Dear Betsy: My Children Won't Come for Thanksgiving Because I'm Not Vaccinated. Can You Help?

Ex-CBS News reporter Betsy Ashton heals a family's Vax vs. Ivermectin war. "I write in love to people who love one another and want to be together for the holidays..."

On October 21 I received a phone call from a dear old friend, a grandmother of five and mother of a grown son and daughter, who lives in a beautiful part of Florida. She was stunned that her children were refusing to visit her for Thanksgiving and Christmas because she chose not to be vaccinated for covid-19.   

“My children think I’m crazy, that I’ve become some kind of ignorant, inconsiderate flake,” Louise moaned into the phone. “What really hurts is they accuse me of not being concerned about infecting them and the children. But that’s not it at all!!”

On a preventive protocol for covid-19  (not the FLCCC’s, but one that uses nearly all the same medicines) Louise did not want to get vaccinated with the new Pfizer, Moderna, or Johnson & Johnson vaccines being pushed by medical authorities and most major media in the United States. 

“It’s about not trusting new medicines that haven’t been fully tested,” she said.  (The above vaccines are on emergency use authorizations and did not get the extensive Phase 3 trials that most new medicines must receive before being widely administered.)

Would I write the kids, she wanted to know?  They knew me from my years as an investigative reporter on television. “They won’t believe me, but they’ll listen to you.”

And so I wrote an email to the kids, copying Lou: 

Subject: “Your Mother is Not Crazy!”

-------- Original Message --------

Dear ones:

It has been WAY too long since we have talked, since I’ve seen you.  I don’t think I would even recognize your children if I bumped into them on the street!!  And that’s a shame.  I miss you.

But your mother has kept in touch a bit, and she called me today with some urgency because you have been bugging her about her not getting vaccinated for COVID-19.  And she says that you think she is a nutcase on medicine because she takes lots of supplements. (She says you do listen to her on other topics, but she really needs help on this.)

So why call me?

What you don’t know is that in March 2020, when COVID-19 hit New York City and my “Portraits of Immigrants” art exhibitions (2 were in gallery calendars) were indefinitely postponed as a result, and the commission to paint the portrait of the founding partner of a leading law firm was indefinitely delayed because he was in Palm Beach and I was here and all travel had shut down, I received a phone call from my personal physician — an internist with a big practice in NYC. It changed  my life.

My doc was totally frustrated that so many people were dying on ventilators in NYC hospitals and bodies were piling up in freezer trucks, yet physicians like him were getting zero guidance from medical authorities on what to do to help their patients — to prevent or treat the disease.  He was so frustrated that he started doing his own research in medical journals and scientific websites and said, “Betsy, I’ve found this group of critical care physicians who have figured out what this disease is, and they are using steroids and high dose vitamin C with vitamin D and zinc and melatonin to treat people in ICUs and they are getting better!  People in their hospitals are not dying.  But the NIH and WHO all say that you can’t use steroids, and they are wrong!!  You are a news person (well, I was still connected to news reporters and editors as a board member to three journalism groups), can you help us get the word out?  We could save thousands of lives!”

And I said, “Absolutely!  Everything I’ve been doing has been shut down for I don’t know how long, and since I can work from my laptop and phone…. How often do you get a chance to save thousands of lives?!”

That was the beginning of my dip into public relations.  I helped the doctors form the FLCCC Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to disseminating medical information to physicians around the world in an effort to save lives. And we have done that.  At first, we were heroes. (Those whose lives we have saved still consider us that.)

But since these doctors’ research and observations in ICUs and with outpatients (many internists, family practitioners, and nurses joined the alliance) started discovering studies that showed off-patent ivermectin to be a remarkable preventive and anti-viral as well as anti-inflammatory treatment for COVID, we have been vilified and ivermectin has been trashed by a massive PR campaign carried out by government agencies and media heavily sponsored by Big Pharma, which stands to lose billions in emergency use authorizations for vaccines and new treatments now in the pipeline—new drugs designed to prevent and treat COVID, that independent doctors and scientist say are neither as safe nor as effective as cheap, off-patent ivermectin.  In short, the only thing wrong with ivermectin is that nobody is going to make billions in profit off of it.  But billions could be lost if it were declared an effective treatment for COVID.

And, yes, the heads of the NIH, FDA, the WHO and EMA seem to be on the side of Big Pharma in this.  We have evidence that shows that those agencies have long been “captured” by the big money behind the new drugs. And the major media — newspapers, TV, mostly cover the heads of those agencies and doctors in places that depend on donations from drug companies for their new hospital wings, their journal advertisements, their career advancement.  Studies promoting new drugs have often been falsified to get quick approvals.  (Yet the massive PR campaign against the off-patent drug claims the opposite is true.)

