Recently, I had a chance to interview three courageous whistleblowers at the Houston Methodist Hospital in Texas. What they had to say was a mind-blowing condemnation of the state of our “healthcare” system.
We talked about the COVID vaccine mandates that Houston Methodist Hospital “spearheaded” in the U.S. back in 2021, about vaccinated and boosted nurses getting “COVID” anyway — and being forced to come in to work at the ICU while sick with fevers — and about the tremendous fear that the doctors felt over speaking out.
We also talked about a top executive at Houston Methodist allegedly offering the physicians in his inner circle an opportunity to fake the vaccine — while publicly touting COVID injections as a necessary and life-saving measure.
Now, philosophically speaking, it is not that shocking to me as a Soviet expat. That is how things were universally done in my old homeland — public and private policy, so to speak — but seeing such blatant, time-warped signs of all-permeating corruption and censorship-driven behavior in America, as if I were back in the USSR, is bizarre. But first things first. Let me introduce the Houston Methodist whistleblowers.
Dr. Mary Crow
Dr. Mary Crow is a well-respected oncologist and hematologist in Texas. She received her medical training at Baylor College of Medicine and has been practicing for over 30 years. In the 1990s, Dr. Crow was a Chief Oncology Fellow at the MD Anderson Cancer Center.
She is a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO), the American Society of Hematology (ASH), the Harris County Medical Society (HCMS) and the Texas Medical Association (TMA).
Dr. Crow has been very outspoken about the not-so-scientific nature of the “COVID response” from the get-go. When Houston Methodist introduced the mandates for physicians, she applied for a religious exemption. As a result, she was not granted an exemption, and she lost he medical privileges at Houston Methodist.
(To clarify, the term “medical privileges” stands for the right of a physician to work at a hospital. In Texas, physicians are not considered hospital employees but independent professionals who work with hospitals where they have “privileges.”)
Dr. Venu Julapalli
Dr. Venu Julapalli is a gastroenterologist in Houston, TX. He received his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine in in Houston, TX, and has been practicing for more than 20 years. In 2005, he founded a groundbreaking gastroenterology private practice in Houston, TX.
Together with his cardiologist brother, Dr. Vinay Julapalli, Dr. Venu is on a quest to bring the heart back to modern medicine and to restore the sacred relationship between patients and doctors. Both Dr. Venu and Dr. Vinay have been on this quest for a long time.
In 2021, after Houston Methodist Hospital mandated COVID injections for physicians, Dr. Venu Julapalli’s religious exemption was denied, and his privileges at the hospital were suspected and eventually revoked. In the summer of 2021, he filed a lawsuit. His lawsuit is still pending. If you are looking to learn more about Dr. Venu Julapalli and his lawsuit, I interviewed him in detail about it in August 2021.
Another thing that he did in 2021 was organizing an internal listserv for the “medical staff” (physicians with “medical privileges”) at Houston Methodist. The list initially consisted of about a thousand physicians. The purpose of the listserv was to have open conversations about what was going on. A few doctors, such as Dr. Mary Crow, were very outspoken, and questioned the rationale behind the official “COVID response.”
Most weren’t outspoken at all though, even on the internal listserv. Many were afraid to talk. They had concerns — which they shared privately with Dr. Julapalli — but they were too scared to speak loud.
When talking about it, Dr. Venu Julapalli takes no prisoners and makes a great point: If all the doctors who had sincere concerns found the guts to voice their concerns out loud, we wouldn’t be dealing with the nightmare that we are dealing with today.
Conclusion? We have a free will for a reason, and our choices actually matter! Our courage matters. The world takes the shape of our collective choices, and at any moment when we feel scared, or insignificant, or powerless, we are just making the world smaller.
Owen Robinson
Owen Robinson is a registered nurse who has been working in critical healthcare for twelve years. He has been taking care of patients all through 2020 — until he was terminated for declining the booster.
Owen got the original series of COVID injections early on. He did it based on the fact that the general understanding in his circles was that vaccines were good, and safe, and of course properly tested. What also impacted his choice at the time was the fact that he had seen people dying with COVID symptoms in the ICU with his own eyes. According to Owen, the number of people dying during that time was truly larger than what he had seen before COVID.
