Another local chiropractor spreads dangerous misinformation about Covid prevention and treatment

Photo: YouTube, 2010

In October, 2021, the U.S. News and World Report revealed chiropractors are a major force stirring up anti-vaccine sentiment and spreading medical misinformation across the country in the pandemic. Often regarded as trusted health professionals, chiropractors who do this pose a potent threat to the public by hawking supplements as alternatives to vaccines, working to help people evade vaccine mandates, recommending unapproved and potentially toxic medication regimens to treat and prevent Covid, and abetting anti-vaccine movements at the local level.

That is certainly happening here in Grand Junction, too.

Many chiropractors in Grand Junction are either trying to profit from the pandemic or are using their platforms as trusted health professionals to spread disinformation about Covid vaccines and give bogus advice on how to prevent or treat Covid-19. Lots of people are making big money off these quack treatments, which are now widely circulating not just in Mesa County, but around the world.

Another local chiropractor who is parrotting this quackery is Daniel A. Lonquist of the Back to Health Wellness Center at 2470 Patterson Rd. Lonquist makes a slew of egregiously incorrect statements on his website, all while inferring he knows more about how to beat Covid than all of America’s legacy public health agencies combined.

On December 22, 2021, Lonquist authored a blog titled “Fact vs. Fiction, Truth vs. Lies, Censorship!” that he posted on his chiropractor business website in which he says:

–The Omicron variant “so far … has been shown to be nothing more than a cold.”

Wrong. Omicron is definitely different than a cold.

While Omicron shares some of the same symptoms as a cold, like coughing and a sore throat, colds tend not to give people high fevers and severe headaches, which are hallmarks of Omicron. Also, compared to other variants, Omicron replicates faster in the bronchi (large airways) of the lungs rather than in lung tissue. While this makes Omicron somewhat less of a direct threat to the lungs than Delta (video), the number of people who have already gotten sick with Omicron and who are flocking to America’s hospitals shows the Omicron variant definitely poses a far bigger health threat than the common cold. The Omicron variant is a mutation of the same highly communicable virus that so far has killed more than 843,000 Americans and left thousands with long term disabilities from long Covid.

— Lonquist says, “There are currently ZERO reported deaths [from the Omicron variant] in the USA…”

Not true.

In cities where the Omicron variant hit early — like Boston, New York City, Chicago and Washington, D.C — cases increased sharply. While deaths followed cases at a slightly lower rate, Omicron is far more efficient at infecting people, and can infect so many more people so much faster than previous variants that even a proportionately lower death rate is still devastating, and hospitals are still overwhelmed with sick people needing care to the point where it has become difficult for them to treat people with other problems. As of January 6 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimated 95% of new U.S. cases are now Omicron. At the same time, the 7-day moving average of new deaths increased 14.4% compared with the previous 7-day moving average.

Lonquist claims: “…the majority of [Covid-19] cases being reported have been in the vaccinated.”

Not the least bit true.

Locally and nationally, for months now, by far the greatest proportion of people hospitalized for Covid-19 throughout the country have been, and continue to be unvaccinated people.

As of January 13, 93% of Covid patients in our local hospitals were unvaccinated. According the CDC, unvaccinated Americans stand an 11 times greater chance of dying than vaccinated Americans. Estimates of the risk of being unvaccinated vary from place to place. In Texas, unvaccinated people are 40 times more likely to die than vaccinated people.

93% of patients currently in local hospitals for Covid-19 are unvaccinated. (Source: Mesa County Public Health Department Covid Dashboard, 1/13/22)

Lonquist claims that Covid “statistically has a zero chance of death” in children…

— So far 710 children under the age of 17 have died with Covid in the U.S. While most children who get Covid have mild or no symptoms, they can not only get very sick with it, but can get a rare but extremely serious multi-system inflammatory syndrome that shares the symptoms of toxic shock syndrome and Kawasaki syndrome. While the number of children who have died from Covid is a very small percentage of the whopping 840,000 people Covid has killed so far in this country, the number is far from zero and certainly not an insignificant number to the hundreds of families who have lost those children.

Lonquist says the Covid-19 vaccine “has a chance of seriously injuring that child.”

— Lonquist fails to give any kind of context for this statement, which is crucial for people to be able to accurately gauge the real risk of the vaccine.

Serious side effects from Covid vaccines in adults and children are exceedingly rare.

From November 3 – December 19, 2021, approximately 8.7 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine were administered to children aged 5–11 years. The Vaccine Adverse Effects Reporting System (VAERS), a self-reporting system, received 4,249 reports of adverse events after vaccination within this age group. Of those, 4,149, or 97.6%, were not serious. Non-serious reactions included fatigue, fever, headache, vomiting. One hundred of those kids, or 2.4% of those reporting adverse events, had what was termed “serious adverse events.” CDC describes it this way:

The most commonly reported conditions and diagnostic findings among the 100 reports of serious events were fever (29; 29.0%), vomiting (21; 21.0%), and increased troponin [a type of protein found in the muscles of the heart] (15; 15.0%). Among 12 serious reports of seizure, one child experienced syncope [fainting] and another child potentially experienced syncope, two children experienced febrile seizure [a convulsion that may be caused by a spike in body temperature], one child had a history of seizures, two children had a potentially evolving seizure disorder, and five children experienced new-onset seizures. Among 15 preliminary reports of myocarditis [inflammation of the heart muscle] identified during the analytic period, 11 were verified … and met the case definition for myocarditis; of these 11 children, seven recovered, and four were recovering at time of the report. VAERS received two reports of death during the analytic period; both are under review. These deaths occurred in two females, aged 5 and 6 years, both of whom had complicated medical histories and were in fragile health before vaccination. None of the data suggested a causal association between death and vaccination.