I will be talking about this tonight on the Weekly Update webinar that I host every Wednesday night.  You can tune in with the thousands that do by registering on our website: 

https://flccc.net

Click on the Quick Link for Weekly Update Registration and they will send you the Zoom link.  (if you miss it, we will post the recording tomorrow.)

I’ve got to jump here and prepare for tonight—we go live at 7:00 p.m. Two good reporter/writers who have been covering us fairly will be on with me and Dr. Pierre Kory to talk about the censorship that’s going on.

Most of the PR against us claims that only far right-wing Trump “nuts” favor off-patent treatments.  That is NOT true. Some do, and mostly Republicans have loudly criticized vaccine mandates. Our group is neither political nor anti-vax, but knows that ivermectin is safer as a preventive—and appears to be far more effective. 

Even so, I got the J&J vaccine because I live in NYC and couldn’t go anywhere if I didn’t. But I still take ivermectin, as does Jim. We know the science about it that is being suppressed by most media.

Here’s some that is useful: You’ve been told there is little evidence for ivermectin.  Really???  See below [from IVMmeta.com].

[And this from FLCCC.net.]

There is so much more to tell. I have been living with this science for 18 months now. I have personally seen “miraculous” turnarounds in patients—many my age—who were dying in hospitals, until I helped courts get data that got ivermectin to them. 

Your mother is on a safe and effective protocol.  She will be fine. 

I hope you can watch tonight!  Or watch some of our other programs. Most of the people who question the vaccines are not idiots. Most of our followers are MDs and PhDs.  They KNOW what works. They see it. And they know how corrupt our so called “public” health agencies have become. The entire medical establishment has succumbed to the sweet lure of profits. Read below the words of those who know far more than I.

Dr. Marcia Angell, Harvard physician and editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) for 2 decades said the following in 2009: 

“It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor.”

Dr. Arnold S. Relman, another former editor-in-chief of the NEJM said this in 2002:  

“The medical profession is being bought by the pharmaceutical industry, not only in terms of the practice of medicine, but also in terms of teaching and research. The academic institutions of this country are allowing themselves to be the paid agents of the pharmaceutical industry. I think it’s disgraceful.”

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet said this in 2015:  

“The case against science is straightforward: much of the scientific literature, perhaps half, may simply be untrue.”

Much love to you all,

Betsy

On Thu, October 21, 2021 at 7:24 a.m., the mother wrote:

Dear Betsy!

Thank you for taking the time writing Jess and Brian! I know how busy you are.

When Jess called yesterday and asked about why I was not getting the Covid 19 vax, I immediately thought of you. The last time we talked I knew who you were working with and have followed them from the beginning. They are highly respected, and I know what they are up against.

I follow their recommendations for supplements and have remained very healthy. I have friends who have had Covid and then taken ivermectin along with zinc, Vit D3, C and multi-vitamins. They have recovered just fine and continue following recommended protocols. Additionally, I received a prescription based on Dr Zelenko’s protocol and have on hand Zpack, HCQ, zinc and C just in case I need it.

I highly respect your investigative reporting background— you have the facts and understanding I don’t have. You are involved day in and day out with this. I’m very grateful that you are there—I’m sure the Doctors are as well!

I feel much better that Jess and Brian have someone they love to call and find out more. They trust you!

Thank you!

Lovingly,

Lou

On Oct 22, 2021, at 2:59 PM, Lou’s son Brian, a husband, father and business leader living in Ontario, Canada wrote:

Betsy,

Thank you for taking the time to write this. I appreciate what you are doing and am pleased to hear that people are figuring out how to treat this virus and save lives. Because you took the time to write this and have stepped in as a quasi intermediary out of respect I wanted to take a moment to respond with my thoughts on this matter so you know I had read your message and where I stand so it’s not left hanging in the ether.

Clearly Jessica and I have discussed this with our mom and I will not speak for Jess but I truly believe there is plenty of real science backing the fact that vaccines are safe and effective in dramatically reducing the transmission and deadliness of the virus which in turn will reduce the likelihood of future mutations which could start this whole thing over again. 

