After The Virus - What Next?

[Techdread]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

So say's the pshrink cosplaying as a virologist and epidemiologist.

He maybe, but his analysis is spot on.
And if you disagree lets see some coherent arguments, not your bullshit conspiracy theories.

This is more of a data collection exercise, I know it goes against your supposedly freedom and privacy upbringing.....

[Woodsman]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

MiniTrue censors videos by Dr. Daniel W. Erickson and Dr. Artin Massih of Bakersfield for badthink related to their questioning of the shutdown.

Following in lockstep with YouTube, Twitter suspended the account of a Colorado biotech company which is working to develop a potential coronavirus treatment using UV light inserted into the lungs.

Any research given positive attention by the Bad Orange Man is by definition, thoughtcrime and ipso facto made immediately illegitimate. All thoughtcrime will be ruthlessly policed and suppressed by The Party.

Dr. Daniel W. Erickson and Dr. Artin Massih of Bakersfield, California, co-owners of Accelerated Urgent Care in Bakersfield are experienced medical professionals who have 40 years of hands-on experience in dealing with viruses and respiratory infections.

Watching the news in China in January, they knew the virus was on its way. They ordered many COVID-19 tests because they knew they would need them. They tested many thousands of people, and discovered for themselves what epidemiologists around the world are saying: COVID-19 came here earlier than previously believed, is more ubiquitous, and ultimately for the general population less deadly than we thought.

In this press conference, they address the question of whether or not California should have shut down much of its economy with a resounding "no." They conclude with the need to open up immediately, on grounds of health and human rights.

"We’d like to look at how we’ve responded as a nation, and why you responded. Our first initial response two months ago was a little bit of fear: [the government] decided to shut down travel to and from China. These are good ideas when you don’t have any facts. [Governments] decided to keep people at home and isolate them. Typically you quarantine the sick. When someone has measles you quarantine them. We’ve never seen where we quarantine the healthy.

So that’s kind of how we started. We don’t know what’s going on, we see this new virus. How should we respond? So we did that initially, and over the last couple months we’ve gained a lot of data typically. We’re going to go over the numbers a little bit to kind of help you see how widespread COVID is, and see how we should be responding to it based on its prevalence throughout society—or the existence of the cases that we already know about….

So if you look at California—these numbers are from yesterday—we have 33,865 COVID cases, out of a total of 280,900 total tested. That’s 12% of Californians were positive for COVID. So we don’t, the initial—as you guys know, the initial models were woefully inaccurate. They predicted millions of cases of death—not of prevalence or incidence—but death. That is not materializing. What is materializing is, in the state of California is 12% positives. You have a 0.03 chance of dying from COVID in the state of California. Does that necessitate sheltering in place? Does that necessitate shutting down medical systems? Does that necessitate people being out of work? 96% of people in California who get COVID would recover, with almost no significant sequelae; or no significant continuing medical problems. Two months ago we didn’t know this. The more you test, the more positives you get. The prevalence number goes up, and the death rate stays the same. So [the death rate] gets smaller and smaller and smaller. And as we move through this data—what I want you to see is—millions of cases, small death. Millions of cases, small death.

We extrapolate data, we test people, and then we extrapolate for the entire community based on the numbers. The initial models were so inaccurate they’re not even correct. And some of them were based on social distancing and still predicted hundreds of thousands of deaths, which has been inaccurate. In New York the ones they tested they found 39% positive. So if they tested the whole state would we indeed have 7.5 million cases? We don’t know; we will never test the entire state. So we extrapolate out; we use the data we have because it’s the most we have versus a predictive model that has been nowhere in the ballpark of accurate. How many deaths do they have? 19,410 out of 19 million people, which is a 0.1% chance of dying from COVID in the state of New York. If you are indeed diagnosed with COVID-19, 92% of you will recover.

