The Arrow #108

Hello friends,

Greetings from Dallas.

All I can say is that I miss the Florida weather. Cold and rainy here in Big D.

Along with gearing back up for Protein Power 2.0 (more about which later), MD and I have had our collective noses to the grindstone on another big project we’ve signed on to. We’ll be finished on this one around March 1, when we’ll really be cut free to work full-time on PP 2.0. Since I’ve been so busy on this other project, I have fallen way behind on answering emails and dealing with comments on this Substack.

One recurring email and comment subject I can address here is my commentary last week on the Russia-Ukraine situation. I’ve received multiple emails and a handful of comments telling me I was wrong on my analysis of the war between Russia and Ukraine. A common theme in these emails/comments is that if I want to learn the real truth about the situation I should watch or listen to the opinion of [fill in the blank with the name of someone who has opined on the situation]. The tone of all these emails/comments is that [fill in the blank] is the one person who is in possession of the real truth re Russia-Ukraine.

I did not get one single email from someone saying, Hey, I’m an expert on Russia or Ukraine or the Russia-Ukraine war. Every one was recommending I seek out [fill in the blank] for the real skinny.

This implies to me that all these emailers and/or commenters have been persuaded by these various “experts.” My question is, How do you know your experts are any smarter or better informed than my experts?

I’m not saying your experts are not as smart or better informed than mine. I’m just asking how you know? I’m certainly not an expert in this conflict, and I’m reasonably sure none of the commenters/emailers are either. Or they would have told me so. So it comes down to dueling experts.

My current go-to expert is Peter Zeihan, whom a few of you commenters and emailers blew off in favor of your own expert.

The reason I tend to favor Peter Zeihan is because I love his latest book The End of the World is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization. Having written or co-written some ten books or so, I know the whole book-writing, book-publishing business forward and backward, at least from the perspective of what an author has to go through to get his/her book vetted and published. It ain’t easy.

I don’t want to bore you with the entire process, but I’ll lay out just one step: copy-editing. After you’ve submitted your manuscript and fought it out with your editor over what changes he/she wants you to make, you submit the resulting document to a copy editor. Copy editors are the most anal creatures who draw breath. They go through the entire manuscript checking spelling, subject verb agreement, and every single tiny insignificant detail imaginable. Each claim you make as the writer, they want documented. Documented in detail.

They have special little sticky notes that are perforated — or at least they did back in the days of hard copy editing, which may not be going the way of the dodo. They stick them on the page next to the author’s claim with the perforated part folded under the page. When you, the author, get the manuscript back, you have to read each of these colorful little missives, write your answer (if it’s a question) or provide documentation (if it’s a claim), tear the little perforated tail with your answer off and stick in the manuscript by the question. Sometimes your answer isn’t enough—these are extremely anal people—and you have to provide more. This back and forth goes on until the copy editor is satisfied. For the author, it is a nightmare, but one that has to be endured.

Zeihan’s book (linked above) was published by Harper, which is a major mainstream publisher, so I know he had to go through the same process. And since his book is a giant compendium of facts, his copy-editing experience must have been a nightmare vastly beyond anything I’ve endured.

And it makes me comfortable with his statistics. I’m sure he had to provide proof to his copy editor.

I am awed by the material in his book. MD is getting tired of my constantly reading her this or that and my incessant insistence that she read the book. The writing is crystal clear and hilarious, which you wouldn’t expect in such a serious book. But which makes it a lot more fun to read.

Here is an example. He was writing about the debt load of various countries, which he somehow makes incredibly interesting, and discussing specifically the difference between Europe and Asia.

There are little bon mots like this scattered throughout that both make a point and generate a laugh. In me, at least.

From the hints he’s dropped, I’ve figured out he probably lives in or near Boulder, Colorado. That fact, along with his little pony tail (petty? of course, but I just can’t help myself), made me worry when I got to the part in his book about climate change. But I needn’t have worried. He was as clear-eyed about that as he has been about everything else. So far. I’m only about halfway through, so I might be in for a big disappointment later.

I checked him out online and signed up for his newsletter. He makes no mention of it on his website (or none that I saw), but since I’ve signed up, I’ve gotten a handful of videos from him. All of them have been informative.