My belief is that the available vaccines, if administered in time, will be proven to do this in a very meaningful way. I appreciate that developing the protocols to treat COVID patients who cannot be vaccinated or get sick even when vaccinated is a very important element of this especially for those living in countries that cannot afford or get access to vaccines yet so as to curb death rates and not overrun healthcare systems.  However, for the reasons laid out above I do not see vaccines versus a viable treatment if you get sick as mutually exclusive. The only way this ends and protects future generations is to stop the spread and the potential mutations, and from my perspective the best way to accomplish this is to get vaccinated, not to wait and see because you believe it can be successfully treated if you get it.

I am glad to hear you are vaccinated as I am sure you have done your homework as it relates to the safety of doing so. As such I would appreciate it if you would be willing to share those with my mom. At the risk of sounding mean, which is not my intention, I would ask how anyone can choose not get vaccinated while your cupboards are stocked with medicine to treat the virus if you get it? In any event this is a very loaded subject and I appreciate your thoughts on the matter which I truly respect but unless I am missing something from my perspective there really are very few good excuses to not get vaccinated if it’s readily available to you, in fact I believe it’s everyone’s responsibility as a good global citizen. Apologies if that sounds harsh but it’s what I believe. In the event you think I have missed anything, think what I have said is incorrect, or am out to lunch please let me know, discourse is good and I am happy to hear it. 

Otherwise I am glad you are well and keep going with all the good work you are doing.

Much love to you and yours!

Brian

On Oct 24, 2021, at 2:59 PM, Brian’s sister Jessica, Lou’s daughter, a wife, mother, and business executive living near Durham, North Carolina wrote:

Dear Betsy,

Clever subject line! It caught my attention immediately. I echo everything my brother said in his thoughtful response.

I know nothing about Ivermectin except that there are no broad double blind studies on how it works in humans. I know that Ivermectin as a treatment is becoming another divisive political issue. I know a lot about confirmation bias and I believe that censorship is one-sided right now and that the mainstream media is pro-vaccine mandates. I think big Pharma has a lot to win, no question, as they should. Charlie Munger says “show me the incentives and I will tell you the outcome.” The Science and the scientists that came together to find a vaccine are extraordinary and they should be rewarded! That is how innovation works! Conversely, our healthcare is way too expensive in comparison to places like Canada or France. I believe in subsidized healthcare (i.e. Obamacare) except that when they did Obamacare they capped the gross margin for healthcare at 20%. Guess what happened? The healthcare businesses jacked up prices so that they could capture a larger number of revenue! And now in the USA, there is a 90 to 1 ratio of healthcare administrators to doctors in this country! Ridiculous. Ivermectin has become a cultural and political bias that I have no interest in getting wrapped up in. If I were extremely ill with Covid, I would probably try all to get well. Time will tell. So why wouldn’t my mother get vaccinated and take Ivermectin like you?

Now regarding vaccinations, we believe getting vaccinated is part of our social responsibility. If you look at a virus and the probabilities of how it mutates, it is only a matter of time in which you get a virus that is SO easily transmissible AND deadly. So, let’s not let the math play out…..and by the way, this should not be a political issue. Every single member of Congress and the Senate are vaccinated. Even Donald Trump is vaccinated.

What I am confused by and honestly, annoyed and disappointed by, is Mom’s overall resistance to getting vaccinated when I have not heard one good reason not to get vaccinated! Not one.

I get upset because I would love to see her but don’t think she wants to or should travel. I would love it if she saw her grandchildren but it wont happen because she is not vaccinated. I get mad by the idea of her unknowingly transmitting a virus that can kill as she is surrounded by highly vulnerable people. I am confused by the message it sends to her children and grandchildren. We are supposed to be together for Thanksgiving. I am not sure how to handle it……

Brian is correct; there is much hypocrisy in choosing not to get vaccinated. BUT I want to try and understand. I think you have done an excellent job in communicating other treatment alternatives. Thank you Betsy. I am still not convinced that my mother is NOT crazy by refusing the vaccine.

Still curious and trying not to be judgmental (Walt Whitman!).

With Love,

Jessica

And so, I wrote back:

Dear, dear Brian! and Jessica!

How wonderful to hear from YOU!  And know that I fully appreciate your responses, and take no offense, but value what you have told me for two reasons:  first, it shows me what I always knew, which is what intelligent, well informed, kind, caring and public-spirited people you are. Second, it gives me a chance to sharpen my response to how the Big Pharma/medical establishment messaging has penetrated the minds of thinking and caring people—good and influential citizens and business leaders. 