We’ve tested over 4 million… which gives us a 19.6% positive out of those who are tested for COVID-19. So if this is a typical extrapolation 328 million people times 19.6 is 64 million. That’s a significant amount of people with COVID; it’s similar to the flu. If you study the numbers in 2017 and 2018 we had 50 to 60 million with the flu. And we had a similar death rate in the deaths the United States were 43,545—similar to the flu of 2017-2018. We always have between 37,000 and 60,000 deaths in the United States, every single year. No pandemic talk. No shelter-in-place. No shutting down businesses…

We do thousands of flu tests every year. We don’t report every one, because the flu is ubiquitous and to that note we have a flu vaccine. How many people even get the flu vaccine? The flu is dangerous, it kills people. Just because you have a vaccine doesn’t mean it’s gonna be everywhere and it doesn’t mean everyone’s going to take it… I would say probably 50% of the public doesn’t even want it. Just because you have a vaccine—unless you forced it on the public—doesn’t mean they’re going to take it.

Norway has locked down; Sweden does not have lock down. What happened in those two countries? Are they vastly different? Did Sweden have a massive outbreak of cases? Did Norway have nothing? Let’s look at the numbers. Sweden has 15,322 cases of COVID—21% of all those tested came out positive for COVID. What’s the population of Sweden? About 10.4 million. So if we extrapolate out the data about 2 million cases of COVID in Sweden. They did a little bit of social distancing; they would wear masks and separate; they went to schools; stores were open. They were almost about their normal daily life with a little bit of social distancing. They had how many deaths? 1,765. California’s had 1,220 with isolation. No isolation: 1,765. We have more people. Norway: its next-door neighbor. These are two Scandinavian nations; we can compare them as they are similar. 4.9% of all COVID tests were positive in Norway. Population of Norway: 5.4 million. So if we extrapolate the data, as we’ve been doing, which is the best we can do at this point, they have about 1.3 million cases. Now their deaths as a total number, were 182. So you have a 0.003 chance of death as a citizen of Norway and a 97% recovery. Their numbers are a little bit better. Does it necessitate shutdown, loss of jobs, destruction of the oil company, furloughing doctors?

I wanted to talk about the effects of COVID-19, the secondary effects. COVID-19 is one aspect of our health sector. What has it caused to have us be involved in social isolation? What does it cause that we are seeing the community respond to? Child molestation is increasing at a severe rate. We could go over multiple cases of children who have been molested due to angry family members who are intoxicated, who are home, who have no paycheck. Spousal abuse: we are seeing people coming in here with black eyes and cuts on their face. It’s an obvious abuse of case. These are things that will affect them for a lifetime, not for a season. Alcoholism, anxiety, depression, suicide. Suicide is spiking; education is dropped off; economic collapse. Medical industry we’re all suffering because our staff isn’t here and we have no volume. We have clinics from Fresno to San Diego and these things are spiking in our community. These things will affect people for a lifetime, not for a season.

I’d like to go over some basic things about how the immune system functions so people have a good understanding. The immune system is built by exposure to antigens: viruses, bacteria. When you’re a little child crawling on the ground, putting stuff in your mouth, viruses and bacteria come in. You form an antigen antibody complex. You form IgG IgM. This is how your immune system is built. You don’t take a small child put them in bubble wrap in a room and say, “go have a healthy immune system.”

This is immunology, microbiology 101. This is the basis of what we’ve known for years. When you take human beings and you say, “go into your house, clean all your counters—Lysol them down you’re gonna kill 99% of viruses and bacteria; wear a mask; don’t go outside,” what does it do to our immune system? Our immune system is used to touching. We share bacteria. Staphylococcus, streptococcal, bacteria, viruses.

Sheltering in place decreases your immune system. And then as we all come out of shelter in place with a lower immune system and start trading viruses, bacteria—what do you think is going to happen? Disease is going to spike. And then you’ve got diseases spike—amongst a hospital system with furloughed doctors and nurses. This is not the combination we want to set up for a healthy society. It doesn’t make any sense.

…Did we respond appropriately? Initially the response, fine shut it down, but as the data comes across—and we say now, wait a second, we’ve never, ever responded like this in the history of the country why are we doing this now? Any time you have something new in the community medical community it sparks fear—and I would have done what Dr. Fauci did—so we both would have initially. Because the first thing you do is, you want to make sure you limit liability—and deaths—and I think what they did was brilliant, initially. But you know, looking at theories and models—which is what these folks use—is very different than the way the actual virus presents itself throughout communities….