[Underlining emphasis added.]

Lonquist recommends people take the drug hydroxychloroquine as “prevention and early treatment” for Covid-19, saying the federal agencies discouraging their use are “outright lying,” and that “doctors have been using them with great success.”

He even prescribes specific doses of these drugs for people to take.

Hydroxychloroquine is not approved by the FDA to treat or prevent Covid-19. It is approved to treat malaria and autoimmune conditions like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. Studies show hydroxychloroquine is unlikely to kill or inhibit the virus that causes Covid-19.

A 2020 review of safety problems that occurred after hydroxychloroquine was administered to patients hospitalized with Covid-19 showed people developed serious heart rhythm problems, blood and lymph system disorders, had kidney injuries and even liver failure. They also ended up having longer hospital stays and had a greater risk of needing to be put on a ventilator and dying. In outpatients, the drug made no difference in the length of time until patients recovered from Covid-19. Because of all this, FDA has not approved use of hydroxychloroquine for Covid-19.

— Lonquist recommends nebulizing and breathing hydrogen peroxide at the initial onset of symptoms of Covid-19, and offers to give people “the recipe.”

Hydrogen peroxide is a topical antiseptic used on the skin to disinfect minor cuts, burns and scrapes. It is also a whitener or bleaching agent in some toothpastes.

On September 21, 2021, the Asthma and Allergy Foundation issued a stern warning telling people it is flat-out dangerous to breathe in hydrogen peroxide to try to treat or prevent Covid-19:

The Asthma and Allergy Foundation’s warning issued September 21, 2021, against the fraudulent and dangerous trend being promoted on social media, and buy some chiropractors, of nebulizing hydrogen peroxide as a prevention for Covid-19.

Lonquist also recommends people nebulize iodine solution, saying “Studies have shown up to a 50% protection” from Covid-19.

The FDA has sent cease-and-desist letters to practitioners like Lonquist who have made the same bogus claims about nebulizing and breathing topical antiseptics to prevent or treat Covid. Betadine, which manufactures povidone iodine topical disinfecting products, was forced to put statements on its website warning that its products should only be used topically, and are not to be used to prevent or treat Covid-19.

The FDA’s list of fraudulent coronavirus disease products can be found here.

Lonquist was admonished by the Colorado State Board of Chiropractic Examiners in 2004. The Board sent Lonquist a letter of admonishment for performing a procedure on a patient without obtaining the necessary informed consent. He has been reported to the state Chiropractic Board over the statements on this 12/22/2021 blog on his website.

Below are screen shots of his blog taken on 1/14/2021.

Note that the first page uses the imagery of an actual medical doctor. At the beginning of the article, Lonquist says government health agencies are providing inaccurate information that’s only designed to scare people, and infers he knows more actual factual information than all of these agencies combined:

Page 2 of Lonquist’s 12/22/21 blog:

Page 3 of Lonquist’s 12/22/21 blog:

Final page of Lonquist’s 12/22/21 blog

  6 comments for “Another local chiropractor spreads dangerous misinformation about Covid prevention and treatment

  1. It would be harder to find a co-hort of people with a bigger god-complex, paired with a constant inferiority complex, clawing and scratching at any passing tide to hitch their boat to for unscrupulous financial gain. If they truly cared about the people they serve, they would “stay in their lane” of spine alignment. They are NOT MDs, and have less education than “doctors” holding a PhD, EdD, DVM, DDS, or any other doctoral degree. It is truly obscene what many chiros are saying and doing, preying on people’s justified fears with unjustified and unethical promises for help.

  2. HEMP. Take the recent findings on this and follow the successes. Treatments to nip it in the bud. NOT a vaccine which will not be covered by your insurance should your side effects be serious or fatal. Keep taking data! during these critical times. Be responsible and wear good masks, distancing, and avoiding super spread areas.

    • What makes you think your insurance won’t cover you if you have serious side effects enough to require treatment or hospitalization? Does your health insurance policy specifically exclude side effects from the Covid-19 vaccine, or any other vaccine?

  3. To avoid seeing a Q-cult anti-vaxxer chiropractor, just check their political affiliation from the secretary of state’s website. If the chiro is GQP, avoid them “like the plague.”

  4. Anne, keep exposing those that would exploit others simply for the dollar. Many chiropractors practice beyond their training. The fundamental problem goes back that we are over producing chiropractors. As a family therapist I treated a number of chiropractors that were going far beyond their training.

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