THE EARTH IS FLAT, THE MOON IS MADE OF GREEN CHEESE, AND THE COVID VACCINE WILL KILL YOU—PART VI: WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED AND WHERE ARE WE GOING?

“Where are you going now my love?/ Where will you be tomorrow?/ Will you bring me happiness?/ Will you bring me sorrow?”  Carry On, by Stephen Stills, from the album Crosby, Stills and Nash

I promise, this will be my last post on the COVID pandemic.  As a nation and a planet, we have way too many other things that also threaten us, and we have to deal with them, too.  But now is a good’s time to reflect on where we currently stand with COVID, and what it can tell us about the future.

As of today, the world has just passed its 5 millionth confirmed COVID death.  I say “confirmed” because the death toll is much higher, based on overall mortality data.  For an updated running world total, as well as a country-by-country breakdown, you can check here updated COVID statistics .

What do we know?  First, research in southeast Asia has found at least 3 similar strains of coronavirus in bat populations in Laos https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-21240-1  This seems to make it more likely that the virus started as a natural mutation, and less likely that the disease stemmed from some sort of lab experiment.  But there’s no way we’ll probably ever know. 

Nothing new about this.  For centuries, the French referred to syphilis as “the Italian pox” and the Italians called it “the French disease.”

The issue isn’t where it started.  The question is what will happen now.

Scientists had hoped that COVID would work its way around the world, stall once vaccinations were introduced, and then fizzle out.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like this will happen.

More and more, it appears COVID will become endemic, like influenza.  We can fight it.  We can treat it.  But it isn’t going anywhere.

The Americans can blame the Chinese, and the Chinese can blame the Americans. It doesn’t matter.  We’re stuck with it.  As it continues to mutate (the latest variant has been referred to as “Delta-plus”) additional periodic boosters my become necessary, just like influenza.

So what have we learned from all of this that can guide us in the future?  First, we now know that no matter how dire a situation may be, even when thousands are dying daily, there will be politicians and charlatans who will seek to use the situation for their own political and personal gain.

We’ve seen millions around the world reject science in favor of easy answers.  We’ve seen how a “you can’t make me do this” attitude—whether about masks, distancing or vaccines—can be more important than “can I make a sacrifice to help others?”  We’ve seen how people will deny the truth, then seek out obscure and tangential rumors to support their own version of the “truth.”

We’ve seen millions of Americans use their children as surrogates for their own biases, screaming at everyone from public health officers to school board members, with seemingly no concern for the children themselves. 

We’ve seen millions use their religion not as a tool of faith to help their fellow humans, but as a club to bludgeon anyone who disagrees, even if that results in greater suffering and death. Then they just go home, say grace, and pretend to be religious.

We’ve seen doctors, nurses, and other health care workers ridiculed and threatened simply for trying to protect the health of the American people.

We’ve seen Americans attack, maim, and sometimes kill one another simply because they disagree over wearing a mask.

We’ve seen how the virus’s impact on everything from life expectancy to unemployment has disproportionately landed on Black and Hispanic Americans, once again demonstrating the injustice in our current health care system.  Will we finally have the courage to confront this, and make the necessary changes to improve the health of all Americans? 

Finally, we have seen a disease that should have united all of us and compelled us to put aside our differences, reveal instead just how ugly, divided, and weakened we have become.

But can any hope be found in all of this?  Anything that might guide us in the future?  Yes. 

Applications to Nursing and Medical schools throughout the country have increased significantly.  Decades-old research involving RNA, and especially messenger-RNA, which resulted in COVID vaccine development, has been greatly accelerated because of the pandemic.  This holds significant promise for breakthroughs in other areas, particularly cancer treatment.

We have seen acts of mercy, as neighbors have helped one another while loved ones were hospitalized.  We have seen health care workers, sometimes on the verge of exhaustion, pressing on to care for their patients, even when overwhelmed.

We have seen teachers demonstrate amazing resilience in dealing with remote education to continue their educational mission.  We have seen sanitation workers, meatpackers, store clerks, and others whose labor is frequently discounted and overlooked, carry us forward during the darkest days of the pandemic, despite high death rates in their own ranks.

Will we recognize their sacrifices, and better protect them in the future?  Or will we continue to worship billionaires who simply tell us what we want to hear?  As one front line worker once told me, “when they talk about us, they call us ‘essential’ workers.  But that’s not how they treat us.  They treat us like we’re ‘sacrificial’ workers.” 

 Will we do better by these people in the future?  Maybe even pay them a living wage?

The pandemic has accentuated the gap between rich schools and poor schools.  More well-to-do children had computers, iPads, and a plethora of online learning opportunities.  Poorer kids struggled to get by.  Education, the great equalizer of my generation, has failed to uphold our neediest students during the pandemic.  Will we recognize this and seek to remedy it, or continue to let our neediest students fall by the wayside?

These are just a few of the questions we confront as we begin to come out of this pandemic.  Adversity can make a nation stronger—but it can also be an excuse to point fingers, blame others, and refuse to learn.  Which path will we choose?  Will we pull through this together as “The United States of America,” or will we falter, stumble, and fail, ultimately collapsing into “The Disunited States of Stupid?”

All of this may be premature, of course.  We’re not out of the woods yet.  If you’ve been vaccinated, thank you.  Not just for what you’ve done for yourself, but what you’ve done for all of us.  And if you’ve not been vaccinated, please reconsider.  This virus isn’t going away.  Just like the Battle of the Bulge in the Second World War, when Allied troops suffered a vicious counter-attack when they were plunging forward to the very edge of Germany, things could worsen quickly.  We all need to do our part.

Signing off for now.  Worldwide deaths as of this moment–5,032,168.  American deaths–768,847.

Be careful out there. 

THE EARTH IS FLAT, THE MOON IS MADE OF GREEN CHEESE, AND THE VACCINE WILL KILL YOU–PART V: THE WACKOS AND THE CON ARTISTS

“For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10, The Bible, New International Version

“There’s a sucker born every minute.”  Most frequently attributed to Phineas Taylor (P.T.) Barnum

“Ladies and gentlemen, attention please/ Come in close so everyone can see/ I got a tale to tell, A listen don’t cost a dime/ And if you believe that we’re gonna get along just fine

Now I’ve been travelin’ all around/ I heard trouble’s come to your town/ Well I’ve got a little somethin’, guaranteed to ease your mind/ It’s call Snake Oil y’all, it’s been around for a long, long time. . .” Snake Oil, by Steve Earle, from the Album Copperhead Road

Some of you might remember from my earlier posts that I said this edition would be devoted to the “Wackos.”  In that case, you might be wondering where the whole “Con Artist” thing comes in.