My main point, however, is to heal wounds. I write in love to people who love one another and want to be together for the holidays and should be able to do so.  However, the tone of your letters tells how hardened this issue has become and that is so painful to hear. So, I hope I can help.  Let me address the points that you raise:

•  Re: vaccines. I fully believe that modern medicine, including vaccines, has/have saved millions of lives. No one was happier to get the Salk vaccine than 8-year-old Betsy and to see the scourge of polio wiped off the planet—except in a few places where ignorance prevails. So, yes, ignorance can lead to poor health choices, but that is not the case here. I’m full of safe and effective vaccines. I can only speak to the science of this pandemic as a result of working with a team of top, highly published and cited clinicians, who have been preventing COVID and successfully treating patients who had it during the past 20 months—I’ve been working almost 24/7 with them. 

•  What I have personally witnessed and been involved in, deals as much with prevention as with treatment. Many of the physicians associated with the FLCCC Alliance worldwide, including my personal physician, who is board certified in internal medicine, work to prevent their patients from getting sick and read up on the best scientific evidence they can find to do so.

•   I was not planning to get any of the new COVID vaccines, but did so because of the New York City mandate that would have banned me from entering any concert, restaurant, gallery, club that I support, or even my church if I didn’t have the card to show proof. I had been successfully preventing getting COVID for nearly a year—since November 2020, on the FLCCC’s I-MASK+ Prevention and Early Treatment Protocol (link below) wearing an N-95 mask, social distancing, and taking the simple mix of available medicines. I had hoped to stay on it, as all the medicines in it are safer than this batch of vaccines, are inexpensive, and have proven in multiple trials to be effective in blocking the transmission and replication of viruses—and new trials from all over the world were showing that the main component, ivermectin, kills the SARS-CoV-2 virus and blocks the spike protein from entering human cells.   

https://covid19criticalcare.com/covid-19-protocols/i-mask-plus-protocol/

https://covid19criticalcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/08/SUMMARY-OF-THE-EVIDENCE-BASE-FINAL.pdf

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•  To be more personal, my physician has had 100% success in keeping hundreds of patients from getting COVID using the I-MASK+ protocol. (He has also had 100%  success in treating other patients who came in with COVID symptoms by using the treatment doses. Ivermectin killed off nearly all the virus in 48 hours and all of it in fewer than 5 days.) He did not think it wise for me to take the vaccines because three female patients in my age group, who also have a rather typical hypothyroid condition that I have—normally not at all debilitating—suffered serious side effects immediately after getting the COVID vaccines. One died.  Another suffered almost immediate and permanent dementia, and the third was hospitalized for 6 weeks with a serious vascular issue and is still not 100%. All had been otherwise healthy.  So, weighing the risks and benefits of getting the vaccine for me, he insisted that, if I was going to get the vaccine, I take the J&J shot, and take ivermectin two days before and two days after getting the shot to neutralize any damaging effects from the vaccine. I did so and I continue to take the lower dose I-MASK+ protocol every 2 weeks for full protection from getting infected.  Had it not been for the mandate, I would have stayed solely on the I-MASK+ protocol. It’s safer and more protective.

•  These vaccines are proving to lose their efficacy much too quickly. Many fully vaccinated people are in hospitals with serious COVID and are able to spread the infection. Data from Israel, the most highly vaccinated country in the world, is showing this.

•  More about the safety issue. Two of the women I work with have daughters who got vaccinated this summer while pregnant—two healthy women living in different states, very normal, healthy pregnancies, and within two weeks of the jabs, both babies’ hearts stopped beating!  They were devastated. Our doctors know of many more such cases. The number of adverse effects from the vaccines (see VAERS reports on CDC.gov) is staggering compared to what scientists normally consider acceptable for any medicine.  

•  By contrast, ivermectin—a simple pill—is one of the safest medicines on the WHO’s list of Essential Medicines. Not only did it eradicate onchocerciasis and elephantiasis, two horribly disfiguring tropical diseases, which is why it won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for its founders in 2015, but it also has been used to treat many viral diseases including Dengue fever, Zika virus and others common in the tropics. Nearly 4-Billion people have taken it for 40 years and fewer than two dozen people have died of complications in that time—compared to over 1,000 who have died from this new batch of vaccines in the past few months! And oddly, in parts of Africa, where millions have taken IVM for decades to prevent tropical diseases, COVID has not been the problem it’s been in North America and Europe. Hmmm!

