Is MAHA a misdirection strategy?

When COVID patients started trickling into my office March 2020, I saw my role as primarily one of a bystander. Watching the news, I assumed all the chaos would land in the hospitals - I was a solo ENT with a very quiet practice, and though I was happy to help if I could, I never imagined I would become embroiled in the forefront of a war.

I didn’t stay on the sidelines for long. Because I’m an upper respiratory tract specialist - and one of the few that didn’t close my doors - I became a haven in my community for patients seeking outpatient treatment for COVID. I started with hydroxychloroquine, but after President Trump mentioned it as an option, the Texas State Board of Pharmacy prohibited doctors from prescribing it for COVID. I then used monoclonal antibodies with great success, but, in an effort to get the mRNA shot in every arm, the government took over and then shut down distribution. During the third and largest surge of the pandemic - when I no longer had access to monoclonal antibodies - I turned to ivermectin, and that’s when things got complicated.

My clinic was known in the area as the place to go to get treatment in order to stay out of the hospital, and I don’t recall a time in my career when I have ever worked so hard. I saw so much and that high volume of patients, all with the same disease, endowed me with perspectives other doctors weren’t privy to. I tried to tell my colleagues, but when they dismissed me, I turned to social media.

I was thrust into the war in the fall of 2021, during the third and largest surge of the pandemic. My Pearl Harbor attack occurred on November 12, 2021 when I received a text message from a reporter at the Houston Chronicle asking me to confirm if it was true Houston Methodist hospital had suspended my privileges “based on comments I made on social media.” The reporter clarified, “I am referring to your tweets in favor of ivermectin to treat covid and against vaccine mandates. And the emails you sent patients encouraging some to not get vaccinated.” I did a double-take and denied his assertion. “No! News to me! Please check your sources.”

It’s dangerous to get between coin flippers and their blood money, and I learned that the hard way. The reporter’s text was accurate, and when I checked my email, I saw the suspension letter. The suspension was impactful, but the subsequent blow was far worse. A friend texted me in a panic, “Have you seen what they posted about you on Twitter?”

Houston Methodist had tweeted a five-part thread to announce to the world my suspension, explaining I was spreading “dangerous misinformation…harmful to the community.” They also proclaimed I was vaccinated (which was not true.) The tweet went viral, and the medical mafia rejoiced. On X, the former head of MD Anderson celebrated, and people from as far away as Australia hurled insults such as “pond scum” and “sister of the devil” at me. Reporters from major news outlets like CBS and NBC asked me to comment on headline stories with me as the subject. I was horrified and traumatized. In the following weeks, I was kicked off a board, reported to the Texas Medical Board, and to this day, still feel self-conscious in my community.

After the online struggle session, my world changed, and though I received and still receive an outpouring of support, the hospital’s publicity stunt stole my privacy, instantly making me a public figure and not in a way I would have ever wanted. The only choice I saw was to accept and embrace this new status and respond accordingly. I held a press conference, sued the hospital, and have been fighting back ever since. I formed strong alliances with other doctors who were equally attacked for expressing their expert opinions and over the past three years - despite a five month ban on X - have garnered an army of over 470,000 followers who help me and other doctors fight the massive digital information war known as the pandemic.

The hospital’s attack awakened me to the realization I was engaged in a war, but unlike most wars, no bullets were fired; this war was digital, a massive information battle where the media was used as the primary weapon. The conflict originated in China with the assistance of our own government - a genius strategy that, unlike other conflicts, caused a deep and likely longstanding division within our republic. Fighting a known, external enemy typically unites, but in this case, our citizens were splintered without even knowing we had been attacked.

The odds have always been against those of us who figured out early this was more than a disease, but despite little-to-no funding, our small but mighty army has managed to move the needle and get the truth out. Trust in our public health system is at an all-time low and only a small percentage of people continue to get COVID shots. Nonetheless, most of us feel this is not quite enough. Winning means pulling the bioweapons off the market, dismantling our public health system, and holding the perpetrators accountable.

We have accumulated an enormous amount of data to support our claims - data the majority of the public is aware of - but the biggest hurdle has been convincing anyone with authority to acknowledge and act upon it. That changed on April 19, 2023 when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced his run for presidency. Our hope was bolstered further when he brought Nicole Shanahan on as his running mate. Both have been outspoken critics of how our government handled the pandemic, and Nicole Shanahan has even tweeted the COVID shots should be pulled off the market.

We knew a Kennedy victory for President was a long-shot but were overjoyed that someone capable of bringing the injustices of the past four years to light was now holding a gigantic microphone. After years of tireless fighting to get the truth out, Kennedy was our best hope. We were finally on the brink of detonating a nuclear bomb on our enemies. Robert F. Kennedy was that bomb, and we eagerly prepared to drop him on BigPharma.

But on August 23, 2024, the mission changed, and the bomb’s intended target shifted. Kennedy switched course, dropping out of the race, endorsing Trump, and announcing the birth of MAHA. MAHA - Make America Healthy Again - was sold as a way to make Kennedy more palatable to the average American, and in the process, directed the public’s attention away from the dangerous mRNA shots and onto our food supply. With the birth of MAHA, Pfizer and Moderna have faded from focus - the real enemy is now Kelloggs, a foe who started poisoning us decades ago and continues to poison us, albeit at a much slower, and more voluntary, pace. Instead of wiping out the creators of mRNA, we’re now poised to drop our nuclear bomb on a far less serious threat - cereal manufacturers.

This strategy shift coincided with the meteoric rise of Casey and Calley Means, who parachuted into the medical freedom movement on May 14, 2024 with their best-selling debut book “Good Energy.” The book echoes what many nutrition experts have been saying for quite some time, that processed foods are unhealthy, but their common sense message miraculously became an overnight sensation after being picked up by big media names such as Tucker Carlson and Joe Rogan.