Here is my schedule. I wake up every morning and hop out of bed at 5:30-6 AM. I start going through emails until the Wall Street Journal gets tossed on my doorstep at ~ 7 AM. Then I read that. Then I skim through the NY Times, which I subscribe to digitally.

Yesterday morning a video from Zeihan awaited me when I awoke. Came in at 5:04 AM. It was one of the weirder videos I’ve ever watched. I can’t imagine myself doing a video as I was getting dressed to go give a talk, but Zeihan did. And oddly enough it was informative.

Here it is. Well worth watching if only to watch him slick back his hair and put on his pony tail holder. Along with dressing, he discusses the issues with sending Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

Not long after watching this, I opened my WSJ to see this on the front page.

The article makes mention of the fact that the Abrams tanks are not easy to learn to operate, but doesn’t go into nearly the detail that Zeihan did in his video above. Nor did it discuss when the tanks might be sent other than a vague mention of about 12 months. Maybe.

I suspect this is throwing cover to Germany’s Chancellor who wants to send their Leopard 2 tanks, but is getting pushback from his constituents.

As I have been doing with MD, I encourage you to read this book. At least the first half. I can’t comment on the second half yet, but the first half is brilliant. In fact, if the second half is as good as the first half, I may grow myself a little pony tail just in homage. Not.

Speaking of books…

The Big Pfizer Document Dump

I found out late yesterday that a new book was available providing an analysis of the Pfizer documents released by court order. As you might remember, when attorney Aaron Siri representing numerous plaintiffs filed a FOIA request for the Pfizer documents used to get the FDA’s authorization for the mRNA Covid vaccines, the FDA pleaded with the federal judge to withhold the documents for 75 years before releasing. That request in and of itself should have alerted anyone who was interested that there might be something fishy going on. It certainly alerted the federal judge, who, thankfully, said No. He demanded Pfizer release the documents monthly, 50,000 pages at a time.

A volunteer group including Naomi Wolf and the War Room/Daily Clout research team began plowing through the thousands of pages of documents. They have now published their findings in a book available only on Kindle (at this time, at least) titled Pfizer Documents Analysis Reports. I bought mine last night, but haven’t read it yet.

I did get some feedback this morning from a financial journalist who is a reader of The Arrow. Here are his comments:

As I wrote, I haven’t cracked this book yet. But I will as soon as I can tear myself away from the Zeihan book. I usually have 6-10 books going at any given time. I kind of rotate through them till one gets read, then I add another to the stack. I know I’ve come across a good book when I quit rotating and spend all my time on a specific book in the pile until it’s read.

Has Scott Adams Been Red Pilled?

For those of you who don’t know, Scott Adams is the guy who created, writes, and draws the Dilbert cartoon strip and the many Dilbert-related books. Plus he has written numerous other books on various subjects including getting ahead in life and persuasion.

Based on his books, Twitter feed, and his daily live feeds, he considers himself a pretty smart guy. And since he’s a self-styled expert on persuasion, he doubtless figures he can see through a lot of the BS we’re all subjected to daily from marketers, advertisers, and politicians.

He was all in on the Covid vaccines from the start. He argued vociferously on their behalf using various representations from Fauci and others at the alphabet of federal agencies. Then, all of a sudden, he decided he had been wrong about it all. And that those of us recommending caution where the new and not-very-well-tested mRNA vaccines were concerned were right. And he admitted as much.

But he did so in a kind of chicken shit way.

When he caught flack for it, he began saying those of us on the anti-mRNA vaccine side refused to take Yes for an answer. I tweeted that I would be happy to take Yes for answer.

Then I saw a tweet of his and retweeted it thusly:

Adams was trying to make the case that he had done all the in-depth research on the mRNA vaccines to arrive at his—as it turned out incorrect—position while those of us on the correct side had come to our conclusions based on heuristics. Our heuristics were that Big Government was bad, and Big Pharma was bad. So he did all the research and turned out wrong, while we relied merely on distrust of the government and the pharmaceutical industry and turned out be right.

