We the people, are suffering from significant Covid fatigue. We’ve been dealing with contradictory advice, information and instruction since late December of 2019. Now, to be fair, I can’t completely chastise any medical expert or national health concern….at least, I won’t in retrospect, especially in the very beginning, because this particular virus was new; it was called novel for most of the first year and the inconsistencies coming from the experts and medical entities made it abundantly clear, that research was extremely fluid, they were learning with every case and that meant sometimes changing Covid regulations several times in a two week span. I still think after two years, they know far less about Covid than what they know about it.
I remember being told to wash our groceries, veggies, packages, bags of pasta, frozen peas and cartons of ice cream before putting them away in cupboards, pantries, the fridge or the freezer. Was this done as an over abundance of caution? Or to control? I think both. I think in trying to save lives, there’s also been a very watchful eye placed on people to see just how compliant we’re willing to be. It’s exceeded Jonestown as being mother of all sociologies studies.
I forced a self-imposed moratorium on watching on all aspects of news (local and national) after the January 6th incident at the Pentagon. The news itself sickened me, but not as much as the partisan narratives being bandied about on ALL news outlets, regardless of their political leanings. I was in the broadcast news business for more than 30 years. It made me ill to watch what had happened to the once noble profession of Cronkite, Severied, Chancellor, Reynolds, Mudd and of course, Murrow.
I don’t watch the news, but will read about (much less cardio agita that way) and recently happened across an article by Dr. Marc Segal, a clinical professor professor of medicine at NYU? Marc Siegel, M.D., is a clinical professor of medicine at NYU and yes, in an attempt a full disclosure, makes the occasional appearance on FOX as a contributor.
I recently endured five miserable days of Omicrom despite having two Pfizer jabs and while googling why this happened, his article on the subject popped up on my feed.
He wrote….”Many people who are vaccinated, boosted and had Covid before are getting it again — and they are furious. They no longer believe the doctors or the president. Several of my patients have come to me (via televisit) feeling I let them down by pushing them to get the vaccine and then the booster only to find themselves sick with Omicron.
What can I tell them?
For one thing, I can reassure them that their shots weren’t wasted: They were far lessclikely to get VERY sick with COVID after receiving the vaccine and even less so with a recent booster”..
Segal goes on to say, ”I tell them that though I wish they hadn’t gotten Omicron, they are now protected not only against another bout of Omicron but also against the more dangerous Delta strain. I tell them what the Biden administration isn’t: that All immunity, no matter how you get it, matters.”
Sepal says, ”studies have shown that the Omicron variant itself affects the upper airways far more than the lungs, even as it’s much more transmissible than any other variant. This is exactly what happened in the later stages of 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, according to John M. Barry, author of “The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History,”
“There is no guarantee that the same will happen now, but it would behoove our public-health leaders to make the comparison, as opposed to the constant fearmongering.
The obsession with testing and isolation is counterproductive not only because we lack readily available home tests, but also because the virus is now almost everywhere, and isolating yourself if you aren’t sick does little to decrease the amount of virus circulating in the community.”
Here, Segal a bit politically honest….something the Biden administration needs to start doing a tear ago, “One reason President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are in free fall, is because most Americans recognize that he overpromised on the vaccine. Vaccines have two essential purposes: to prevent spread and to decrease severity. And though the mRNA vaccines clearly decrease severity of infection, especially with a recent booster, they clearly are doing little to prevent spread. This makes the mandate argument even more unconvincing — why mandate a vaccine that doesn’t prevent spread of the pathogen?”
And lastly, ”In the meantime, all we have is the cruel rhetoric against the unvaccinated and the consequences of the overpromising of a life-saving vaccine by drug companies, the media and politicians. And the public is left not believing in any of them — or, for that matter, in doctors like me, who have been on the front lines saving lives but then all too often inhale the dogma of reproach”.
Sad.
Just last week, I read the comments of a Liberal contributor on CNN or one of the many NBC concerns, that he feels Covid cases, especially Covid deaths have been greatly inflated. He said what I’ve been saying for more than a year now, that if someone comes to the ER with a severely broken leg, but tests positive for Covid despite being asymptomatic, this would have been considered a full blown case of Covid.
I remember telling friends and family thar car accidents are the number one cause of Covid deaths, outside the most vulnerable categories of age and those with comorbidities
I spent almost two years hardly ever wearing a mask, going shopping, going out to dinner, even attending parties. And since March of ’20, I’ve been taking a daily regime of the immune boosting cocktail of zinc, Vitamins A & D, Sambuca Black Elderberry, and Quercetin. I never even got a sniffle. A month after the second Pfizer job, which kept me bed praying for death for almost 72 hours, I get Omicron. Granted, I’d had far worse colds & bouts with flu & bronchial issues, but Omicron was different. The symptoms I had seemed oddly programmed. One day this, another day, another symptom that lasted a few hours. Very, very strange. I had two days of fever that was all over the place. In the course of a few hours, it ranged from 97 to 101.9? I only had a scratchy throat & lost my voice, but I never lost taste or smell, yet had no appetite. I had chest congestion with a productive, wet cough that produced a phlegm that was the color (and this is no exaggeration) of Nestles butterscotch morsels. I had a traveling headache, lower back pain which was symmetrical on both sides of my spine, the tops of my feet hurt and this version gave me everything from an itchy, back rash, to itchy ear canals, to a yeast infection. But with the exception of fever, the previously listed conditions only lasted a few hours. Strange.
In summation, I don’t know how history will review Covid & the populace’s extremely diverse response, Trump’s initial denial of it, to the efficacy of his implementation of devising a vaccine for it through Operation Warp Speed. How will judge Biden’s failure to do anything but seemingly sit back and watch new Covid cases & deaths break daily records, while calling the general population bigots and racists during a speech about ice cream, of all things.
I’m traveling out of the country in mid-March, so out of fear of being prevented from leaving the US or not being allowed in Scotland due to having a positive Covid test, while being asymptomatic, I’m taking the Pfizer booster. This time, I hope the only reaction I have is a sudden change in appendage placement, but so what!! I might end up a circus freak only Barnum could love, but dammit, I’m going to Scotland!!
I’ll just have to rethink shoes and headwear.