Simple.  When you look closely at the disinformation being offered by COVID deniers, one fact is indisputable.

They’re making a hell of a lot of money.  And in America, at least, it seems dishonesty not only pays, but it pays really well.

On June 27, 2020, a previously unknown group stood in front of the U.S. Capitol in freshly starched white lab coats and began to blather some of the most incredible anti-science nonsense ever heard.  They called themselves “America’s Front Line Doctors.”

Actually, few, if any, could claim to be on the front lines of patient care, but we’ll get to that in a minute.

The whole nature of COVID, with multiple variants and an accompanying chorus of mind-numbing political shouting, is evolving (maybe devolving?) so rapidly that June of 2020 may seem like an eternity ago.  But let’s look back in time for just a moment.

COVID’s first wave was slamming the country, and deaths were topping a thousand a day.  The President, who’d previously promised that COVID would magically disappear as soon as warm weather hit, was now at war with his closest scientific advisors, touting unproven treatments, and backpedaling rapidly from his previous statements.  With an election approaching, rightwing strategists knew full well that a failed pandemic response had the potential to swing the outcome.  They needed a Hail Mary.

Just which specific strategist came up with the idea of having a group of anti-government professionals don white coats and participate in the Capitol publicity stunt is unknown.  But the intent was clear.  Go out and find a group of doctors who would parrot every Donald Trump talking point.  Whether any of them had any real experience treating COVID was irrelevant.  It was all about the propaganda.

Masks don’t work.  Social distancing is unnecessary.  COVID really isn’t that bad, and besides, hydroxychloroquine cures it like magic.  Tests aren’t accurate, so why do them?   Just go about your lives like normal.  You have nothing to fear.

You can trust us.  After all, we’re America’s Front Line Doctors.

Peel back the cover, though, and “Front Line” actually looks more like just a “Front.” 

Some members weren’t actually practicing physicians.  Some weren’t even licensed.  The group’s leader, Dr. Simone Gold, was actually a part-time emergency room physician in a small California hospital (even though she lived in Beverly Hills).  Perhaps in an attempt to bolster her credentials, she later held a press conference in front of the well-known Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles.

The hospital responded by saying that she had worked at their emergency room for a grand total of three weeks in 2015, but otherwise had no contact with the facility, and did not speak for the hospital.  They wanted nothing to do with her.

Another noted Frontliner was Stella Immanuel.  A Texas pediatrician by training, Immanuel nonetheless claims to have rare and unique skills in adult medicine, particularly Gynecology.

She can diagnose demon possession.  Well, short term demon possession in women, anyway.  According to Immanuel, such common (and often extremely painful) conditions as endometriosis are actually caused by women having “astral sex” with demons during their sleep (just the thought of that would probably give most women insomnia).

She also had a few things to say about “demon sperm,” but let’s not go into that.  If you don’t understand this lady is a wacko by now, there’s no sense in more detail.

Robert Hamilton, a pediatrician from California, was also on the steps.  Previously, his major contribution to medicine was the development of what he called “the Hamilton Hold” a “technique” guaranteed to stop babies from crying.  You can Google it if you’d like, but it looks for all the world like a chokehold.

James Tadaro hadn’t seen a patient in over 2 years when he stood on the capitol steps.  His main occupation, in the meantime, seems to have been promoting Bitcoin.

Daniel Erikson was also there.  An owner of an Urgent Care Clinic, he was an early supporter of the “herd immunity” theory that said just ten thousand or so would die from COVID in the United States.  Of course, the current number is over 750,000 and counting.

But never mind all of that.  The whole Capitol steps promotion was recorded by Breitbart and released online.  It didn’t seem to matter that none of the doctors had ever treated a patient with confirmed COVID, much less had any expertise regarding COVID. The posting wound up with millions of views within the first few days.

And what a simple message.  Masks don’t work.  Social distancing doesn’t work.  Take Hydroxychloroquine.  Take Zinc.  You’ll be fine.

Of course, nothing was said about vaccines at this point, because Donald Trump was touting his “Operation Warp-Speed” program.  The Frontliners weren’t about to say anything negative yet.  But once Trump was gone, and vaccines were actually being produced, all of that changed.  Suddenly vaccines were the enemy, too.

B.S. sells.  And now it was time for the Frontliners to cash in.  In short order, they started making the rounds among right-wing news outlets. They created a slick website, filled not only with false information, but with plenty of buttons you could click to donate money.

The group embarked on a RV tour to promote their organization.  When they came to your town, you could even buy a “VIP” ticket to catch the show.

The asking price?  A cool $1000 per ticket.  And with Donald Trump out of office, anti-vaccine hysteria moved to the forefront.

That’s right.  Just bashing masks and social distancing was now so yesterday.

The problem with promoting a phony cure, of course, is that sooner or later people figure out that it’s phony.  Demands for hydroxychloroquine started to diminish (after all, Trump himself had bragged about taking it, only to wind up being choppered to the Bethesda ICU).  A new “miracle drug” was needed.

Enter the time-honored drug Invermectin. 

Invermectin is a great worm killer.  If you’re into public health, you know that parasitic worms devastate much of the developing world.  Plus, stopping the spread among animals is essential in modern agriculture.

In 2012, a laboratory study showed that the drug might slow the growth of RNA viruses in laboratory cultures only.  To this day, no one has shown that it alters the course of a viral infection in humans.  In people, it seems to only work on worms.

And it can be toxic, producing everything from nausea to seizures.  At the Oregon Poison Control Center, for example, treatments for Invermectin overdoses have gone up 1000% since it began to be touted as a cure for COVID.  In Georgia, 70% of all contacts with the state Poison Control Center involved Invermectin.

But never mind all of that.  If you’re going to run a scam, you have to keep feeding it.  And no sooner had hydroxychloroquine lost its luster than the Frontliners pivoted to Invermectin.

This insured that the dollars kept rolling in.  By this time, the Frontliners weren’t just cashing in on rightwing donations.  They were also racking up online medical visits.  Go to the America’s Front Line Doctors website, and you could schedule an online consultation, complete with prescriptions by mail.

The cost?  Ninety bucks a pop, for consultations only.  Drugs were extra.

And the ninety dollars had to be paid upfront, and, then you waited to be contacted.  Many patients complained that after paying, they never heard back from the Frontliners.

Does this add up?  You bet it does.  According to records accessed by The Intercept, the Frontliners have taken in $6.7 million on consultations alone (any donations aside).  The dollars going toward unproven medications at Frontliner affiliated online pharmacies check in at another 8.5 million.

