Andy Knowles: About OPTIMIST

Andy Knowles joins us from the Bahamas to introduce OPTIMIST, an affiliate organization to the World Council for Health.

Andy Knowles is a world-class Olympic athlete, coach, and proud Bahamian. He has dedicated over 33 years to coaching Bahamian swimmers.

OPTIMIST is a group of doctors, medical professionals, pastors, lawyers, and citizens that joined together to promote an expanded protocol in the fight against Covid-19.

OPTIMIST: Offering Preventive Therapeutic Interventional Medicines Increasing Safety & Trust

This is an edited segment from the weekly live General Assembly meeting on January 3, 2022. The full meeting can be viewed here.

This clip is also available on Rumble and Odysee.

General Assembly Agenda Square 3

Here’s what WCH members, staff, and coalition partners are saying about Andy’s presentation:

“Thank you Andy. Your group has a lot of great strategies to share!” -Dr Tess Lawrie

“Thank you for your dedicated work Andy. This is so important to share.” -Jennifer Hibberd

“Such a great approach; taking the information to the people!” -Emma Brierly

“Thank you Andy, great ideas and initiatives.” -Feisal Mansoor

“Way to go, Andy,!!! Way to go OPTIMIST BAHAMAS!” -Mystee Prince

“Great Presentation Andy.” -Margo Victor

Transcript

[00:00:00] [00:00:30] Shabnam Palesa Mohamed: we are now about to introduce our final affiliate for this evening, with us today, depending where you are again. That’s Andy Knowles from the Bahamas and the organization that he’s from is called Optimist. Andy Knowles is a world-class Olympic athlete and coach. He’s very involved with competitive swimming in the Bahamas for over 40 years. As a proud Bahamian, and he believes in giving back to his community and his country, and he’s dedicated over 33 years to coaching the next generation of Bahamian swimmers. His desire is to see every Bahamian learn to swim and led to the development program to teach government primary school children, to swim using private facilities. [00:01:11] Andy Knowles, you’re very warmly welcome. We’d love to hear more about the organization as you walk this path towards health and wellness. [00:01:18] Andy Knowles: Thank you very much for the opportunity. I truly enjoyed this evening. Listened to all the presentations and I’ve felt like I’ve really been educated and encouraged. As interest in just listening and hearing the fact that, we all try to push exercise and eating properly and all of that. [00:01:39] And I’ve been involved with, swim efforts, I’m 60 years coaching and as a athlete and do master swimming now. I’m out in the sun a whole lot and doing a lot of exercise. I’ve been an elder with our church here in The Bahamas. This year makes 24 years. And I’m just going to share a little bit about Optimist, how we got started, what we are doing. [00:02:00] I made a few notes concerning what I heard some of the previous presentations and maybe one or two ideas of how we could help get the word out and help people be educated, but Optimist, [00:02:13] Dr. Jennifer Hibberd: We don’t see you on the screen. [00:02:15] Andy Knowles: Oh, I’m sorry. Yeah. My camera’s not working right now, so you got to see the let’s spin Bahamas and you’ll just have to hear me rather than see me. [00:02:24] So I’m sorry about that. [00:02:25] Okay. Yeah, as you see, Optimist is an acronym, meaning offering preventative therapeutic interventional medicines thereby increasing safety and trust. And we do have a webpage it’s called optimistbahamas.com and it has a link to your, the world council on health as well and a lot of the things that you’re hearing I guess I’ve heard today, is some of those things are on the webpage and people can listen to. Optimist is a committed group of doctors, medical professionals, pastors, lawyers, and concerned citizens. [00:03:04] Back when we banded together to promote an expanded protocol on the COVID 19 fight, which includes the use of ivermectin and other therapeutics to save more lives. So that’s one of our main pillars. The group exists to educate the public about the preventive measures and treatment strategies, which will help fight against the SARS cov two virus and optimize the recovery of those afflicted with the COVID-19 disease. Strategically targeting each phase of the COVID 19 disease, which is the contraction, incubation, the acute illness and recovery. All being vital. [00:03:47] The group has no intention of being political or labeled as anti-vax, but it’s certain doctors and citizens who believe greater measures are being called for than the liberate vaccine only strategy, which is something we just continually seem to be hearing about. Without the education of other options. The impetus to start such a group came about due to these things. [00:04:16] First the seeming imminent threat of a mandatory vaccination program here in The Bahamas, the inadequacy of education on preventative measures and early treatment, the bullying of non-compliant doctors supposedly offering misinformation about therapeutics. So we first met I guess in back in September at my house. [00:04:39] And then from there we’ve had many meetings basically every week as our group is truly grown. And there’s a lot more people feel, oh man, this makes sense. And I want to be a part of it. The three factors working together led to a nucleus of persons banding together. We are pro additional strategies in order to save lives. [00:04:59] The goals are our pillars of purpose points that we put out as first of all, to save more lives and keep more people out of the hospital. To educate on preventative measures and therapeutic medicines that will help fight. Against getting the SARS CoV virus and optimize recovery of those who have developed a COVID-19 illness. [00:05:22] To encourage the government to offer a preventive SARS-CoV-2 package. Households and including vitamin supplements and medicines to bolster the immune system and ward off