammer blow against unscientific mask mandates, but against deadly covid vaccines, less deadly but still harmful childhood vaccine mandates, and the stranglehold that “big pharma” has on media and politics through advertising dollars and campaign contributions.

My request of Senator Grassley is to use this record to reestablish the principle in medicine that patients have the right to straight medical answers to medical questions, especially when interventions are mandated. Not gaslighting. Not name calling. Not censorship of annoying questions and their correct answers.

Please intercede for me with the national VA secretary, as CEO Goodspeed writes that I can. He writes “Mr. Leach was therefore directed to make any further complaints with the VA Central Office in Washington DC , and the contact information was provided him.” It was not, and I can’t imagine how to find contact information where my question is likely to be answered. I did not initially know how to reach the local hospital CEO; I didn’t even know the hospital had a CEO, also called a Director. I first contacted a “patient advocate”; it was she who passed my appeal on up.

The only contact information I was ever given was of an “external complaints” office. I wrote to them August 12. No answer, which should be expected since their website doesn’t list my issue as like anything they address.

I didn’t plan to appeal through both senators, Grassley and Ernst, at the same time. Explanation.

I want to explain that it was not my design, but God’s, I trust, to appeal to Senator Ernst and Senator Grassley simultaneously. I would have thought that too much like going to two dentists to fix the same tooth.

The reason it happened that way was that I first appealed to Senator Grassley through his web form December 30, 2021. There was no response. Then I attended an Iowans for Israel event August 9, 2022 where Senator Ernst spoke. I Spoke to her and John Hollindrake about my case, and their help began.

Then about the 3rd week of September there was an event at Vet’s Auditorium, Faith and Freedom I think, and something happened for the first time in my life: before the event, in an empty hall before the event, there was Senator Grassley with Carol Olson, his state director, and me and my wife, in no hurry, and with no one else waiting to talk to him, and hardly anyone else in sight! How could I pass that up? So I told him a little about my case, and that I had appealed on his web form months before to no avail. So after that Carol Olson began interceding for me.

Sorry, from me, for the confusion, but I trust God’s timing.

Please tell me what Senator Grassley has done to oppose mask mandates in federal facilities, and tell me if there is any lack of positive proof in his arsenal which my research may help supply.

~ ~ ~ ~

APPENDIX: quotes from my previous letters showing my openness to evidence,

...because the degree to which I am responsive to evidence is the degree to which gaslighting any discussion of evidence, by medical authorities for whom my medical question must be very simple, becomes important evidence itself.

My September 24 letter to CEO Goodspeed:

Your unwillingness to [answer my medical question] leaves unsupported your claim that “The health and safety of our patients, staff, and visitors is our top priority, and the policy of requiring masks is just one example of our commitment.”

If you can refute the evidence that masks offer zero provable benefit against covid and contribute to many serious conditions, you should do so with evidence superior to the only two relevant RCT’s. You should not leave the world to guess what justifies, in your mind, your mandate: superstition? Intuition? Some dark destructive religion? Why such zeal without any support in science or logic, or even in law which you violate while claiming to rule in “accordance” with it?

….If you have good solid answers to my concerns, articulating them to me will comply with Canon of Judicial Ethics #19. You sit as judge over my issue, and #19 reads,

  1. 19, Judicial Opinions. In disposing of oontroverted cases,a judge should indicate the reason for his action in an opinion showing that he has not disregarded or overlooked serious arguments of counsel. He thus shows his full understanding of the case, avoids the suspicion of arbitrary conclusion, promotes confidence in his intellectual integrity and may contribute useful precedent to the growth of the law.

September 24: If you have good solid answers to my concerns, articulating them to me will comply with Canon of Judicial Ethics #19. (I then quoted the Canon.)

September 10: My application for a religious exemption rests on the interaction between Scripture and current medical science. ….If I am wrong, you or someone you authorize should correct me, along with thousands of your patients, and some of your staff similarly deceived; ... Arbitrary rules: tools of tyrants. Of course, the power of tyrants rests on citizens’ willingness to obey their rules without arguments, without questions. Arbitrary rules that don’t make sense are valuable tools of tyrants to test the strength of that unthinking willingness. ….This should not be hard for you. Because my Application rests on both medical research and Scripture, all you have to do is show me I am wrong about the medical research and my Application will no longer be needed.

Producing this information for me should not occasion any more work for anybody in the VA beyond reading my letter and responding with a link. Because it is inconceivable that a national mask mandate could go into effect in America without first assembling the evidence that it serves the best interests of Americans, and without making that information readily available to all Americans who want to know.