Sound like a lot of money?  Well, here’s another tidbit.  When Simone Gold was arrested for her participation with the rioters who invaded the American Capitol on January 6, she went online to plead for financial help to pay her legal fees.  More than $400,000 quickly poured in.

Apparently, being a part of a mob that desecrated and defecated on America’s heart of democracy is no big deal, but silently taking a knee during the National Anthem is a horrible sin.  That’s a discussion for another time, but it shows you just how powerful the appeals from hucksters can be.  Whether Dr. Gold received inspiration from television evangelists or not, her techniques are certainly the same.

Send me money and you will be saved.  Forget what your personal physician says, forget what your local hospital says, just do what I say—and pay me.

But the Frontliners haven’t been the only ones to cash in on bogus COVID cures.  Noted conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has shaken down his viewers for millions by promoting colloidal silver gargles.  And he certainly isn’t alone.  Television evangelist Reverend Jim Bakker (remember him?) will also sell you the same stuff—presumably with God’s blessing.  And there’s California Internist Jennings Staley who was indicted for selling “Covid-19 treatment packs” consisting of hydroxychloroquine, antibiotics, Xanax, and (you guessed it) Viagra for $4000 a pop.

This just scratches the surface.  There are plenty of scammers out there.  They all want your money.  And if they have to tell you lies in the process, they don’t really care.  Their formula is simple—bash vaccines, bash science, convince you that they have the cure, then sell it to you at an outrageous price.

Tulane Cardiologist Dr. Siyab Panhwar has perhaps said it best.  “The whole anti-vax movement is one big multi-level marketing scheme.”

But other wackos are out there, often basking in attention rather than money.  Exhibit A is Kentucky Senator and former Ophthalmologist (he lost his certification by the American Board of Ophthalmology in 2005) Rand Paul.  Paul has maintained that “natural” immunity from infection is superior to that of vaccination, and since he himself had a mild case early in the pandemic, he (and presumably anyone who tests positive at any point) doesn’t need a vaccination because he’s now “safe.”

Science of course says otherwise.  Antibodies wane over time, and vaccines provide additional protection.  And as the virus mutates, the entire population needs all the antibody production it can get.  Whether you’ve had a mild or severe case in the past, the evidence points to added protection from the vaccine not only for you, but your loved ones, as well.

I will give Paul the benefit of the doubt and assume he understands this, and is promoting his stance purely from his radical anti-government, anti-regulation biases.  If not, the other possibility is that he might actually believe what amounts to a junior-high level understanding of science.

If this is the case, he should be glad he’s already a doctor.  Because if he were in medical school today, and said something this extraordinarily stupid, he’d probably get himself flunked out in a heartbeat.

The list just keeps going on and on.  Dr. Joe Mercola, a long time anti-vaxxer who’s personal fortune is estimated at $100 million, donates to a variety of organizations to discourage vaccinations.  He also claims that cancer is really a fungus and baking soda can cure it.

And then there’s Ohio physician Dr. Sherri Tenpenny.  She claims to be board-certified in 3 different specialties, although I couldn’t find a single reference to her obtaining full residency training in any field.  She’s famous for claiming that vaccinations will make you “magnetic” and that keys and spoons will stick to your forehead.  It would be great if this were true, since it would be a cool trick I could use to entertain my grandkids, but as a three-time vaccine recipient, I can tell you from personal experience that this is B.S.

More recently, another wacko arrived on the scene.  The Centner Academy in Florida.  It calls itself the “Brain School.”  Maybe it should change its name to the “Brain Dead School.”

Centner, in its zeal to promote its extremist philosophy, has announced that any child who’s been vaccinated must quarantine for 30 days before returning to class.  This is based on the totally dishonest theory that vaccinated children can somehow “infect” others.

There’s nothing to this theory.  It’s untrue, disingenuous, and immoral.  Its only goal is to discourage vaccination.  Go back and read my earlier post on vaccinations if you like.  I describe how the vaccine doesn’t even contain the virus.  It’s physically impossible for it to infect someone! 

But never mind.  Apparently, conspiracy theories are more important than children’s lives at Centner.

I’ll wrap up now.  Sadly, I’ve only given you a sample of the quacks, scammers, and wackos.  Whether based on conspiracy theories, antigovernment hatred, or a perversion of religious faith, they’re out there.  And they would love to get their hands on your money.

In a few days, I’ll conclude my thoughts on COVID.  We have plenty of other pressing issues that confront our nation, and they all need to be discussed as well.  We can do that in later posts.

In the meantime, I can only say that our national response to this deadly epidemic has been nothing short of heartbreaking. 

I usually don’t include links to references I use in my posts because I reason that anyone wanting further information can look it up on-line, but today’s post has contained a huge amount of content.  For anyone wishing to investigate further, here’s a sample of sources.

Tornado Alley (PROG): How ‘America’s Frontline Doctors’ Sold Access to Bogus (advfn.com)

Faster than warp speed: early attention to COVD-19 by anti-vaccine groups on Facebook (nih.gov)

Covid-19: “Shkreli Awards” go to pandemic’s top profiteers | The BMJ

Health Care Network Made Millions Off Hydroxychloroquine, Ivermectin (theintercept.com)

https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/19/us/doctors-covid-vaccine-misinformation-invs/index.html

https://medika.life/exposing-americas-frontline-doctors-and-their-financial-empire-built-on-hydroxychloroquine/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2021/07/19/de-platform-the-disinformation-dozen/?sh=372c00c77378

https://time.com/6092368/americas-frontline-doctors-covid-19-misinformation/

https://gizmodo.com/who-are-americas-frontline-doctors-the-pro-trump-pro-1844528900

THE EARTH IS FLAT, THE MOON IS MADE OF GREEN CHEESE, AND THE COVID VACCINE WILL KILL YOU—PART IV

“Necessity not only authorizes but seems to require the measure, for should the disorder infect the Army . . . we should have more to dread from it, than from the Sword of the Enemy.”—George Washington, General of the Continental Army, and later first President of the United States of America, describing his decision to mandate Smallpox inoculations for all troops, January, 1777.

PART 4: MANDATES

By autumn of 1777, George Washington and his Continental Army were locked in a war with the world’s mightiest military force:  the British Army and their German Hessian allies.  Things weren’t looking good for the General from Virginia.

British troops occupied New York City, and were advancing on the Capitol of Philadelphia.  The Continental Congress escaped to York, Pennsylvania, where they tried to hold the fledgling American government intact.  As winter approached, Washington had no choice but to pull his forces away from Philadelphia to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, and attempt to regroup and retrain.

Accounts of the retreat fill history books.  Poorly clad and hungry, the troops left bloody footprints as they trudged through the snow.

