OUR COVID CHRISTMAS

 

          Well, it’s not like we didn’t have big plans.

 

          Our buddy Jane was going to spend Christmas Eve with us, sleep over, then awaken on Christmas morning and open all her fake-poop and fart-joke presents.  Then there was to be a big beefy dinner with my favorite brother-in-law, and then another feast, somewhere, with Sandy’s mother.  Then our son Tex, his wife Carrie, and two of our friends were flying in a couple days later for a belated Christmas and a New Year’s celebration.  The refrigerator and freezer were full of ribs and roasts and fruits and chowder and smoked fishes.  I had even started cleaning the bathrooms and trimming the jibsheet and swabbing the fo’c’sle.

 

          And then, on the morning of the 23^rd, as I was heading out the door for my last day of work in 2021, Sandy shoved a swab up her nose and came up positive for the ‘rona.

 

          And that, as they say, was that.     

 

          She had been complaining of a sore throat for a couple days, and had even talked the family doc into a script of penicillin for strep throat, but that night she had awakened at 3AM in a pool of night-sweat, and this oddball symptom, she informed me, was a particular marker for the new omicron version of the ‘rona.  Hence the need for a test, and hence the result.

 

          The first communique, of course, was to the family doc again, to report the test result and ask for something to treat her with.  Sandy sent this:

 

          Hi, I talked to Dr. Lewis yesterday and together we thought I had strep or the flu. However, last night I had some Covid symptoms and took a test this morning which came back positive. Is there anything I can take like ivermectic or regeneron? I'm currently taking penicillin. I am vaxed.

 

            Not surprisingly, this was his response:

 

          No,
            The omicron strain is the dominant strain in the US now and is not sensitive to monoclonal antibodies like regeneron. Ivermectin is for intestinal worms and has never had any effect on COVID.  Rest, fluids and tylenol or ibuprofen for the fever or pain is all you can do. If you have been triple vaccinated you are more likely to be struck by lightening than to have a severe course requiring hospitalization.
            Take care,
            DL

 

            This, of course, is what our medical profession has been doing for the past twenty months---refusing to treat patients who get COVID, or even see them.  Stay home, don’t infect anybody else, and put this oxygen thingie on your finger so that when you’re about to stop breathing we can put you in a hospital on a ventilator and you can die there.  BECAUSE THERE IS NO TREATMENT FOR COVID!!!!

 

          But of course there are treatments for COVID and there always have been, and even if there were no obvious treatments at first, that is not an excuse for doctors refusing to search for them and refusing to see their patients.

 

          What do clinicians do for a living, anyway?  A patient presents himself with an illness or injury, and the clinician (e.g., your family doctor), picks the situation apart, looks at the pieces and the evidence, and tries to reason his way through it.  Maybe this drug will do X.  Maybe that other drug will help with Y.  Will rest help?  Will exercise?  Vitamins?  And when they share their results, knowledge advances, and a few sick people start to get better.  This is what doctors have done since doctors first existed.

 

          Until now.

 

          Of the million or so doctors in the United States, there may be two or three hundred who tried to treat patients with COVID early, so they would not become hospitalized or dead.  The rest were too afraid, or perhaps they were too accustomed to following “guidelines” from the government or from insurance companies.  Fauci and his ilk ran point on this initiative, threatening doctors who dared to prescribe hydroxychloroquine or ivermectin (the two most prescribed drugs in the world for COVID), discouraging the use of monoclonal antibodies and making them impossible to get, and pointing everyone toward vaccines and more vaccines and vaccines only.

 

          The refusal to treat early COVID extends to virtually all the hospitals and medical schools in the country.  Mayo Clinic?  Nothing.  Harvard?  Nothing.  Johns Hopkins?  Nothing.  You will look in vain for treatment protocols from these institutions for patients in the early stages of the ‘rona.  None of these institutions developed such protocols because none of them ever treated a ‘rona patient.  Instead, people were told to stay home until they were near death, then we’ll put you on a ventilator.  And, oh yeah…we’re gonna slap this Do Not Resuscitate order in your chart.  OKAY???

 

          My cousin and his wife got the same treatment---nothing---from their family doctor when they came down with COVID (and were quite sick), eight months ago.  Stay home, measure your oxygen levels, and hope for the best.  There’s nothing anybody can do.