Which, of course, makes him out to be the smart guy who got unlucky while we were the gun-toting, flag-waving rubes who happened to have turned out to be right.

No one likes to be wrong. And no one especially likes to be wrong so publicly. So, I can’t blame him for trying to save a little face. But he’s kind of gone overboard. And now he’s gone down the path of total idiocy.

Watch this video of his daily live stream yesterday in which he used his omnipresent white board to lay out where he went wrong. I’ve got it teed up to the point at which he starts. You should really watch it before reading my commentary as you might have a totally different take away.

I’ve never seen someone wriggle so much to keep from saying I was wrong while saying I was wrong. It’s fun to watch.

Adams obviously considers himself a very bright guy. And I’m sure he is. But bright guys (and gals and whatever other genders you might care to use) can be wrong. And often are. But he’s obviously embarrassed about being so publicly wrong on the mRNA vaccines and is trying to do everything he can to keep from simply saying I was wrong. Period. I chose the wrong horse. I’m glad I finally got it right.

If you watched the video first (and I hope you did), you notice on the part with the first whiteboard he said his biggest fear was long Covid, which is what drove his thinking. He did not want to get long Covid. Which many scientists doubt even exists. When he gets to the second white board, he really starts to sling the self-exculpatory BS.

Notice the big circle he put up on the upper left. The Science. All the studies of various kinds. Those who did their own personal research, based on the science, got the right answer. Those who relied on the interpretation of The Science by government, pharma, and the mainstream news, all of which he says lie through their teeth, got the wrong answer.

Despite what I’m sure was his own reliance on the scientific interpretation by the government, pharma and the news, he says he came to his conclusion via a different route.

He says he relied on his penis.

He says he was scheduled for a trip to Santorini with a beautiful woman and really wanted to go. Which implies he figured his penis would get a workout. So, based on that, he made his decision.

He then goes on to say that those who chose the first method—The Science + personal research—got it right, but then Isaac Newton said The Science was created so people wouldn’t have to do their own research as they are not capable of understanding The Science. Then he adds the Carl Sagan touch to confirm. In this way he denigrates anyone who did their own personal research, because according to Isaac and Carl, they just lucked out because they can’t really understand the real science.

Adams basically says he didn’t resort to any of this nonsense. He simply thought with his little head rather than his big head. Which, of course, is understandable. Many a 65-year-old male would have done the same with the prospect of a trip to Santorini with a beautiful woman. Except, except, except was being taken to Santorini the price she extracted for participating in the aforementioned workout? If so, then it’s called something else.

If not, why couldn’t his penis have gotten the same workout staying at home?

I think it’s all a way to avoid saying he fell victim to the confirmation bias, which is the easiest of all biases to fall victim to. You have to fight it constantly.

I suppose I should briefly go through how I came to my views on Covid and the vaccines.

Early on in the pandemic I came across Michael Levitt, a Stanford professor who is a Nobel laureate in mathematics. Using the Gomperz function that’s been around since the early 1800s, he modeled the disease pattern. Which held true in all the places Levitt modeled early on. I wrote a lot about the Gomperz function in early editions of this newsletter. With this mathematical model, it was difficult to see how the lockdowns or “flattening the curve” was going to solve anything. And it showed how natural immunity (herd immunity) was the way we ultimately had to get through it. All this, of course, was pre-vaccine.

Then when the vaccines came on the scene, I was intrigued with them. Somewhere from early 2021 (or late 2020) there is a segment on some show on Newsmax featuring me commenting on the mRNA vaccines in a positive way. I think they thought I was going to bad mouth them and used the nurse who fainted after her vaccine on live TV as a prompt. I told them it’s fairly common for folks to faint after an injection or a blood draw and we didn’t have enough info to tie it to anything. Needless to say, they never asked me back again.

The thing that really got me thinking was when I read the Japanese paper about the lipid nanoparticles from the vaccine ending up in various tissues throughout the body. We had all been told the vaccines stayed in the muscle, where the mRNA stimulated the body to crank out antibodies to the spike protein. The very early Japanese study disabused me of that notion, so I started digging in.

I had heard Fauci and others make statements that did not jibe with what I had learned about immunology in medical school. I thought things must have changed, so I purchased an immunology review book that had been recently published.