At Valley Forge, things weren’t much better.  Influenza, pneumonia, and dysentery killed soldiers by the hundreds.  Only one disease was absent from the devastation suffered by the troops.

Smallpox.

Earlier that year, Washington had ordered (OK, mandated, if you like) that all Continental troops receive the Smallpox vaccine.  As a student of history, Washington knew full well that in prolonged military campaigns, wide-spread disease killed far more men than did enemy weapons.  Also, he was still stinging from the previous year, when an attempt to catch the British off-guard by pressing an attack into Canada had been an unmitigated disaster when Smallpox devastated the American invaders.

By January of 1777, Washington had seen enough, and ordered the vaccines to be given to all troops.  It was one of the most important decisions that affected the War’s outcome.  By spring of 1778, Smallpox cases among the American soldiers had dropped from 13% to around 1%.  From a functional standpoint, Washington had just increased the size of America’s fighting force by over 10% with a single order.

It was a bold and courageous decision.  It was also illegal.

In 1776, the Continental Congress, swayed by anti-inoculation zealots, had passed a law prohibiting military surgeons from administering Smallpox inoculations.  Washington simply ignored it.  By 1781, at Yorktown, Virginia, a revitalized Continental Army brought British colonial rule to an end.

What is it about human nature that instinctively rejects what is clearly the right thing to do, simply because someone else tells us we “have” to do it?  Why is it that many who consider themselves to be “patriots” on a par with Washington and his men refuse to take the same vaccination steps to protect their country that Washington took? What if Washington’s men had refused as well—would we be singing “God Save The Queen” today instead of “The Star-Spangled Banner?”

And why have we used the word “mandate” to connotate anything we don’t want to do, but feel that other laws and rules that protect our interests are just fine?  All states have laws that mandate speed limits, especially in school zones.  But what if I consider myself a good driver?  Why shouldn’t I be able to drive 80 miles per hour past a grade school at 3 O’clock in the afternoon?  Because I’m a great driver, restricting my right to drive by “mandating” a 25-mph school zone is blatant oppression, isn’t it?

How you feel about that question may depend on whether you’re the driver in question, or whether you’re the parent of one of those school kids running out of the building at 3 PM.  So it is with plenty of other laws, rules, and yes, “mandates” if you’d like.

In the fall of 2009, I had just been named Vice-President for Health Sciences at Creighton University.  The H1N1 strain of the influenza virus was just hitting the country.  I helped formulate a plan to vaccinate all medical, dental, pharmacy, nursing, physical therapy, and occupational therapy faculty at our institution.  It was the right thing to do.

Influenza vaccines had been around for decades, so there was nothing new or “experimental” about it.  Nonetheless, several faculty members were appalled that the vaccine was “mandatory.”  Several of them threatened to quit.  A few even did.  But Creighton endured the outbreak with one of the lowest campus disease rates in the nation.

I’ll never forget one senior faculty member who was adamant that he would not take the vaccine. “You have no right to force me!” he said, red faced and fuming.  “This is just another example of big government!  This is what’s going to happen with Obamacare!” (Remember, this was 2009).

I shook my head.  “Look, Bob (not his real name),” I said.  “I know how I could get you to take shot.”

“What do you mean?  You can never make me take it!”

“Of course I can,” I responded calmly.  “I’d just hold the syringe right in front of your face, like this.”

I held up my thumb and forefinger as if I were holding an imaginary syringe.   “Here’s the vaccine, Bob, but you can’t have it!  We’ve decided only certain faculty can get it, only those who are really important and whose work is indispensable!  And that’s not you!”

“Wha. . .What?” he stammered.

“That’s right, this is rationing!  Nooooooo, you can’t get the vaccine.  You’re too old!  You don’t deserve it!  You’re not worthy!  This is a Death Panel—just like Sarah Palin warned you about!  Everyone else can get the vaccine, but not you!  No matter what, you can’t get the vaccine!  No matter what you say, no matter what you do, no matter what happens, no matter how bad this outbreak gets, you won’t get the vaccine!  You won’t ever get it!”

By now, Bob was stuttering and shaking.  “Come on, Bob, get real,” I said, dropping my hands to my sides.  “If I did that long enough, you’d grab the damned syringe out of my hand and give yourself the shot, wouldn’t you?   So why don’t you just stop all of this nonsense and just take the damn shot?”

He turned and stomped off without a word, but I’d apparently made my point.  He ended up taking the vaccine.

Let’s be honest.  This is purely a matter of ego.  It’s a matter of “I’m too important to do what I’m told, and that’s all that matters.  Screw everyone else.”

Of course most people won’t have the guts to admit that.  Instead, they’ll come up with all sorts of weird rationalizations—this is really a plot, this is an affront to my freedom (yeah, tell that to George Washington’s men), the vaccine doesn’t work, it just might-possibly-maybe-remotely-theoretically have side effects.

Anyone who says this deserves a one-word response:  B.S. (OK, that’s really two words, but I’m trying to be polite and just use initials).

My Father, my Uncles, as well as the Fathers and Uncles of everyone I grew up with, served in World War II.  Most of them didn’t volunteer.  They were drafted.  They weren’t exactly crazy about going, but they did their part to preserve our nation.

They didn’t do it so that 75 years later, when America was at another war, this time against the COVID virus, our nation would throw its hands up and say “Oooooooh!  I don’t wanna get the vaccine!  Oooooh!  I don’t wanna wear a mask!  Oooooooooooh!   This is all about me, and not my fellow countrymen.  Ooooooh! You can’t make me!”

As I said in my first post to this blog https://afamilydoctorlooksattheworld.com/?p=77, nothing would make our adversaries happier than for us to continue this kind of nonsense.  If we’re really dumb enough to keep this up, we might as well hand the keys to America over to our enemies.

If this makes anyone uncomfortable, I suggest you do something right now.  Go to a mirror, and take a good hard look.  Ask yourself if whatever it is that makes you think this virus isn’t real, whatever makes you think that you shouldn’t “have” to wear a mask or get vaccinated—no matter how it might ultimately help someone else—whatever is compelling you to deny the science, is it worth it?  Is it really worth it?  Is it what Washington’s men who willingly took the smallpox inoculation, and the Americans who fought the world over were really risking their lives for?  So you wouldn’t “have” to wear a mask?

Do you really think mask wearing is an unreasonable sacrifice, when compared to everything they gave?

Think about it.  Think about it long and hard.

When I began these last four posts, I said I’d talk about viruses, vaccines, masks, mandates, and whackos.  I haven’t been able to get to the last item on the list—the whackos. 

And it’s a long list.  Stay tuned for the next posting.