infection. And another goal is to encourage the government to offer a therapeutic COVID 19 package to households and treat the disease in the early phases before it progresses to acute illness phase. To share with the public, the results of scientific medical evidence on the virus and the vaccine. [00:05:54] And then finally to take a stand against a mandatory vaccination program that will lead to further, loss of religious and constitutional liberties. And as I listened earlier and look in to those goals, one of the things that we’ve been able to do because like you guys have said, it’s just all a one vaccine only approach. And it just seems like nobody else is talking about any of the other side effects and things that are coming out. [00:06:24] One of the things we have done is we printed flyers. We did 5,000 flyers, which basically has a preventive medicines as such and a link to our webpage. And we stand on the most busy corners and just give them out in the traffic. So people encourage people that look at the webpage because that’s one of the only ways they’re going to be able to see and get some of the information. [00:06:47] We have met with the minister of health for The Bahamas and they are all sympathetic and what we’re doing. They don’t say no. They give a lot of lip service to the fact that we want to offer preventative and therapeutic medicines to help in this fight. But then everything in the press seems to be none of that seems to be coming forward. [00:07:05] We met with, through a zoom. For the last several months, we’ve met with different unions, some of the bigger umbrella unions. And again, they agree with us that this should not be something mandated because people need the right to make their own decisions and be able to look at all the evidence themselves and decide. And so we’ve had buy-in from them. [00:07:24] We met with the nurses, union and others. We have other meetings planned moving forward and we’ve just wanted to continue to be able to educate and let people know that we’re out there. There’s this Optimist group that wants to try and help. One of the things that we are going to be looking at doing now early in the new year is to gather with the churches, meet the churches and start to get the churches and the members, because that’s a large part of the population here in The Bahamas, getting them to look at the preventive packages for their congregation. [00:07:55] So we have all the different plans moving forward, and we feel as an optimist group, rather than trying to fight the media and argue as such and get into a, more of a fight with who’s got the right medicine. We just want to be out there in the grassroots and start truly helping people and helping them get well. [00:08:18] And so that’s one of our approaches. [00:08:19] Myself and my wife had COVID back in July and I can share, honestly, that we had, we were on top of it. Our doctors dealt with us on a daily basis. We had the ivermectin, zinc, vitamin D and both of us were covered very well. So I know personally that it works and it’s something that we know that if we can push this to the public and help, help them be a part of what we’re doing. [00:08:46] It’s going to just help that much. So that’s one of all that is one of our reasons and existing. We know that we can truly help a lot of people. As I was listening earlier to one of the things that crossed my mind is there have been a big increase that we have folks in our group. We’re looking at a big increase in deaths, since the vaccine has been started. [00:09:07] And of course you can’t link things directly. But when this thing, the COVID thing first started some 18, 19, 20 months ago. And you had friends and people who had died, my question back then was, wow, did they die of COVID? I have friends and people that I know now, and I see them in the obituary column and I go to their funerals and question now is honestly not, did they have COVID. [00:09:29] Were they vaccinated? Because there’ve been increase in blood clots had been an increase in heart attacks. So there’s a lot of things that like one of the doctors shared earlier, it just does not get out there. And so our thrust is to get the word out, how people check the webpage by doing that, they will be checking your webpage and to just keep the public is educated as we can, while we offer all the preventative and the therapeutic medicines to help save our people. [00:09:57] So that’s what we’re about. I honestly appreciate the opportunity to be able to share with you guys. Yeah. I feel way out of my league, but I really felt like I learned a whole lot today and I know that we have a group. There’s been Kim and Alison and Damian and Misty who have been a part of your group last couple of months, every week, zooming in. [00:10:15] And now I can see why they’ve been very excited and I’m so glad that now Optimist is a recognized group within the WCH so I appreciate the opportunity just to be able to share today. And I’ve been very encouraged by everything. [00:10:29] Shabnam Palesa Mohamed: Thank you very much. Andy Knowles from Optimist. It’s been a wonderful experience learning about your organization and strategies that you’ve been using. A values-based approach to educate people and to empower them with the skills they need to become well and to become free. [00:10:46] So thank you very much for that presentation. And of course, once this is all over, we look forward to visiting you, hopefully in The Bahamas. Thanks very much. [00:10:54] Andy Knowles: Yeah we do have the sunshine that really helps with that. That’s great. Thank you. [00:10:58] Shabnam Palesa Mohamed: Absolutely. And if you can please engage in the the text section of our chat with some people who may have some questions for you, some thoughts and ideas. [00:11:06] We’d really appreciate that. [00:11:08] All right. Thanks very much for that. [00:11:10]

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