However, once he himself got sick and tested positive for COVID — and especially when he saw the vaccinated and boosted nurses developing COVID symptoms and working sick — he realized that the claim of “doing this for patient safety” was not panning out.
He also saw that the procedures were organized in such a way that the vaccinated and boosted nurses were almost more likely to be working sick and potentially “spread COVID” than the perpetually tested nurses with religious exemptions.
Vaccinated and Boosted Nurses Forced to Work While Sick
The straw that “broke the camel’s back” for Owen Robinson was when he saw two vaccinated nurses forced by their superiors to come in sick, with fevers — and one of the nurses was so sick that she had to spend the day sitting at her desk with her head down, while the new trainee nurse was doing her job.
Another nurse, not in the ICU, passed out on the hospital floor in the middle of her shift and had to be taken to the emergency room. Allegedly, when it happened, she was taking care of a patient who was unstable, and, based on what Owen had heard, the situation impacted the patient’s condition. In his own words:
[When Houston Methodist announced the mandate], I didn’t agree with the mandate, but I’d already been vaccinated, so I was able to keep my position. Then about the same time that the CDC dropped the … the requirement for nurses … first it was 14 days from being positive for COVID that a nurse could come back into work. Then it went to 10 days.
And about that time, I got COVID. I was positive for COVID. I was out for work, they dropped it from 14 to 10 days, and I told them I’m not coming back in with symptoms […]. If I have symptoms, I’m not coming back in with COVID. And they were like, Okay, well, we’ll see. And they didn’t make me come back in at that time.
So then I came back to work, people are getting sick people have been vaccinated, fully vaccinated with the booster … they had they mandated the booster. [… I refused to get the booster after my exemption expired, and I was suspended and then terminated].
The thing that that caused me to really walk away, was when I came back to work, not only were the fully vaccinated and boosted nurses getting sick, but the CDC dropped that window to five days for nurses to come back in after they tested positive. And the director of our ICU forced two nurses to come back into the unit, sick with fevers and symptoms, and to take care of patients in the ICU, possibly immunocompromised patients in the ICU.
One of the nurses was so ill that she sat at the desk with her head down on the desk most of the day. And she had a trainee, a new nurse who was doing all of her work for her and taking care of her patients for her. And it would just not sit well with me. I didn’t think that was right. I didn’t think it was safe.
They made us … when we applied for an exemption, they made us sign this, this list, that said, I know that I’m not safe for my patients, I know that I’m not safe for my co-workers, because I’m refusing to get this vaccine …
I know that, you know, all these things that that you had to agree that that didn’t even make sense and were very negative, basically … and you had to sign that just to get an exemption. And then the people who did get the exemptions had come in and swab every week.
And then of course, a lot of some people got religious exemptions, and then when they came out with this latest bivalent vaccine, then they pulled all of those religious exemptions for people and fired them anyway. So it was just, it was just terrible situation.
“Air Vaccines”
One of the most explosive parts of the interview was the segment where we talked about how allegedly, a top executive at Houston Methodist was offering select physicians “air vaccines,” a way to fake their vaccination status to circumvent the mandates — all while publicly promoting the mandates as a necessary and noble safety measure.
That, now, brings me straight back to my childhood because this is exactly how things were done in the USSR. Here is the segment of the transcript:
Tessa Lena:
And so now we are coming to the juicy part of the interview, the fake, the air vaccines. So from what I understand the very top management at the hospital at Houston Methodist, the very management that was mandating the vax … […] and promoting it as a safety precaution, a very important one, the very same people were allegedly offering up fake vaccines to the people they liked or trusted … to the physicians they liked or they trusted, to their close circle? So let’s talk about that.
Dr. Venu Julapalli:
So let me give a little context to this. In the course of the exchanges that we were having on the listserv, I would get private messages from folks who would just talk about various things. It was either for support or some question.
So one of those individuals, a colleague, messaged me, she had gotten her initial vaccination. And then Methodist mandated the booster. This was in February 2022. She didn’t want to take the booster. So she filed her religious exemption, it was denied. And so she basically was asking, well, what am I supposed to do now.