 

          The few doctors brave enough, or conscientious enough, to buck the system found ways of treating patients and making them better. This was pre-vaccine and pre-monoclonal-antibodies, but the results being published by responsible clinicians were simply ignored by the public health establishment.

 

          Clinical outcomes after early ambulatory multidrug therapy for high-risk SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) infection was published in late December of 2020 and can be found at https://imrpress.com/journal/RCM/21/4/10.31083/j.rcm.2020.04.260/htm

It is not the only study of its kind but I cite it because 1) it was among the first reports on what was possible, 2) it reported a huge reduction in hospitalizations and death, and 3) it coined the phrase “therapeutic nihilism” to describe what was happening in hospitals, medical schools and clinics across America:

 “The rates of death in our study indicate that early multidrug therapy is associated with >>90% reduction in mortality among the high risk compared to community rates of death associated with therapeutic nihilism in ambulatory patients who are subsequently hospitalized.”

 

          All of this was because Fauci and Trump and their helpers decided we were going to put all our eggs in the basket of mass vaccination, and that any form of treatment had to be mocked and disparaged by the doctors who might otherwise try to help people.  Fear was the tool they chose to make people line up for the shots.  This was a conscious policy decision.  Drugs like hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin had to be treated like pure madness and quackery.  Doctors who prescribed them could lose their licenses.

 

          A final note on this topic.  I get the impression, and it’s only an impression, that there are a lot of nurses and medical tech workers who know what is going on in the practice of medicine at the moment, and they don’t like it.  Doctors themselves, however, present an almost united front of cowardice and incompetence.

 

          *

 

          Sandy was truly sick.  Her throat was on fire, she had an ugly cough at all hours of the day and night, and she was carrying a coffee cup around the premises and hocking disgusting loogies into it.  This is not something I am accustomed to seeing.  I can’t say I was ever truly worried about her survival, but I watched her for any signs of breathing difficulty or fever.  And at night, even though she would probably have been more comfortable in a bed by herself, we slept together just so I would be there in case of an emergency.

 

          Another odd symptom became apparent as time went on.  This was the COVID brain fog you may have read about.  While Sandy and I are not complete geezers, we both have moments when we misplace the car keys or forget why we went into a room.  But this was different.  She simply could not hold a thought in her head for any length of time, and her short-term memory just stopped operating at times.  At one point, there was a small bag of Christmas presents sitting on the bed and we discussed what they were, who they were for, how we might get them delivered, and so on.  Then, about an hour later, she noticed the bag again and asked me what they were.  There were several other incidents like this over the course of 48 hours.

 

          But the worst of it was finished by Christmas, just two days after she had tested positive.  That was when it became possible for her to get some food down her throat.  She was still sick, still dropping off for long naps, still coughing, but it was obvious she was getting better.  The following day, we went out and took a walk around the block.

 

          Today, December 30, exactly one week after her positive test, she tested negative.

 

*

 

          Being stuck in the house for a while is not necessarily unpleasant.  In fact, the German word “sturmfrei” (meaning “storm-free”) describes the carefree state of being home with no roommate or no parents around, perhaps lying on the couch in your underwear, watching a movie, with a drink in your hand.  Isolation with a dreaded disease, however, is something else.  When none of your friends want you around and will have nothing to do with you, you start to think you are diseased subhuman scum and a bit of depression sets in.  The diseased-subhuman-scum treatment was new to Sandy, and though it will be temporary for her, she didn’t like it.

 

          At this point, I’m used to it.  Once it became apparent from my blog and other sources that I had no plans to get vaccinated, almost all my family and friends began to shun me.  There was never any discussion of this, it simply happened.  I am not included in any of their plans, not even family events like birthdays or holiday gatherings.  Friends who used to go out to dinner with us now do not accept invitations.  There is no excuse offered, or a “rain check” suggested---the invitation is merely declined without explanation.  After one or two such incidents, you get the message.  I don’t offer invitations anymore, except to those few who are still willing to interact with me.