Calley is a BigPharma turncoat who now wants to take down the food industry and is credited with convincing Kennedy to drop out of the race and endorse Trump. As if nothing significant happened the last four years, neither he nor his sister have had much to say about the mRNA shots. Until last summer, none of us had heard of Calley Means, but with launch of his best-selling book, Calley’s following on X has grown exponentially from 19,000 to 245,000 in just six months. It is common knowledge that he has the ear of both Kennedy and Trump.

Apart from the success of the book, the siblings appear to be well-connected Washington insiders, thanks to their father, Grady Means, who served in the White House as a policy assistant to Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. To his credit, Grady was speaking out about the food industry before “Good Energy” was published and in an article published in The Hill, even alluded to the absurdity of making children take the COVID shots to attend school.

Grady presumably paved the way for his son Calley to be invited to join the Council for Foreign Relations, an influential American think tank with a global focus. Calley’s other position of influence is his experience working as a lobbyist at Mercury Public Affairs, the same firm headed by Susie Wiles before she accepted the position of Trump’s chief of staff. Mercury focuses on high-stakes public strategy, including lobbying and government relations, with Pfizer and Gilead Sciences (the developer of Remdesivir) as clients.

Calley’s sister, Casey, is an ENT who trained at Stanford and Oregon State but dropped out of residency in her final year. She now runs a biotech company called Levels, which raised $12 million in seed funding in November 2020, backed by one of the largest venture capital firms in Silicon Valley, a16z. While in college, she worked at 23andMe. Though Calley has downplayed their relationship, Casey recently posted a photo of herself and CEO of 23andMe Anne Wojcicki, calling her a “wonderful friend.” 23andMe has been widely criticized for selling its customers’ genetic data to GlaxoSmithKline for $320 million.

Upon a friend’s recommendation, I bought the Means’ book “Good Energy” and was excited to see that Casey was a fellow ENT who went to Stanford. I have always felt our profession is too eager to operate on patients with chronic sinusitis and consider myself conservative in terms of taking people to the operating room for what I consider an inflammatory problem. I reached out to Casey multiple times on X (we follow each other) but was disappointed and a bit surprised that she never responded.

I wondered if I was being ignored because of my views on COVID, so I decided to search her X account for posts concerning the pandemic. To my dismay, I found nothing, meaning she either scrubbed her account or strangely, as a doctor active on social media, had no views on the most significant public health event of our time.

I performed the same search on her brother Calley’s account and found nothing pertaining to the mRNA shots.* I went back to their book, wondering if they mentioned it and realized their health-focused best-seller, despite publication on the heels of the pandemic, was devoid of anything related to COVID.

My antenna were up, and I was not alone. I have a handful of trusted confidants I communicate with daily, and we all shared the same concerns. Who are the Means? How did they become so popular so quickly? Where were they during the pandemic? Beyond our small group, other doctors felt the same as we did and were starting to grumble.

Since Casey never responded to my messages, I began challenging the Means on X. On September 9, 2024, I posted “I hope Drs. Casey and Calley Means will use their influence to join us in calling for the COVID shots to be pulled off the market.” Calley responded to my tweet in the comments with a sophisticated word salad that seemed intended to deflect and messaged me claiming to have talked about vaccines during his interview with Tucker. He said “There are forces to bring childhood health to the top of agenda. What a ridiculous assertion that the message of Casey and me is about seed oils. Where is this animosity coming from?" I never mentioned seed oils in my post and responded, “I didn’t assert that. I like your message. What worries me is the timing and intensity. Bobby Kennedy is the biggest threat to BigPharma they’ve ever had. Could it be BigPharma is diverting the conversation to the food industry? Shifting the blame? I also worry that Casey, as a physician, is mute about the shots. It’s a sign that she implicitly has no issue with them. Multiple other doctors who have been fighting since the start of the pandemic have concerns about you and Casey. Prove us wrong.” Calley then provided me a with a tweet showing how Casey has questioned the Hepatitis B vaccine for newborns. We went back and forth, but I could not get him to state the COVID shots were harmful or should be pulled off the market. Following the DMs, he suggested we talk. Our initial call did not go well - he accused me of subjecting him to a purity test and our conversation was heated. He reached out to talk twice more, seemingly in response to more and more people challenging him and Casey on X. I told him all he really had to do to put people at ease is go on record about the COVID shots. He repeatedly assured me he was on my side but still has not gone on record to speak of the dangers of the mRNA shots.

I told Calley that I understand his activism is different than mine and have no issue with that, but I also know that if he truly cared about the welfare of our children, he would have an opinion on the mRNA shots and state that. My focus is COVID, but I find the practice of giving children hormones and chopping off their genitals abhorrent, so I speak out publicly on other health issues beyond COVID when I authentically feel compelled to do so.

Misdirection is a common war tactic and form of propaganda, a technique used to distract attention away from a topic. Thanks to the efforts of MAHA, all eyes have shifted to dropping the Robert F Kennedy nuclear bomb onto the food industry, while our more immediate and severe threat - mRNA manufacturers - strengthen their forces. I, along with many others, can’t help but wonder if BigPharma orchestrated this sudden change in focus and if the Means siblings are being used - knowingly or unknowingly - to drive this change.

Several weeks ago, I sat down with Calley Means and Jack Kruse on the Danny Jones podcast and had the opportunity to ask Calley directly - on camera - his views on COVID and the mRNA shots. The show will air on December 25th or 26th. Stay tuned!

Addendum: A reader performed an advanced search on Calley Means’ X account showing he has posted about COVID on X, with an emphasis on its link to metabolic health.