PART 3: MASKS

If you’re one of those people who, for whatever reason, feels the need to deny the reality of COVID, call it a hoax or a conspiracy, and publicly carry on about how it’s no worse than the flu even though you secretly fear the virus, at least you can get the vaccine in private.  That’s what millions of Americans, some of whom still deny the truth about the virus in public, have done.  Many have snuck into neighboring states to get the vaccine, asking that their friends back home not be told, lest it tarnish their anti-vaccine reputation among their hardcore comrades.

I could make an analogy here to rabid anti-abortion extremists who quietly sneak their daughters out of state for an abortion when they get pregnant, but I’ll leave that comparison up to the reader.

But the issue of masks is different.  For many, the issue of wearing a mask has taken on a political meaning far removed from science, evidence, or even reality.  It means you’re weak, it means you’re afraid, it means you’re on the other team.  And if you’re one of those people who denies the reality of COVID, it’s a stark reminder that there are a lot more people out there who disagree with you than agree.

But let’s get something straight from the outset.  Masks aren’t so much to protect you, but to protect us all.  We’ll get to that in a minute.

When COVID first arrived, it was soon known that an N-95 mask was the most effective protection for the wearer.  N-95s started selling like hotcakes.  But I can tell you from personal experience that they’re hot, and no fun to wear.  Unless, of course, you’re in direct contact with a patient who has the disease.

In addition, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) initially advised that mask wearing was unnecessary, so long as we maintained “social distancing,” that is, stand 6 feet apart.  Later, when they recommended mask wearing, anti-science zealots claimed this was proof that COVID was a hoax, and that the CDC couldn’t be trusted.

Which, of course, is ridiculous.  The reason for the no masks/masks recommendation change was simple.  Early in the pandemic, evidence showed that the virus was carried on droplets, but not on aerosol. 

Why was this important?  Because droplets are relatively heavy, and fall to the ground shortly after coming out of your mouth.  Aerosols are much lighter and float through the air.  So if the droplets fell to the ground, so did the virus.

Here’s the best way to think of it.  You’re facing someone and listening as they speak. Suddenly they sneeze.  That wet stuff from the sneeze that covers your face?  That’s droplets.

But if you’re standing across the room from that person who sneezes, you won’t feel a thing.  Why?  Because those droplets have fallen to the ground before they ever hit your face.  In other words, without realizing it, when it comes to this person’s sneeze, you’re actually protected by social distancing.

But when research revealed that the virus could also travel on aerosol, social distancing wasn’t enough.  Though not perfect, a mask was shown to slow the spread of aerosols, and thus the virus.  That’s when the CDC recommended mask wearing.

Remember, outside of a cell (and our body) the virus is basically dead.  It doesn’t have little arms and legs, and doesn’t swim around on its own.  The only way it can get into your body is to be carried by a droplet or an aerosol.

Masks don’t protect you.  Let me say it again, they don’t protect you.  But by slowing the person-to-person transmission, masks can reduce disease incidence, and buy time to get the vaccine.

When the vaccine arrived, we thought that anyone who was vaccinated couldn’t get the disease, and therefore couldn’t transmit the disease to someone else.  Hence, they didn’t need a mask.

Then along came the Delta variant.  And with a substantial number of unvaccinated people, the variant spread quickly, mutating at every turn.  Cases of the virus rose dramatically. And if you had been vaccinated?  You might still get infected with Delta—and pass it on.

How to prevent such transmission, even among the vaccinated and the unvaccinated?  Going back to masks is about the best approach we have at present.

Such a recommendation, of course, isn’t met with agreement by many.  Instead, it’s “you’re lying to us again!”  “Don’t trust the science!  Don’t trust the scientists!  Don’t trust Fauci!”

Fine.  But what you had better trust is this:  wearing a mask will make it less likely, if you have a mild case of Delta and don’t know it, that you’ll transmit the virus to someone who’s more vulnerable than you, and enable the virus to go on mutating into deadlier forms.

Many people understand this, and choose to wear a mask indoors.  I applaud them.  Many others also understand this, but still refuse to wear a mask because of political, religious, or just a “screw you, you can’t make me do it” attitude.  If you’re one of these people, you need to think long and hard about what you are doing. 

People have come up with all kinds of goofy reasons not to wear a mask.  No, it doesn’t act as a disease magnet, somehow magically pulling a virus out of the sky and infecting you.  No, it doesn’t damage your health by making you rebreathe your own germs (your body actually couldn’t care less).  No, it doesn’t dangerously raise your carbon dioxide levels (I love it when people who smoke say that).

And I understand the political reasons.  Wearing a mask is an outward, visible admission that the virus is not a hoax, contrary to what certain politicians told us.  The fact is, they were wrong—very wrong.  And if we believed them, we were wrong.  Nobody likes to admit they were wrong, or worse yet, voted for someone who was wrong, and for many people, that’s exactly what wearing a mask means.

But it’s probably the religious reasons that baffle me most. Wearing a mask, according to some, separates you from God. 

Really?  A mask?

Others say it contradicts the notion that man was made in God’s image, because wearing a mask is hiding the image of God.  Thus, a mask is blasphemy. 

Hmm.  I don’t recall any biblical reference only to man’s face—just to man in general.  If you are one of those who takes scripture literally, then the rest of the body is in God’s image, too.  Are wearing clothes also blasphemy?

But the strangest is the notion that wearing a mask is a demonstration of a lack of faith, because God wants you to trust him (or her) and not a mask.

To those who would say this, let me remind you again.  A mask doesn’t protect you.  It decreases the spread of the virus, and may save the lives of others.

And if you can honestly say that the lives of others aren’t as important to you as the “right” not to wear a mask, maybe you should ask yourself what your faith is really all about.

Two things are certain.  As this virus pings around the globe and continues to mutate, recommendations regarding mask wearing will continue to evolve.

And second, each time this happens, anti-mask, anti-science zealots will continue to come up with innumerable rationalizations as to why they shouldn’t “have” to wear a mask.

But what happens when people simply refuse to take steps to protect themselves and their fellow citizens through masks, social distancing, vaccinations, and other common-sense measures?  When should the government—state, federal, or local—step in? 

This is the question that, for many people, triggers a response that is far more visceral than thoughtful.  And there are plenty of less-than-honest people out there who are working to manipulate this response to their own personal, political, and financial advantage.  And they’re doing it increasingly often.

More on that next time.

“There’s no vaccine against stupidity.”–Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

PART 2: THE VACCINE

Vaccine denial, anti-vaccine hesitancy, or outright anti-science belief, whatever you want to call it, is nothing new.

Way before the COVID vaccine, even before polio, there was Smallpox.  The disease was horrible.