When I went back to grab this graphic, I discovered a brand new version of this book is now available covering the Covid situation. So, I ordered it today.

When I received the book pictured above, I read it cover to cover. I discovered what I remembered about immunology and virology in medical school was still pretty much true. A number of things that were speculative then had been proven out by 2019, the publication date of the book. Once I realized things hadn’t changed that much, I concluded that Fauci and his cohorts were all lying through their teeth. Which is when my index of suspicion really skyrocketed.

Then, after all the hype about how safe and efficacious the vaccines were, when I read the Pfizer paper, I knew it was all bunk. The same number of people died in the study group—ie those who got the actual vaccine—as did in the placebo group. (Actually, a few more died in the study group, but it wasn’t considered a statistically significant difference.) And the figures they used to come up with the 95 percent efficacious were relative risk figures, which are worthless, instead of absolute risk figures, which showed minimal differences.

When I heard all these tales about hospital emergency rooms overflowing, it made me wonder. There was no real data showing this. Only anecdotal reports. As it turns out, there were many fake doctors on Twitter and other social media spreading this word. Were they government bots? Who knows. One who got outed was a young Asian female doctor who was all over Instagram (or I think—could have been TikTok) in her scrubs and mask saying how dreadful it had been during her ten hour ER shift she had just finished. Patients with Covid everywhere, dying like flies. No rooms for them. A total tragedy. Then she was outed as working 9-5 in a pediatric clinic somewhere and hadn’t come within a country mile of an ER.

Stories like those made me wonder even more. Now info has come out showing that the unvaccinated were over-counted in hospitals, making it seem like all the unvaccinated were dying.

Those who have been with me since the early days probably remember my writing about all this in various editions of The Arrow. I have an advantage over Scott Adams in that I do understand the scientific literature, which is not all that easy to interpret correctly. In fact, it’s difficult to interpret. Especially since much of it is fraudulent.

Soit le Derrière, Soit le Visage

So supposedly said French actress Catherine Deneuve as she began to age. The saying has been attributed to a number of other aging actresses, so I couldn’t find out who said it first. The direct translation is “either the backside or the face.”

It’s funnier as allegedly mouthed by a handful of US actresses to wit: When I start to age, I have to trade my ass for my face. I can’t have both.

Meaning, of course, that if they diet to maintain their youthful rear ends, their faces go gaunt. If they work to maintain their non-gaunt faces, their backsides get too big.

I almost titled this section Ozempic Face instead of the French above.

I read an article in the New York Times a couple of days ago about a condition plastic surgeons and dermatologists are starting to see by the score. As people lose large amounts of weight with Ozempic, Wegovy, and Mounjaro, they discover that their faces begin to look old and gaunt.

These drugs are all GLP-1 agonists. I wrote about them at length a few Arrows ago. They are all administered by expensive weekly injections and were developed to treat type 2 diabetes. But since weight loss was a side effect (along with others more severe), many people are using them as weight loss drugs. And they are effective. As long as you take them. The one study that I wrote about in the Arrow (linked above) showed that as quickly as the weight goes away, it comes back just as quickly once the drug is stopped. Which is no bueno in my book. It’s a lot of expense and hassle to be end up months later right back where you started.

According to the article in the Times, docs are making out like bandits on both sides of this equation. Injecting the drugs is a money maker and dealing with the facial droop is even more so.

Or, if you want to go big…

One of the effects of these drugs is a diminution of hunger. If you’re not hungry, you don’t eat. If you don’t eat, you typically lose weight. There is no magic in that.

But if you lose weight because you don’t eat or by going on a calorically-restricted diet, you end up losing muscle mass. In fact, about half the weight you lose on such diets is from the non-fat parts of you. Mainly muscle.

The body is smarter than most give it credit for. While you’re dreaming of weight loss, your body is dreaming of survival. These are your genes whispering to you from thousands of years ago. They know you needed big muscles to survive back then, and they assume you need them now. So your body hangs on to leg muscles, breathing muscles, fight or flight muscles, heart muscle, etc. Your facial muscles don’t do much to keep you alive in trying times, so those are the first sacrificed.