 

          I will accept certain limitations on the way I will interact with people who will still see me.  Most of these make no sense whatsoever, but if it makes them comfortable….  For example, there are some who will go to a bar or restaurant with me, or have a conversation with me on the street, but will not come into my house.  Fine.  I can live with that.

 

          I have my limits, however.  I will not stand outside in 30 degree weather and have a conversation of more than a sentence or two, and I will NOT wear a mask to accommodate an acquaintance’s fears or their need to signal their obedience to the New Normal.  I won’t even sit there with them if only THEY are wearing a mask.  For one thing, it makes me distinctly uncomfortable to interact with people who believe I am somehow a danger to them, and for another, I get a sense of participating in something dirty.  Consenting to the mask ritual feels like being a “good German” even though I am not personally smashing the windows of Jewish businesses.

 

          The rules that people keep in their heads cannot be fit into any rational pattern, and since they won’t usually discuss them, I am left to guess what they are.  Last summer, I played golf with a buddy several times, sat in the same golf-cart, talked maskless, etc.  I later visited him in the hospital and even wore a mask since it was a hospital rule, but when he went home for an extended rehabilitation, it was made clear to me I was not welcome.  I don’t know if this was his rule or his girlfriend’s edict since nobody ever told me, but the new protocol is unmistakable.  I haven’t seen him for six weeks and I don’t know when I ever will.

 

          Where masks are concerned, I tried for many months to adopt an attitude of “you do your thing and I’ll do mine,” but the time has run out on that one.  The ‘rona has been here almost two years and there has never been a time when a fair, truth-seeking, rational investigator could examine the data and conclude that mask-wearing had any effect on the transmission of respiratory viruses.  I say that because I was that investigator.  Beginning on April 4, 2020, I read everything there was to read about the usefulness of masks, starting with the previous twenty-five years of peer-reviewed studies on the topic.  You cannot spend the dozens of hours I spent doing this and come away with the belief that masks do any damn good at all. 

 

          Yet the need to strap a diaper to your face is now a matter of unshakeable faith for the faithful.  Not only do they believe it, they have literally no doubt about the importance of masking, so that even a suggestion of doubt can send them into a rage.  Beyond that, on-line discussion of the pointlessness of masking is regularly suppressed and censored.  The mask issue is extremely telling.  The only thing the believers have done so far is swallow what they are told on TV---there is literally no other basis for their belief---and until they stop doing that, I don’t see how I can take them seriously about anything related to COVID.

 

          So I push back.  What can I do other than push back?  If my attitude is “let’s all do our own thing,” and yours is “do what we tell you or you will be crushed,” I’m going to wind up in the prison camp face down in the mud.  Totalitarians, like bullies, cannot be appeased.  And with mask mandates in effect in towns and cities and states and nations all over the world, I have only two options: sign up with the New Normals or fight them.  It does not appear they will ever leave me alone to make my own decisions and live my own life.  I must be demonized.  I must be segregated.  I must be barred from polite society until I embrace their ideology and their superstitions.

 

*

 

          Over the past week, one of the first questions we are asked on the phone is whether I am also sick.  When we tell them I’m in perfect health, the typical reaction is laughter, but a few people conveyed the impression they were annoyed that Sandy (who is vaxxed) got sick but I (unvaxxed) did not.  Nobody has actually come out and said, “Why didn’t YOU get sick, ya bastard?” but that seemed to be the sentence that got caught in their throats.  A couple people asked me if I had been tested, on the theory that I might have COVID but be asymptomatic.  (Almost everybody I know thinks this happens regularly.  It’s an essential part of the system of beliefs and obedience rituals.  Without asymptomatic COVID, there would be no possible justification for masks, lockdowns, etc.)

 

          Since the Diamond Princess cruise ship incident in Yokohama in February 2020 (and other similar events), we have known that about 85% of humanity are immune to COVID, and based on my more-or-less constant interaction with people of all ages, sexes, races, national origins, religions, ethnic groups, vaccination status, and patterns of bodily hygiene, it has been obvious that I am one of those 85%.  I have told everyone I am immune because I have been exposed to the virus hundreds of times and never gotten sick.  It’s the only rational conclusion from the available evidence.  I’ve been saying it for almost two years now, though no one believes me.  It’s why my friends and family treat me like diseased subhuman scum even though I am actually the safest person they could hang out with.