•  You have been told by media and health authorities that these vaccines are the ONLY way to prevent COVID, but they are not. In Uttar Pradesh, India, a state with a mostly poor population, living in crowded conditions, that is almost as populous as the United States, where few had been vaccinated, officials effectively ended the COVID pandemic by handing out at-home COVID Prevention Kits containing ivermectin. But the role ivermectin played in that remarkable feat has been suppressed in the media. It should have been headline news. They ended the pandemic there. Mexico City, the state of Chiapas, parts of Peru, Panama, the Dominican Republic—many countries have quelled the pandemic with simple preventive packages of this medicine. 

•  The study that convinced our team of doctors last fall to create the I-MASK+ protocol came out of Argentina in 2020, when COVID first hit and hospitals were full of dying patients, Dr. Hector Carvallo had 800 doctors and nurses take ivermectin, while 400 chose not to do so. All wore the same masks and gowns and all worked up close treating infected patients in crowded ERs and ICUs. After 2 weeks, 59% of the 400 that did not take IVM got COVID. Of the 800 who took IVM? Not one got sick! That’s impressive prevention. That study, too, should have been front page news.

Bottom line: based on what the doctors I know have experienced and have researched and have used in lectures to medical professionals around the world, and based on all the people I have interviewed, who have no financial interest in pushing any medicines, who are only interested in saving the lives of patients, I am convinced that the American and Canadian people are being sold a poor bill of goods. You, your children, your mother, and everyone you know could have safely begun taking the I-MASK+ preventive protocol for COVID last December 4th, when our team announced it at a press conference in Houston. And the pandemic would have effectively ended, just like it has in the poorer countries that have used ours and similar IVM-based protocols.

But no, you’ve been told to wait for vaccines. And that there is “no early treatment for COVID.”  So hundreds of thousands of Americans have died needlessly of COVID since then. And untold numbers have died of adverse effects to the vaccines since they came out. And very shortly, Merck will be pushing its new “early treatment” drug—the only one (that will surely be) approved for COVID. Whatever you do, don’t give that to your children even if they get COVID. It’s mutagenic. That could wind up being Thalidomide-2. 

Please let your mother take ivermectin and have her join you for the holidays. She will be safer to herself and others than you are. I know that’s counter to the big message you’ve been reading and hearing, and I cannot expect you to immediately become critics of what all the “experts” are saying and what all of your friends, who read and see the same media, think is correct. 

But you can catch a great discussion about it. I’m in it, along with our leading doctor and two top reporters who have been covering the propaganda war here. It gets into why you are getting bad information from seemingly good sources. And it’s that bad information that is creating this war in families and among friends between those who are vaccinated and those who are not.  

https://odysee.com/@FrontlineCovid19CriticalCareAlliance:c/FLCCC-WEBINAR-102021_FINAL:8

There is a solution to this, but it’s being suppressed, and I’m just sick about that.

Thanks for listening.  Happy to answer any questions you may have. And if I didn’t give you something to think about and help create peace in the family, well, Jim and I would be thrilled to have your mom join us here for Thanksgiving. I’d just ask that she take the preventive dose of ivermectin before coming. ;-)

Big hugs to you all,

Betsy

Then Lou wrote:

Dear Betsy, Brian and Jessica,

Thank you for taking the time to write and share what’s going on with the doctors you work for—I have followed them and respect their research and practice. What you have explained, is what I'm familiar with right now. As I shared with Brian and Jess when Covid-19 started, I determined that I would wait for more studies before I would have the vaccination.

Why so hesitant?

First, a friend of mine, who Brian and Jess knew, was a plastic surgeon. We discussed medicine and God many times. I asked him when a new medicine was safe to take—he said, “wait about 7 years.” For me the Covid-19 vaccination was used much too fast, and I was waiting on the science. I didn’t think I would wait for that long but I was not ready to get it.

Second, I’m very hesitant about new medicine because of my brother Howard. He was born in 1939. This is what my mother told me: At the time there was a new medicine which doctors were using to induce labor. They said it was safe. My mother was pregnant with my brother and the doctor had 10 women ready for delivery. He wanted to travel and see his son play in a football game, He induced labor in all 10 women—4 of the babies, including my brother, lived and all had cerebral palsy. Five years later he had polio.

And so I have a natural hesitancy towards new medicine….

I heard nothing for a week and figured that my efforts did not bear fruit.  And then the phone rang and a choked up Lou said, “Thank you, thank you so much. They are coming.”

A Note From Betsy:

I chose not to use the real names of the family I wrote to because I did not want to expose them—especially the children—to the wrath of friends, who read and watch major media that carry only the incorrect “no early treatment” and “prevention through vaccines only” covid narrative. I just wanted to bring a family together, and am publishing this to, hopefully, help other families.  ;-