The skin broke out in pus-filled blisters, the body shook with fever, and over 30% of those infected died (well, a lot more than 30%, if we’re talking about children).  And if you survived?  There was still a high likelihood you’d end up blind.  The disease was known and feared the world over.

Well, not entirely the world over.  Most indigenous peoples on this side of the Atlantic had never been exposed.  Once Smallpox hit native American tribes, it slaughtered them by the thousands.

In 1721, as Boston, Massachusetts braced for an approaching outbreak, the preacher Cotton Mather was startled by the news he heard from a slave.

We also have this disease in Africa, the slave told him.  But it’s not nearly as deadly.  We take a small knife and make a shallow cut into the arm of a healthy person.  Then we rub some of the pus from an infected person into the wound.  The person with the cut experiences swelling and the formation of pustules, but only on the arm.  The pustules heal, and the person never gets infected with the disease itself, even if others around him are dying.

Yes, sorry to disappoint any white supremacists out there, but the first successful vaccination was pioneered in Africa.  Today, we also know that similar procedures were also practiced in India and China.

Years later the British physician Edward Jenner discovered that women who worked milking cows would frequently contract “Cowpox,” a similar but much milder disease than Smallpox.  Reasoning that a procedure to introduce Cowpox into the skin would be less painful, but still prevent the dreaded full-blown Smallpox, Jenner began vaccinating his patients with Cowpox.

Over the next 200 years, his vaccine saved millions of lives and wiped Smallpox off the face of the earth.

But it wasn’t easy.

The notion of a vaccine was initially met with shock, scorn, and outrage.  Preachers thundered that  introducing something of animal origin into the human body was an affront to God!  The vaccine will turn you into a cow, others said!  Well, maybe not a cow specifically, but it will make you grow horns and start producing milk by the gallon, if you’re a woman.

The political cartoon from an English publication (pictured above) pretty much says it all.

Jenner and others were threatened with death.  But eventually, they persevered.  Within 50 years, Smallpox vaccines were mandatory for children in England.  Smallpox rates plummeted. 

Over the ensuing years, other vaccines were developed, primarily for children, making it much more likely for young people to survive to adulthood. Polio, pertussis (whooping cough), diphtheria (which killed my Mother’s sister at age 9), and tetanus vaccines followed.  Others came later.  And through it all, anti-vaccine zealots fumed.  But with each successive vaccine, death rates declined.

Despite this, vaccine opponents still didn’t let up.  In the United Kingdom (UK) in the early 1970s, they zeroed in on the triple-valent diphtheria/pertussis/tetanus (DPT) shot.  Allegations that the DPT vaccine caused neurological disorders in children began to make the rounds.  Parents started suing vaccine manufactures.  No study ever showed a link between DPT and such disorders.  But the lawsuits caused vaccine prices to skyrocket. 

However, the continued protests took their toll.  By 1974, DPT administration in the UK had fallen 78%.  No surprise, then, when 5 years later, the biggest pertussis epidemic in 20 years slammed Britain. 

And during the time of decreased vaccine use?  There was no decrease in the incidence of neurological disorders the vaccine supposedly caused.

Administration of DPT in the UK and around the world began to rise once again, despite the sentiments of anti-vaccination zealots.  Preventable diseases fell.    

Then along came Andrew Wakefield.

A relatively unknown British surgeon, Dr. Andrew Wakefield shook the world in 1998 when he published his study of 12 children in the renowned medical journal, The Lancet. The widely used measles vaccine MMR, Wakefield claimed, caused autism.

Autism is a heartbreaking condition that begins early in life.  In its more severe form, it robs a child of its ability to communicate verbally with the outside world.  Even in milder forms, it distorts relationships and makes everyday activities into obstacles.

The article and its ensuing publicity carried a horrifying message.  Give your child an MMR shot and you could be giving them autism.  MMR vaccine refusal went through the ceiling.

Immediately, other researchers tried to confirm Wakefield’s finding.  None of them could.

It turned out, after years of investigation, that Wakefield’s paper was fraudulent.  He ignored data that didn’t support his thesis, and fabricated data to make his case.

In blunt terms, he lied.  Further investigation also showed that a group suing vaccine manufactures had  paid Wakefield over a half million dollars two years before his paper was even published.

The Lancet retracted the article, and Wakefield had his medical license revoked.  He moved to the U.S., and went on the payroll of anti-vaccination campaigners here.

In over twenty years, despite enormous research, no one has found a credible link between MMR and autism.

But Wakefield had an impact.  MMR administration has never returned to its pre-1998 levels. Measles epidemics on college campuses among unvaccinated students have cause colleges to suspend classes.  And internationally, 144,000 children die of the disease each year.

Which brings us to COVID.  When scientists understood that the disease was a member of the coronavirus family, they immediately were concerned.  Although years of research had produced anti-viral medications that can diminish (but not cure) HIV, herpes, and a few others, no treatment had ever been developed that could actually eliminate a virus.  And for coronaviruses, nothing was even on the drawing board.

As soon as the infectivity of the virus became apparent, everyone understood there was going to be no miracle cure, and that our best hope was to get to a vaccine as quickly as possible.  In the meantime, we would have to use common sense initiatives like masks and distancing to bob and weave while the virus punched away at us.

To say that our nation-wide response to COVID was pretty half-assed would be an understatement.  I’ll talk more about that in upcoming posts, but suffice it to say that false information from America’s highest leader caused the virus to spread far more rapidly than it ever should have.  By the time the first vaccine was released in the U.S., 375,000 Americans were already dead.

A rapid dissemination of the vaccine, similar to the release of the polio vaccine in the 1950’s, should have slowed transmission to a crawl.  Of course, that didn’t happen.

Why?  Enter once again the anti-vaxxers.

The number of allegations that have been made against the COVID vaccine could fill a book, so I’ll just hit some of the more common misconceptions.  The vaccine alters your DNA.  It turns you into a magnet.  It implants a microchip somewhere in your body (I had a patient once tell me that I must have a microchip somewhere in my own body because I had smallpox vaccine when I was younger.  I tried to explain microchips weren’t even invented then, but it didn’t seem to do much good).  It poisons your immune system.  It causes massive inflammation.

First, let’s talk about how the vaccine works.  A shot of RNA enters your body, and travels to your cells.  It does not enter the important nucleus of the cell (where your DNA is stored) but it remains in the cell’s outer region and causes the cell to do one thing and one thing only.  Make spike protein.

Why is this important?  Because the surface of a COVID virus is covered with spike protein.  It’s what allows the virus to attach to a human cell, inject its own genetic material into the cell, and cause the human cells to reproduce the virus like mad.  The body’s immune system, having never seen the virus before, is caught off guard.  By the time it responds effectively, the patient may already be dead.