 

          But though I have been immune, I am now starting to wonder whether I still am, or will continue to be.  The initial 85% number was confirmed in late 2020 by the CDC’s survey on what it called “secondary household infections.”  This was a count of the people who lived in a house where somebody living there (your wife, your kid, grandma, somebody), caught the ‘rona, and it turned out that only about 15% of the other people in the house would get the damn thing.

 

          Now, however, with the omicron version spreading, you have to wonder whether 85% of us are still immune.  This is what happens with viruses, of course.  They become less dangerous but easier to catch.  It’s a very good thing when this happens even if the Faucis and the Anderson Coopers and the Snoop Dogs are still telling everybody to freak out.  It’s a very good thing when people get a sniffle but don’t go on a ventilator or die.

 

          On December 30, NYC reported 44,000 new ‘rona cases.  This is an amazing number, and set some kind of record for new cases in a place that has a lot of people in it.  Since the vast majority of these people will get no more than a cough, and will now be immune from COVID, this appears to be great news.

 

          In addition to the decline in bad or lethal outcomes, the omicron surge in New York is wonderful for another, even more important, reason.  Three quarters of NYC is vaccinated, a lot of them have one or even two booster shots, they wear masks everywhere, they have dinner in Plexiglas bubbles, and what has happened?  The hundreds of thousands of new cases over the past week are overwhelmingly those who got all the shots and followed all the rules, but they are STILL getting the virus.  The justification for vaccine mandates, which was never able to withstand much scrutiny to begin with, is evaporating before our eyes.  What is the point of all the lockdowns and masks and segregation and vaccines if all the people who are locked down and masked and segregated and vaxxed are spreading the virus to each other at record-breaking speed?

 

          So I am encouraged.  The precautions and safety protocols have never appeared more absurd and pointless than they do now, and I am hopeful that some percentage of the true believers will realize that.  The counter-argument I have heard is that the believers have been presented with lies and propaganda from the beginning and they have never done anything but believe them, so why would they change their minds now?  And it is true they were never really persuaded in the first place, and that their acceptance of the New Normal ideology was never a rational process.  It was more akin to the way cult members are recruited, through fear and constant repetition of the basic precepts.  So how can the believers be made to see that the COVID madness doesn’t make sense now?  It never made sense before, but that hasn’t seemed to matter.

 

          I hear the argument, and it is troubling, but I remain optimistic.  That is because I do not need ALL the New Normals to abandon ship at once.  All I need is for a few of them to lose their zeal for the new totalitarian state.  If that happens, the entire edifice may crumble.  That is because those who are pushing this are far from their ultimate victory.  Yes, there are places where the unvaxxed cannot work, ride a bus or buy food in a market, and there are places where the disobedient are thrown into quarantine camps without legal process, but mere segregation and demonization is not enough to create a fully locked down, unfree society.  This is only a transitional period.  Every totalitarian movement in the 20^th Century had to purge the refuseniks by killing them, putting them in prison indefinitely, or so thoroughly terrifying them that resistance vanished.  We are seeing this process play out in Australia and Germany and Canada and Austria and a dozen other countries, and it is frightening, but my hope and belief is that it will be more difficult to accomplish in the United States.

 

          Diversity is our strength, remember?  That’s what the woke tell us all the time.  Well, in this case they may be right.

 

          The medico-authoritarian state has not advanced in the U.S. nearly as far or as quickly as it has in other countries, and there are states like Florida and Idaho and South Dakota where it has barely advanced at all.  Federalism and state sovereignty are powerful safeguards for liberty precisely because they make it difficult for an all-powerful central government to take over everything, everywhere, all at once.  And this is not the first time federalism has protected us by preserving liberty in some places when it was under attack throughout the land.  Jim Crow, which existed in much of America for seventy years, is a perfect example.  There were times when a majority of Americans would have supported the separation of races (or at least would not have opposed it), and southern Democrats were eager to extend segregation as far as they could.  There were always states like Vermont and Michigan, however, which would not tolerate it, and it is the existence of such outposts that can keep freedom alive until the rest of the nation comes to its senses.  The COVID madness in America is not found everywhere, and as long as there are islands of sanity, there is hope for all of us.   

 

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