TouchPoint Press

I’ve never thought of my authorial activities as a business, but here I am blocked by the same impediments that most enterprises are facing these days due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. (I had to look up the “novel” part of that phrase to discover its meaning in this context, because I was darned sure COVID-19 wasn’t fiction.) Authors everywhere who have been readying to launch a book are stuck on hold.

While my new novel, the legal thriller BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS, became available on Amazon in the Kindle edition a few weeks ago, publisher TouchPoint Press has set the book’s official launch date as May 4. (Readers who have extra time on their hands can get an advance review copy of the book, free, by letting me know at thebrinkof@gmail.com.) That’s when the paperback edition joins the gazillion other books on the website of the world’s largest retail book seller.

Okay, “gazillion” is an exaggeration. The number is really only 45 million or so. I’m not joking. Several years ago, I asked an Amazon guy how many books were on the site, and he said 40 million in print format alone. So the author’s challenge – and it’s a colossal one – is to draw attention to hiser (his or her) book. The internet is rife with marketing outfits eager for authors to fork over 5 bucks to 5,000 bucks, or more, with the promise – but strangely, no guarantee – to sell their books by the boatload.

Therefore, unless you’re rich and can afford to pay some marketing guru many thousands to do the work for you, you’re saddled with that project yourself. Oh, you say, but the publisher is supposed to do that. Don’t we authors wish (that’s a rhetorical question). That day is long gone. Publishers, even the gargantuan Big Five, expect their authors to get down in the trenches and work their arses off. It’s understandable: Back in the day, when you couldn’t just toss off a book and stick it up on Amazon without a publisher, such a humongous glut of books didn’t exist. (I’ve read that 70% of books today are self-published.) Of course, you make a lot more off of a book sale when you don’t have to share the proceeds with a publisher. The problem is, your book has no cachet. Because, I read recently, traditional publishers accept only one of every 1,000 books submitted.

How did I get into all of this? Or, switching from interrogative to declarative: But I digress. I started out intending to talk about what I was doing in place of lining up speaking appearances and the like during the pandemic. Long story short (BTW, I’ve got a book of short stories, The Way We Were, on Amazon Kindle, only 99 cents), another passion has temporarily taken precedence. I’ve discovered a doctor who can, I’m convinced, prevent infection of COVID-19, or, if it’s already latched onto you, get rid of it.

Dr. David Brownstein

All right, enough of the groans. I haven’t lost my marbles. Dr. David Brownstein of Bloomfield, Mich., is regarded as one of the country’s top holistic doctors. Other doctors internationally invite him to their countries to lecture. He has authored 11 books, seven of them national best sellers.

I watch the TV reports and read my daily Palm Beach Post in exasperation as I hear and see the tragic stories of lives lost to COVID-19, especially the ones of health care workers who are endangering themselves in order to treat patients with the disease. Call me naïve, but I think the vast majority of these deaths are unnecessary.

Dr. Richard Ng

A longtime follower of Dr. Brownstein, I’m aware that he and his partners at his Center for Holistic Medicine have treated about 100 patients who either tested positive for the disease or showed symptoms. None died, and none were hospitalized. All recovered. Brownstein did YouTube interviews of four of these patients. One was on the brink of death, when a business partner who was a patient of the center’s Dr. Richard Ng got the doctor to call him. Ng had him stop taking Tylenol and ibuprofen, and prescribed  mega-doses of vitamins C, D and A. Most important, Ng had him prepare a saline solution with Lugol’s iodine, and one with hydrogen peroxide, and use a nebulizer to spray a mist into his lungs. The man was almost fully recovered four days later. You can see all of Dr. Brownstein’s blog posts, including  the videos, at drbrownstein.com.

I have mounted a crusade to disseminate the word about this highly effective protocol. So far, I’ve been beating my head against a wall. The Detroit Free Press, in close proximity to the center, has not responded to an email I sent urging the paper to do a story. It makes me itch to get back into reporting, because I’d dive into such a story.

Dr. Alina Alonso

An editor with the Post responded that the center’s success rate was not all that significant, because the virus’ death rate is relatively low, anyway. Good point – except that some of those 100 patients, it is fair to conclude, would at least have been hospitalized without the treatment. I also sent the information to the Post’s health writer. He did nothing with it, but did write a story touting the effectiveness of ventilators, countering an Associated Press story of a few days earlier reporting that New York officials said 80% of patients on the devices ended up dying. The AP story also said a United Kingdom report put the figure at 66%, and a small study in Wuhan, China, found that 86% died.

I’m almost certain that Dr. Alina Alonso, Palm Beach County’s health director, will give short shrift to the information I sent her about Brownstein’s therapy. Though I have much respect for New York Times correspondent Nicholas Kristof, the email I sent to the paper likely won’t even reach him.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Why such a dismissive attitude among the media and health officials? The answer is that the conventional-medicine establishment wields enormous power over them and politicians. When the AMA, the American Heart Association, the American Cancer Society, the FDA and other organizations report results of studies, alternative medical sources are never consulted for their input. Hey, there’s not much money to be made from holistic health remedies. Ventilators, statin drugs?  Big money there.

So we beat on, boats against the current, as FitzGerald wrote – except I’m still hoping someone out there with influence will propagate the message, so that it isn’t borne back ceaselessly into the past.

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