Not, “we follow the CDC and the Mayo Clinic” without even a link to where they seriously address those studies, and only then in response to my exhaustive documentation of the anti-science of masks. (In my December 11 letter to Lori Clair – she called herself “Sinclair” in another place – I listed the search results from the CDC and Mayo Clinic websites. I found no serious account of either study. That letter is reproduced in the enclosed record. )

Don’t doctors summarize research for patients to help them understand treatment options? Why no “informed consent” about an intervention not just offered but imposed on every patient?

I don’t find it on your hospital website. I haven’t found it from any doctor I have talked with, though it should be available from every doctor, since every doctor enforces it. No doctor I have asked has even heard of either the Denmark or Bangladesh studies, which are the only two RCT’s measuring real covid infection in real people. [Update: I found one doctor familiar with them, and he agrees with me about what they prove.] I am astonished at the ignorance of these studies by every doctor I have talked to, and alarmed at the lack of curiosity about them when I cite them. Can I be the only patient asking about them, that doctors should remain so unprepared to this day, two years after your mandate began? ….

But if someone, anyone, in the VA hospital, or actually in any hospital, will show me evidence that refutes the evidence I present, or correct my understanding of the evidence, I will be happy. But so far none of the answers I have received from hospital administrators (I also got a response from the Broadlawns CEO) has even suggested that my review of the research is incorrect or unbalanced. For as long as the evidence that mask mandates are a great fraud seems overwhelming to me, and unrefuted, and unaddressed by the VA, I am losing interest in any appearance of endorsing the fraud.

Do not eat meat sacrificed to idols, Paul warns. The principle applies here. He explained that the meat per se is not the problem. It’s others seeing you endorsing the idols, and being led astray from God, thinking it must be OK.

….Please forward me the CDC analysis of the Denmark and Bangladesh studies which intelligently refutes the findings seen in them by me and by the Cato Institute.

Biden’s Executive Order. The rejection letter I got did not give the answer of doctors, explaining where I misunderstand the evidence, but of lawyers: “...After reviewing your request with both the Medical Center Director as well as the Regional Counsel, it was determined that the facility mask policy is in line with Executive Order 13991 and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Therefore the Facility Director will not grant your request.”

What? My request was “reviewed” even by the Medical Center Director, yet not even that level of expertise was able to challenge his review of peer-reviewed mask research? No attempt was even made? He or she did not think an email to staff asking for volunteers to respond to the Denmark and Bangladesh studies would turn up anyone who had heard of them? There was no review by doctors but only by lawyers? ….The order doesn’t prohibit doctors from supplying honest, research-based “informed consent”. Since the order cited no research or other evidence whatsoever in support of its mandate, the order does not prevent informed doctors and hospitals from taking political steps to reverse the mandate, including full disclosure to the public.

For example, the hospital could include somewhere on its website the evidence for and against masks, and any other issue that divides public opinion about medical issues. The website could allow doctors on both sides of the controversy to interact with each other, without fear of censorship, where “peer review” would not preemptively censor but would simply subject errors to scrutiny. I have urged the governor to establish such a website as the basis for her emergency mandates: Cure for Covid Censors.

In fact, Biden’s Executive Order explicitly orders institutions to use persuasion to overcome resistance to the mandate, so that if I am wrong, the hospital administration is required by the EO to show me the evidence that I am wrong.

Not just tell patients the president makes us all mask up and there is nothing they can do....In conclusion, I look forward to your presentation of solid evidence corroborating the public benefits of your mask mandate – some substantial benefit, not some “statistically insignificant” benefit at around the 0.1% range with Confidence Intervals straddling zero.

"A people which is able to say everything becomes able to do everything." ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” ~ Jesus Christ, John 8:32 

Veterans Administration the Last Federal Agency to lift Vaccine Mandates

Epoch Times, May 3, 2023

Major US Agency to Keep COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate Despite White House Announcement

By Zachary Stieber (The following verbiage is excerpted from the Epoch Times article)

The White House’s announcement that many mandates are ending “will not impact” the VA, McDonough said. “To ensure the safety of Veterans and our colleagues, VA health care personnel will still be required to be vaccinated at this time,” he told workers.

“As we transition to this new phase of our response to the pandemic, the vaccine (including booster shots) remains the best way to protect you, your families, your colleagues, and Veterans from COVID-19.”

A VA spokesperson declined to provide any data consulted when choosing to keep the mandate in place.

The VA’s website claims that vaccines “help protect you from getting severe illness” and “offer good protection against most COVID-19 variants,” pointing in part to observational data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that indicate the vaccines provide poor protection against symptomatic infection and transient shielding against hospitalization.