And in the course of that conversation, she wanted to talk to us, me and my brother, who’s also on staff at Houston Methodist, The Woodlands. And so we had a coffee meeting, meeting with coffee, and she told us that one of her colleagues, who is the Chief Medical Officer at Houston Methodist at The Woodlands offered her the opportunity to fake the vaccine.
Now, this is, the person who’s being offered this is well respected. Obviously, the Chief Medical Officer wants to keep her there. And she told us that she was taken aback and asked the Chief Medical Officer, if this is something that was asked or offered before, or she was the first one that was offered to and, and the response apparently, that he said that, that he could neither confirm nor deny whether it was offered before.
Now, of course, she didn’t take up the offer. And she ended up getting a religious exemption approved shortly after all went forward. But that’s what apparently is going on.
Now. I don’t know how pervasive this is. I don’t know how extensive this is. I don’t know where this stops, apparently was something that was being done within the … the system, but I don’t know how it was happening. But to me, it just is a culture issue. I mean, this is the Chief Medical Officer at this institution, the institution that started it all on this whole vaccine mandate.
My understanding is that this particular person didn’t even approve of the booster, he no longer thought that this was, this was a good policy. And … and even … he even expressed that. So in that respect, I mean, it’s not really even about the Chief Medical Officer, he’s obviously trying to help somebody out and … and keep somebody that is valued and respected. What kind of culture puts a person in that kind of Catch-22 situation?
I mean, I wouldn’t do it if I were in that situation, but he’s put in that situation. And he’s compelled to, you know, offer somebody the Underground Railroad.
There’s something deeply wrong with the culture, when that very policy that was established by this institution, that they put all of their brand and all of their reputation behind … in fact, in their own words they want to lead the country on … has one of its own executive officers giving somebody a way out?
Tessa Lena:
Well, it poses several questions. One, the most important one of them, the one that is straight in our faces is that if somebody truly believed that the vaccines are needed for safety, then one would not offer a fake one because then one would be afraid for his own life, right? […] You’d want everybody to get it. If you’re genuinely thinking that that’s what’s needed to protect our health. And his own, for that matter.
Dr. Venu Julapalli:
I mean, that’s … that’s such an obvious thing that we actually take that for granted. But you’re absolutely correct. I mean, that leads … that really calls up this point, how do we know anybody’s done anything? I mean, there was no verification process. I mean, if you were just … if you said you were vaccinated, you were considered vaccinated.
So, you know, Methodist will keep going out there, the CEO, Dr. Marc Boom, would go out onto CNN, MSNBC, saying we’re 99% vaccinated. Well, how does he know that? I mean, how does he know who actually took it? Or who actually faked it? How do we know anything at that point?
Tessa Lena:
Well, theoretically, if you decided to be dishonest and not fight the honest fight but instead say that you got the vaccine, just say it, would anybody check your records, your … your card, your CDC card or anything like that?
Dr. Venu Julapalli:
As far as the medical stuff was concerned, no.
Tessa Lena:
So chances that some people, just by human nature, that are considered vaccinated on the system now, that maybe they didn’t even get it, they just said it? It’s possible?
Dr. Venu Julapalli:
Oh I think it’s possible, yes. And how pervasive is it … is the next question on my mind.
Tessa Lena:
I mean, the absurdity of it is just stunning. And so, and as far as you know, this, air vaccine was offered on the booster mandate stage of it, right?
Dr. Venu Julapalli:
That’s when we were informed of the story. So that … that leads to another question. Well, how, when was the system like this begun? Was it begun at the very beginning? Did it only come on later, when, you know, other information had come out, and people were getting more reluctant to do this?
I can certainly say that by the time of the booster mandate, in terms of what I was getting, because we actually surveyed this on the listserv, the medical staff had started originally, in vast majorities of support for the first series.
So we were in the minority, those of us who didn’t, who felt that mandatory vaccination was not a good policy, we were in the minority. By the time of the booster mandate, which was February 2022, that tide had completely turned.