Without vibrant facial muscles, the tissues laid over them sags.

Which is why you need to consume protein. Problem is, protein is usually associated with fat. Fat contains a lot of calories. So people avoid it when trying to lose weight. And they end up getting shorted on protein.

If you get shorted on protein, you’re ultimately going to get longer in the face, i.e., sagging from lack of good facial musculature.

As I never tire of saying, the best way to lose weight is with a good quality, low-carbohydrate diet containing plenty of protein. I believe Catherine Deneuve was wrong. You can have both a face and a derriere if you do it right.

Chart of the Week

Take a look at this:

This should be good news. Two of the top three deserts can be made low-carb with little loss of flavor and goodness.

Sadly, it shows just how out of the mainstream I am. Oatmeal raisin cookies are my favorite.

Statins Yet Again

My good friend Maryanne Demasi was one of the authors on a Journal of the American Medical Association Internal Medicine paper showing basically how worthless statins are.

This paper caught the attention of Peter Attia, another good friend of mine, who fired off a critique of it on his extremely popular blog.

Now Maryanne Demasi et al have replied on her Substack. It all makes for interesting reading. Especially if you are on a statin, or if your doctor has recommended a statin, and you’re contemplating what to do.

Most medial guidelines these days recommend statins, so doctors are in a damned if they do, damned if they don’t situation. If you as a patient come in with an elevated LDL-cholesterol level, and the guidelines recommend a statin for that level of LDL, what’s the poor doc to do?

If your doc prescribes the statin, then he/she is pretty safe. If you have a heart attack—which people do on statins all the time—then your doc is covered. If your doc falls into what Dr. Demasi and I would call the enlightened camp and doesn’t give you a statin, and you go on to have a heart attack, then, your doc could be sued. The plaintiff’s attorney would show that your doc did not follow the guidelines.

It’s a tough spot for doctors to be in.

I’m glad Maryanne and the collaborators along with Peter Attia have gotten this debate out in the open.

Maryanne has an interesting history. She used to be a scientific reporter for the Australian Broadcast Company. She did her own research on saturated fats and statins and decided to use her platform on ABC to present contrarian opinions to Australian viewers. So many Australian doctors complained that ABC took her programs on saturated fat and statins off the air. And ultimately fired her.

If you haven’t seen those two programs, they are great. Especially since yours truly appears in one of them. That’s how I met Maryanne, and we’ve been friends since.

Why Studies Are So Hard to Interpret

I’m going to give you an example of the kind of stuff I run into all the time when trying to evaluate studies.

The bad example for this exercise is a study from Sweden titled: Postprandial levels of GLP-1, GIP and glucagon after 2 years of weight loss with a Paleolithic diet: a randomised controlled trial in healthy obese women. (Link here.)

Since I have an interest in incretins (GIP and GLP-1) and a special interest in weight loss driven by GLP-1, I was on this paper like a duck on a June bug when I came across it.

Was I ever disappointed. But all is not lost. I can show you just how crappy a study can be from the design phase on.

Here is how the study was set up.

I love to see different diets compared without regard to calories. It comes closer to what happens in real life. Any time I can find a study that approximates what happens in real life, I am all over it.

In this one we’ve got a Paleolithic diet and a control diet based on the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations, which I would assume would be similar to the US Dietary guidelines. Let’s take a look.

Here is the Paleolithic diet as these researchers defined it.

Okay. Not really what I would call a Paleolithic diet in terms of macronutrients. What specifically did they eat?

Suddenly a problem looms. There were no vegetable oils in Paleolithic times. And not much lean meat. Already we’re in trouble with this study.

How about the Nordic Nutrition Recommendations?

Basically the difference between these two diets as a bit less carbohydrate and a bit more protein in the so-called Paleolithic diet as compared to the control diet. And, no grains or cereals in the Paleo diet. Otherwise everything was pretty much the same. Strangely, no mention of vegetable oil in the control diet.

Okay, those were the instructions. Let’s look at the data to see what these subjects actually ate.

You can see that the subjects did reduce their carb intake, though I wouldn’t exactly call a 115-120 g/day of carb a low-carb ‘Paleo’ diet.