No clinical trial efficacy data has been made public for updated shots from Moderna and Pfizer, and none of the vaccines prevent infection or transmission.

The VA is the second-largest federal agency, employing nearly 400,000 people.

The VA was the first U.S. agency to mandate vaccination for its workers.

“We’re mandating vaccines for Title 38 employees because it’s the best way to keep veterans safe, especially as the Delta variant spreads across the country,” McDonough, an appointee of President Joe Biden, said in a statement on July 26, 2021.

The mandate was later expanded to most Veterans Health Administration employees and volunteers. It covers personnel such as psychologists, pharmacists, housekeepers, social workers, volunteers, and contractors.

The mandate does not cover employees deemed to be VA health care personnel.

Mandates imposed by two other agencies, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Indian Health Service, are also remaining in place while the agencies review the requirements, the Biden administration said.

Most of the administration’s mandates are ending on May 12, the White House said this week. That includes mandates for federal workers and contractors imposed by Biden that were struck down by courts as likely illegal, a mandate for foreign travelers arriving by air, and the requirement that some foreigners arriving by land present proof of vaccination.

Biden had ruled out such requirements before taking office but later claimed that not enough people were getting vaccinated. The mandates were imposed after evidence began emerging that indicated the protection bestowed by the vaccines waned over time, and officials have since cleared multiple booster shots in a bid to restore the flailing protection.




Next Step: Newspapers

Actually I have made little effort to publish this information so far. The submissions I have made are listed here.

Epoch Times submission

I submitted the following article to Epoch Times, on December 30, 2021:

"VA Hospital, asked for medical justification for mask policy, consults with lawyers"

If the Veterans Administration Hospital is able to assure its patients that its mask requirement slows covid, without causing a host of other medical harms, why won’t they?


Why did they consult with their lawyers instead of their doctors before answering?

I asked them October 29, “Why are masks still required to enter your hospital for everyone, all the time, this long after the best peer reviewed studies (Netherlands, Bangladesh) find no “statistically significant” benefit from them, while other studies (Germany, Cato Institute) document serious physical harm they cause? If your answer is that you know about studies in favor of obsessive masking that I have overlooked, can you refer me to them?”

This question was completely ignored, which strongly implies they indeed cannot justify their policy from any evidence. Their December 23, response: “...After reviewing your request with both the Medical Center Director as well as the Regional Counsel, it was determined that the facility mask policy is in line with Executive Order 13991 and is consistent with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines. Therefore the Facility Director will not grant your request.... Laurel S. Williamson, Central Iowa Health Care System Privacy Officer.”

I read Executive Order 13991, by Biden, January 20, 2021. It begins with an assertion (made without any support) that masks in fact slow covid. Never does it prohibit hospitals from discussing research with patients.

In fact it says hospitals should “address obstacles” to mask requirement enforcement. Isn’t it an obstacle to mask requirement enforcement, that the best research says masks accomplish little or nothing? Shouldn’t that be “addressed” by the hospital?

The EO also says hospitals should “incentivize” mask wearing. Wouldn’t it “incentivize” mask wearing, to tell patients about all the wonderful research proving masks help?

But if there is indeed no such research, is any hospital prohibited by Biden from so informing its patients?

Although these concerns apply in every federal facility, you would think in a hospital, there would be several doctors who know the research and can easily correct me if I am wrong or interact with the CDC if I am right. But then I had thought a hospital would treat a question about mask research as a medical question to be answered by consulting with doctors, not lawyers.

In order to give my request firmer legal standing, I framed it not only as a request to address research of concern, but as a request for a religious exemption from their mask requirement. Did you know Jesus refused to obey a health regulation on the ground it accomplished nothing? Mark 7:1-16.

“Doing truth”, John 3:21, and challenging lies, is a fundamental Christian calling. Bowing down to a false god is our #1 “thou shalt not”. A mandate not supported by evidence or science but by censorship, and with moral outrage over noncompliance as indignant as ancient responses to blasphemy, sounds a lot like the superstitious attribution of magical powers by our ignorant ancestors to bowing down to a carved tree.

My application for an exemption for myself: denied. My request for research cites in support of their policy: ignored.

Possible next steps: Appeal through U.S. Senator Charles Grassley, R-IA. Appeal through the VA’s External Complaints program. Appeal through a federal lawsuit

Resources: The 15 page Application for a religious exemption from all covid mandates that I submitted to the VA. It includes Biblical and legal arguments. Part One. My summaries of research. Part Two. (About 25,000 words so far; it is updated daily.)