I mean, we had in our survey, 75 to 80% of people saying that the booster mandate and termination of privileges as a result of not following that mandate was not a good policy. Of course, they don’t say that in public and on the record, but they would say that anonymously on a survey.
By the way, per Owen Robinson, unlike doctors, the nursing staff at Houston Methodist had to actually “prove” their vaccination status — which is to say that the randomness of the entire affair was truly Soviet-like.
Burnouts, Mandates and Staffing Shortages
For months now, we’ve been hearing from the mainstream media that the staffing shortages in healthcare are due to “burnout.” According to Owen, while there was some burnout, it was mostly due to the poor administrative management of the situation. He believes that the hospital became truly “overwhelmed” after the vaccine mandates caused many employees to quit, and the staffing shortage became severe.
Also, during the “Omicron” wave, a lot of the people occupying COVID hospital beds didn’t have any symptoms at all or only mild cold symptoms. The reason for that was that the hospital was testing all patients for COVID, even if they came to the hospital with a broken leg. And then, if they tested positive, they would be hospitalized and given a course of Remdesivir.
He notes that while he is a nurse and it’s not his place to diagnose, there were many patients without symptoms or with light symptoms treated for COVID as a part of this protocol, and since the beds were occupied by the people who weren’t very sick at all, the ones who needed to be hospitalized had a harder time getting hospitalized. A mind-twister, indeed! Dr. Crow adds:
“The hospitals had no surge capacity, Tessa, and they have … haven’t had it for 10 or 15 years. The summer before COVID, any one of these hospitals in The Woodlands was on drive by. They had no available beds two days out of seven in the summer. And then when they decided to accept limited trauma, it got worse.
So this idea that the hospitals were overwhelmed was ridiculous, because they were already overwhelmed, all right. These hospitals operate at 98% capacity on a given day.”
Fertility Concerns
Another thing that Dr. Crow mentioned in the interview was her concerns over the effect of the COVID injections on fertility. In her own words:
I see a lot of young women for severe iron deficiency […] we talked about their symptoms, a lot of menstrual irregularities, difficulty getting pregnant, miscarriages, and I thought, well, maybe they’re under stress, everybody’s under stress. And you started hearing this out in … among the vaccinated certainly as the boosters started rolling out.
And if you notice in all the highly vaccinated countries, Iceland, Ireland, UK, there is no baby boom. There’s no baby boom. In fact, there is a drop in babies and this was occurred in Germany and in the EU as well. So I remain very concerned about this moving forward.
Because in the Japanese bio localization study, these lipid nanoparticles bio located in the ovaries, the testes, the spleen, the bone marrow in the liver, okay. And in none of the animal trials, or the vaccinated, the offspring of the vaccinated animals went on to go and get pregnant, they were all killed after nursing.
So I think there is a ticking time bomb here. Because if you look at Africa, which is only 6% vaccinated, they’re not having any fertility problems. And they’re having … they’re having no excess mortality. And they’re doing … and they’re having no COVID.
So there’s something that’s very wrong here, when you actually get into the data. And this is based on the data that these countries have released when they release it. All right, you got to look forward a little bit. But I would just ask my OBGYN colleagues, are you seeing a baby boom? Because every time you lock up human beings, even in the concentration camps, people got pregnant and had babies, and that’s not really happening.
Conclusion
It makes me wonder what our life would be like today if every person — every doctor, every journalist, ever lawyer, every artist, every scientist, etc. — chose to be brave.
There is an art and science to bullying. There is a technique to driving people crazy. There is a methodology to elevating the sense of helplessness and obfuscating the power that we truly have from the moment we are born.
I pray that all this pain we’ve been through is not in vain, and that the ones who have been timid up to this second, connect to their inner lion and choose to be new and brave from now on. I pray that their inner lion guides them on the path of fixing the wrongs that they allowed to happen on their watch. The pain needs to be healed. It is never too late to be brave. It is never too easy to be brave but it is also never too late. There is work to do. Can you see your inner lion? I can.
About the Author
To find more of Tessa Lena’s work, be sure to check out her bio, Tessa Fights Robots.