Looking at the fat intake, it appears that those on the control diet did eat a bit less fat, especially at the 6 month mark.

Protein intake as reported is lower in the control group, but as calculated by nitrogen excretion at the very bottom, it is about the same. Which makes me wonder about how accurately these subjects reported their diets on their 4-day food diaries. Subjects are notorious for under reporting intake and over reporting exercise.

Let’s look at the results.

As you can see, weight loss and fat mass loss were highest at the 6 month mark —when the Paleo group had ratcheted up both their protein and fat intake which then fell back to near baseline and their success deteriorated after that. There were 12 group sessions in this study during which subjects were counseled. Eight of those twelve sessions took place in the first six months. The other four were spread out over the last 18 months. It’s easy to see how motivation would wane.

What I find interesting is how much more those on the Paleolithic diet lost than did those on the control diet despite both diets being fairly similar. It demonstrates yet again what power there is in carb cutting. If you look at the first table above, you can see that the carb difference was only about 50-60 g per day, yet the weight loss difference was significant.

The fasting plasma BHB (beta-hydroxybutyrate — the primary ketone in the blood) levels are a bit confusing. People even on a ketogenic diet struggle to get these numbers. How can they be that high on both diets, neither of which is a ketogenic diet? Especially not the control diet. It makes no sense.

Unless, of course, the subjects, worried about being found to be non-compliant, fasted for an entire day or so before the blood draws.

When we look at the GLP-1, the item I’m really interested in, the results are not what I expected.

I’ve added the timelines just so I don’t have to put up the entire chart, which you can see if you go to the link at the top.

As you can see, the AUC (area under the curve, which is the total GLP-1 output over the time measured) shows that GLP-1 was higher on the higher carb diet, the one in which the least weight was lost. You expect to find the GLP-1 AUC higher in the arm that lost the most weight.

At the same time, you see the GIP AUC is lower in the control group whereas it should be higher. GIP is released in the upper GI tract in response to highly process foods, mainly grains. Which were not allowed in the Paleolithic diet arm of this study.

The glucagon/insulin ratio shown at the bottom is more what you would expect.

This is what I mean about a totally screwed up study.

Not just that the numbers weren’t what I expected for GLP-1 and GIP. But because they added vegetable oils to the Paleolithic diet. And lean meats instead of fattier cuts. And the ketones were high in both, when they should have been high in neither as many carbs as they were allegedly eating.

This is why I say that reading these studies critically is difficult and takes a lot of time. And the abstracts and titles are often a bit off the mark. Many people just read those, then cite the study thinking it actually says what the title implies.

That’s about it for today. I hate to end on a boring study, but I hope it was informative.

In fact, I won’t end it there. I have a favor to ask of you. MD and I are really getting geared up to plow on through and finish Protein Power 2.0. I was holding off a bit until this last talk I gave, because the talk was on a different idea of why people lose weight on low-carb diets. It seems so simple to me now that I understand it, but I was worried exactly because it did seem so simple. Had I been booed off the stage, I would have known I didn’t dig deeply enough. But people I respect told me the idea was eye-opening. To say the least.

So, now I have no restraints holding me back. MD had been ready forever. If you have anything in particular you would like to see in Protein Power 2.0, please send me an email to: [email protected]. Put PP 2.0 in the subject line and let me know what we could write that would help you the most. I’ll collate these and put them up in a future edition of The Arrow, and we can all refine them.

Thanks from the bottom of my heart in advance.

One last thing that crossed my desk while MD was vetting the above. Looks like an injunction was entered against that idiotic California law AB2098 passed by idiotic Californian legislators prohibiting physicians from giving “mis-information” to their patients about Covid. Little did I know, however, that part of the reason it was overturned was the crappy grammar used in its writing. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of people. Read all about it here and revel in the idiocy of these twerps.

Keep in good cheer, and I’ll be back next Thursday.

And make sure if you are on one of the weight-loss injections that you consume plenty of protein. You can bump your intake of good quality protein by using HLTH Code meal replacements. One of our sponsors and the best meal replacement on the market.

Also check out Dry Farm Wines and Precision Health Reports.