But what if the body’s immune system is already primed against the spike proteins, and when the virus strikes, immediately attacks the virus before it’s had a chance to infect a critical number of cells?  The virus is stopped in its tracks.

In a nutshell, that’s how the most basic COVID vaccines work.  Inject some RNA that makes spike proteins and thus prime the immune system to destroy the spike protein-covered COVID virus as soon as it hits your bloodstream.

And with a second exposure to the spike protein?  The immune response may strengthen even further.  Hence, the concept of booster shots.

But wait.  What happens to that RNA that was injected, and what about all those spike proteins?

The vaccine’s RNA strand doesn’t replicate itself.  It just makes some spike protein and then falls apart, like everything else in our bodies that doesn’t replicate.  Remember, the RNA is just a strand of bases—it isn’t even alive.

And ditto the spike proteins.  They’re just a strand of amino acids, and get disassembled like every other protein that’s metabolized in the body.   They aren’t alive, either.  And they certainly aren’t magic, despite what some people would have you believe.

The spike protein part is important, because it seems to be at the heart of the most recent conspiracy theories making the rounds.  Previous claims that the vaccine causes cancer, Alzheimer’s, infertility, altered DNA, is made from aborted human fetal cells, and causes COVID virus to be shed from the body of the vaccine recipient (remember, the vaccine doesn’t even contain the virus) have previously been shown to be total B.S.

That leaves the spike protein as about the only scapegoat left, if you’re desperate to find anything to discredit the vaccine’s use.  And anti-vaxxers have seized on a scientific paper that proposes that spike proteins in large enough quantities could be harmful.

But here’s the part of the paper they ignore.  The quantities produced by a COVID vaccine aren’t nearly large enough to cause the side effects the paper proposes.

Is the quantity important?  Sure.  Do you take vitamin A?  Of course you do.  It’s in our food—whether you take vitamin supplements or not.

But in large enough doses, Vitamin A can be lethal.  So should you therefore avoid all foods that contain Vitamin A?  No, because without it, human life wouldn’t be possible.

No study has shown that spike protein induced at the level of a COVID vaccine is harmful.  Plenty of studies have shown that the COVID virus very well might kill you. If it’s the spike protein you’re worried about, and not the virus, you’re barking up the wrong tree.

So get the vaccine.  It’s safe, and it works.  It won’t give you cancer, alter your genome, make your hair turn green, cause your teeth to rot out, cause your boobs to shrink, or make your penis fall off (if you’re one of those people who worry about that sort of thing).

But at this point some may say, “wait a minute.  All this science stuff is fine.  But you can’t MAKE me get this!  All this mandate stuff is dictatorship and un-American!  And you haven’t even mentioned masks!  Why do I need them?  And why should I have to wear one!”

Important questions and we’re out of space.  But trust me, I’ll have plenty to say about all of that in my next post.  See you then.

In the meantime, any thoughts or questions, feel free to contact me.

“A lie gets halfway around the world before truth has time to pull its boots on.”—commonly attributed to Mark Twain

“They used to say ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ but that isn’t true.  Whatever doesn’t kill you mutates, then comes back and tries again.”—Author unknown

Up until then, it had been a routine visit.  A check up for a new mother and her two-month-old baby.  Both were doing well.  Barely a year out of my residency training, I ticked off the do’s and don’ts for new babies, scheduled a follow-up appointment, then mentioned the immunizations the child would receive.

The new mother’s expression changed.  “I don’t want him to get any shots,” she said.

“Don’t worry,” I responded, assuming she was concerned because the shots might be painful.  “It’s really quick and it’ll be over before he knows it.  A lot of babies don’t cry a peep.”

“It’s not that,” she said, with a bit of hesitation.  “I don’t want my faith to be weak.  I’m trusting God to take care of him.”

I was so stunned, my response leaped out of my mouth before I even had time to think.

Maybe a little explanation is in order.  My approach to vaccines and infectious diseases has been shaped not only by my medical training, but also my personal experiences.  In 1953, at age 18 months, our small-town family doctor examined me and found a rigid neck and a temperature of 105.  He dropped everything, and personally dashed me down to the Kansas University Medical Center in his own car, saving my life.  With a lot of luck—as well as ten days of antibiotic injections every six hours into my spinal fluid—I somehow managed to survive pneumococcal meningitis.

Three years later, my mother was the first person that same family doctor contacted when he received his initial shipment of polio vaccine.  She had me into his office in less than an hour.

Today, we have a vaccine for pneumococcal infections.  I think anyone who saw what I went through—a spinal tap every 6 hours—would want their child to get the shot. 

So it shouldn’t be surprising how I responded to that new mother who refused her child’s vaccines because she wanted to just trust God.

“Gee, lady,” I blurted out.  “You wouldn’t just leave your kid lying in a ditch somewhere and expect God to take care of him, would you?  Don’t you think God wants you to take a little responsibility for your child’s health, too?”

The young mother looked stunned, then mumbled something about going home and praying about it.  I never saw either of them again.

All of this was in 1982, long before the British medical journal The Lancet’s discredited article falsely linking vaccines to autism, long before a xeroxed letter that falsely claimed Proctor and Gamble was run by the Church of Satan had swept across the country and “gone viral” (before such a term was even invented), and long before the public availability of the internet.

Since then, it seems things have only gone downhill.

I won’t begin to touch on all of the falsehoods that have been spread by internet sites as well as an agenda-driven right-wing media.  I described some of these things in my last post “An Open Letter to The People of The United States of America.”  But suffice it to say these things have done more to destroy our credibility and damage America’s interests around the world than anything our adversaries could inflict.

So let’s not focus on phony election claims, environmental denial, or whether or not the world is secretly run by Lizard People.  There’ll be plenty of time for that in future posts.

Instead, let’s talk about something even more pressing—how anti-science, anti-vaccine, anti-truth disinformation is killing Americans, and laying the groundwork for even more death when the next pandemic strikes.

But I’ll give you fair warning—to really understand all of this takes time.  You can’t just read a couple of inflammatory Facebook posts.   To truly confront this pandemic head-on means dropping our biases and looking at the big picture.  It means taking a realistic look at the disease, the vaccine, the issues of masks, mandates, and social distancing, as well as the wacko ideas that seem to arise daily.

Finally, it means taking a hard look at who we are as a nation, and how our response will impact our country’s future.

So if you’d rather just look at 30 second Facebook posts, and then scroll down to watch kitty-cat videos, no hard feelings, OK? But if you’re ready to bite the bullet and dive into the truth about all of this stuff, take a deep breath.  Here we go.