A little more detail about the mask studies, from my application to the VA:

CATO. On November 8, the Cato Institute published its own review of mask studies, finding that “The available clinical evidence of facemask efficacy is of low quality and the best available clinical evidence [Netherlands, Bangladesh] has mostly failed to show efficacy, with fourteen of sixteen identified randomized controlled trials comparing face masks to no mask controls failing to find statistically significant benefit in the intent-to-treat populations. Of sixteen quantitative metaanalyses, [reviews of other studies] eight were equivocal or critical as to whether evidence supports a public recommendation of masks, and the remaining eight supported a public mask intervention on limited evidence primarily on the basis of the precautionary principle.” [Let’s mandate masks as a precaution, in case they turn out to be effective.]

The Denmark study, November 2020, compared nearly 6,000 masked with nearly 6,000 unmasked. After two months the difference in cases between the two groups was only 4, which the authors said was not “statistically significant”.

The Bangladesh study, November 8, 2021, found that only one percent fewer mask wearers got sick compared with the maskless, when patients submitted their own reports, but that advantage dropped to a tenth of one percent when patient reports were double checked with PCR tests.

The German study, April 20, 2021, documents the multitude of diseases triggered by mask wearing. It reviewed 42 studies of specific medical harms, from mild to fatal, from mask wearing. (See my summary of the study.) Most of those serious consequences have been paid too little attention to to put numbers on the likelihood of suffering them, but the buildup of carbon dioxide and lowering of oxygen saturation, which is universally accepted as contributing to them, is suffered by everybody.

Everybody.

You included.


Dave Leach bio

A guy in love with Jesus with way bigger Save The World goals than I have the vision or resources or time or intelligence or networks to tackle alone.

Dave Leach is actually listed in Marquis’ “Who’s Who in America”. (This is to balance the other stuff you’ve heard.) (Starting about 1994, through at least 2020)

FIVE: prolife briefs written to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the briefs in lower courts leading to SCOTUS. The last three were written for others.

SEVEN: times a statehouse candidate.

FIFTEEN: years of managing televised Biblical/political discussions (on The Uncle Ed. Show)

TWENTY FIVE: years of editing an interactive periodical (The Prayer & Action News)

FIFTY: years of marriage.

Writing for others: cafeconlecherepublicans.com, WND.com, ipatriot.com, The Des Moines Register.

Websites: www.Saltshaker.us, www.SaveTheWorld.saltshaker.us.

Marquis’ bio as of about 2006: LEACH, DAVE FRANCIS, editor, musician; b. Iowa City, Nov. 12, 1945; s. Joseph Stanley and Thelma Maxine (Strubhar) L.; m. Donna Susan Schoeppner, Dec. 17, 1970 (div. Feb. 1979); children: Arlo Bernard, Cynthia Robin; m. Dorothy Darlene Barnes, Dec. 13, 1986. B. Music Edn., Drake U., 1967. Band dir. Melcher (Iowa)/Dallas Schs., 1970; band instrument repairman Miller Music/Family Music Ctr., Des Moines, 1972-; editor, founder Prayer & Action News, Des Moines, 1989-; producer, host The Uncle Ed Show, 1995-; owner Family Music Ctr., 1999-. Trumpet player Des Moines Ncpl. Band, 1963-78; musician Kingsway, St. Ambrose and St. Augustine Cathedrals, and Simpson United Meth. Ch., 1980-92. Author, composer: (musical comedy) Werld Klas Ejukashun, 1991; author: The Gifts of Governments, 1990, God's Cure for Loneliness, 1999, The Angel Diary, 2005. Dem. candidate for state rep., Iowa, 1986, Rep. candidate 1988, 90, 2000, 02; pres., edtor Fathers for Equal Rights, Des Moines chpt. 1985-87; mem. Soc. of Mayflower Descendants, 2002-; Chaplain of society, 2005. Avocations: bible study, inventing, construction. Office: 4110 SW 9th St. Des Moines IA 50315-36434; Office Phone: 515-244-3711. Personal E-mail: leach@saltshaker.us.

Dave Leach has published "Prayer & Action News", whose motto is "And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him." Colossians 3:17, since April Fool's Day of 1989


No answer from Epoch Times. I submitted to The Federalist January 5. The Des Moines Register January 15. Cedar Rapids Gazette, the 23rd. Waterloo Courier, January 30.

No answer.




Lawyers

I requested help filing a federal lawsuit from makeamericansfreeagain.com on January 10. January 11, Martin Cannon. Liberty Counsel. One or two others. No response.

In the past I have brought a federal lawsuit in a federal court pro se (by myself, without a lawyer) and came out OK, but now you have to submit to the Real ID license to even enter a federal building to sue our overseers. For which I have as much affection as I do for masks.