PART ONE:  THE VIRUS

First, the disease.  COVID-19 is a coronavirus (one of many) that attaches to the lining of the lungs and spreads rapidly.  It kills some people and not others.  We’re not completely sure why.

It spreads like wildfire, as quickly as varicella (chicken pox), the previous record holder for rapid transmission.  But it’s much more deadly and unpredictable.  One person can have symptoms no worse than a cold, give it to someone else, and they’ll be dead within a week.

No, most people who get it don’t die.  But plenty do—635,000 in this country, and 4.3 million around the world.  And everyone who’s looked critically at the data agrees that the actual numbers are higher.

Why? Because it’s fairly easy to track death rates from any cause (that is, a nation’s mortality rate) and calculate life expectancy.  And when deaths increase over the baseline, the life expectancy goes down.  In America, since the beginning of the COVID outbreak, deaths increased by over 800,000.  That’s 165,000 more than the official COVID count of 635,000.

And yes, not all of the deaths were directly due to COVID.  An increase in overdoses was a factor.  Almost certainly, some people died from heart attacks or other treatable conditions because they were afraid to go to the hospital for fear of contracting the virus.  But even in many of these cases, the virus played an indirect role.

What this means is that the average American now lives 1.5 fewer years than before the pandemic—the largest drop in life expectancy since World War II. 

Well, 1.5 fewer years if you’re white.  2.9 years fewer if you’re black.  And 3 years if you’re Hispanic.

There’s nothing magic about a virus.  It’s a cruelly efficient killer, a time bomb that just sits there doing nothing (because for all practical purposes it’s dead) until it contacts a living cell.  That’s when the zombie awakens.

The viral particle adheres to the cell, activates its surface proteins, then injects its genetic material (either a strand of DNA, or in the case of COVID, RNA) directly into the body of the cell.  The strand takes over, hijacking the cell’s machinery to make millions of copies of itself.  Eventually, the cell dies, the copies are released, and millions of other cells are targeted.  And if the virus emerges from cells in the lungs, the  particles will be exhaled into the surrounding air every time the infected person breathes.

That’s millions of cells, each producing millions of viral particles, being exhaled every second.  Do the math if you want, but you’d better use a calculator. 

Again, by itself the virus particle can do nothing.  It has to have a living cell to attach itself to.  It doesn’t have arms and legs and it can’t fly around on its own—it has to be carried by a tiny droplet or in an aerosol of vapor leaving the lungs of an infected person.

Ah, but we have immune systems, don’t we?  So if we survive COVID, as most people will, won’t we be immune to the disease in the future?

Partially and maybe.  Our immune system works well, but it’s not perfect.  Some patients will clearly become reinfected.  And the subsequent infections may even be worse. (There’s a well-known U.S. Senator, who also happens to be a physician, who seems totally clueless about this.  But we’ll get to him another time).

How does this happen?  Because viruses mutate.  And each mutation brings with it the chance for the virus to come back even stronger.

Each one of the millions of replications, in each of the millions of cells, in each of the millions of infected people, occurring millions of times each day, increases the possibility of a deadlier mutation.

How do you stop it?  Slowing the person-to-person transmission is the only way.

The only way.  No matter what you may hear, azithromycin, ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine, chloroquine, disinfectants, and powerful lights aint’ gonna cut it. 

All viruses can  mutate.  And this virus mutates in a way that is downright evil.

The Delta version spreads more rapidly than anything we’ve seen up to this point.  And with the way we’re currently headed with vaccine denial, we’re going to wind up with a lot more Greek letters before this is over.

And a lot more dead bodies.

Every cough, every sneeze, every breath from an infected person is one more chance for a mutant form to spread.  Morning in America may turn into Delta Dawn.

Let’s be blunt about our understanding.  There’s a lot about this virus we still don’t know.  But two years ago, we didn’t know this damned thing even existed.   We didn’t figure out small pox, polio, or cholera for decades.  Those who say “how come you scientists keep changing the story” about COVID don’t seem to realize we’re just now getting the story ourselves, as we try like hell to save lives while we track this beast down.

Yes, the virus can do a number on our lungs, not to mention our brains and nervous systems.  So-called Long COVID, where sufferers experience fatigue, confusion, imbalance and nerve dysfunction for months, maybe even years, is a real thing.  We don’t know why it happens to some people and not others.

And no, it’s not just old geezers like me.  Children are dying.  Marathon runners are dying.  People who swallow vitamins by the handful have died.  We don’t know why.

But besides the effect of the virus alone, another deadly complication is an uncontrolled response from our immune system.  When the body senses an infection, it starts a process that includes the release of cytokines, potent chemicals that attack the invader.  But sometimes the chemical response goes berserk, and the cytokines begin attacking every tissue in sight.  This psychotic frenzy can destroy lungs, the heart, and other organs.  For whatever reason, the immune system calls down an airstrike on itself.  It’s called cytokine storm.  We have no way of knowing who it will hit.

And guess what?  The virus really doesn’t care where it came from.  And if you get it, it won’t make any difference to you, either.  You’ll still have to fight it—maybe win, maybe lose.  The smart thing to do is prevent it.

A lot has been written about whether this virus jumped from the animal world to humans, as originally thought (like HIV and Ebola), or whether it escaped from a Chinese lab.  And if so, was it a virus that had been intentionally altered? 

We’ll probably never know.  The Chinese have never been ones to open themselves up to the world.  If it did escape a lab, it wouldn’t be the first time.  Anthrax has leaked from both American and Russian labs, and Great Britain experienced an escape of the small pox virus from one of its facilities.  What seems unlikely is that it was intentionally released.  Why release it in the middle of your own country? 

But could it have been an accident?  Who knows?

We’ve seen viruses crop up just about everywhere.  Marburg virus (similar in some ways to Ebola) was first seen in Germany.  COVID’s deadlier cousin, MERS (Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome) was identified in central Asia, and despite what you may have learned in school, the “Spanish Flu” actually originated on a hog farm in Kansas (being from Missouri, I like to rub that in). 

The point is, a virus can come from anywhere.  All we can do is recognize that it’s here, that it’s dangerous, and that we need to be smart about how we deal with it. 

The more we politicize this process and ignore the science, the worse it will be for all of us, and the better for our competitors and adversaries—including the Chinese government.  Think about that for a moment.

We can be certain of one thing, though.  This will not be our last pandemic.  Future viral outbreaks will hit us, and they could well be much worse.  The only question is whether we have really learned anything from our current experience to guide us through the next round.

So what can we do about this COVID stuff in the meantime?     

In my next post, we’ll discuss all of that.  I’ll talk about vaccines, masks, mandates, and wackos.

OK, it may take more than one post.  See you then.