Nobody talks about the fact that coronavirus lives on plastics for three days and we’re all sheltering in place. Where’d you get your water bottles from? Costco. Where did you get that plastic shovel from? Home Depot. If I swab things in your home I would likely find COVID-19. And so you think you’re protected. Do you see the lack of consistency here? Do you think you’re protected from COVID when you wear gloves that transfer disease everywhere? Those gloves have bacteria all over them. We wear masks in an acute setting to protect us. We’re not wearing masks. Why is that? Because we understand microbiology; we understand immunology; and we want strong immune systems. I don’t want to hide in my home, develop a weak immune system, and then come out and get disease.

When someone dies in this country right now they’re not talking about the high blood pressure, the diabetes, the stroke. They say they died from COVID. We’ve been to hundreds of autopsies. You don’t talk about one thing, you talk about comorbidities. COVID was part of it, it is not the reason they died folks. When I’m writing up my death report I’m being pressured to add COVID.

Why is that? Why are we being pressured to add COVID? To maybe increase the numbers, and make it look a little bit worse than it is. We’re being pressured in-house to add COVID to the diagnostic list when we think it has nothing to do with the actual cause of death. The actual cause of death was not COVID, but it’s being reported as one of the disease processes and being added to the death list. COVID didn’t kill them, 25 years of tobacco use killed.

There’s two ways to get rid of virus: either burns itself out or herd immunity. For hundreds of years we relied on herd immunity. Viruses kill people, end of story. The flu kills people. COVID kills people. But for the rest of us we develop herd immunity. We developed the ability to take this virus in and defeat it and for the vast majority 95% of those around the globe. Do you want your immune system built or do you want it not built? The building blocks of your immune system is a virus and bacteria. There’s normal bacteria in normal flora that we have to be exposed to bacteria and viruses that are not virulent are our friends. They protect us against bad bacteria and bad viruses.

Right now, if you look at Dr. Erikson’s skin or my skin we have strep, we have stuff—they protect us against opportunistic infections. That’s why for the first three to six months [babies are] extremely vulnerable to opportunistic infection. Which is why, when we see a little baby in the ER with fever who is one month old, you do a spinal tap, you do a chest x-ray, you do blood cultures, you do urine cultures. But if you had a fever I wouldn’t do that for you. Why? Because that baby does not have the normal bacteria and flora from the community, whereas you do. I guarantee when we reopen there’s going to be a huge, huge amount of illness that’s going to be rampant because our immune systems have weakened. That’s just basic immunology.

Do we need to still shelter in place? Our answer is emphatically no. Do we need businesses to be shut down? Emphatically no. Do we need to have it, do we need to test them, and get them back to work? Yes, we do. The the secondary effects that we went over—the child abuse, alcoholism, loss of revenue—all these are, in our opinion, a significantly more detrimental thing to society than a virus that has proven similar in nature to the seasonal flu we have every year.

We also need to put measures in place so economic shutdown like this does not happen again. We want to make sure we understand that quarantining the sick is what we do, not quarantine the healthy. We need to make sure if you’re gonna dance on someone’s constitutional rights you better have a good reason. You better have a really good scientific reason, and not just theory.

One of the most important things is we need our hospitals back up. We need our furloughed doctors back. We need our nurses back. Because when we lift this thing, we’re gonna need all hands on deck. I know the local hospitals have closed two floors. Folks, that’s not the situation you want. We’re essentially setting ourselves up to have minimal staff, and we’re going to have significant disease. That’s the wrong combination.

I’ve talked to our local head of the Health Department and he’s waiting… for the powers that be to lift. Because the data is showing it’s time to lift. I would start slowly [open up schools sporting events] I think we need to open up the schools start getting kids back to the immune system you know and the major events the sporting events these are non-essential let’s get back to those slowly let’s start with schools let’s start with cafe Rio and the pizza place here… Does that make sense to you guys and I think I can go into Costco and I can shop with people and there’s probably a couple hundred people but I can’t go in Cafe Rio so big businesses are open little businesses are not….

Eventually we treat this like we treat flu. Which is if you have the flu and you’re feeling fever and body aches you just stay home if you have coughing or shortness of breath—COVID is more of a respiratory thing—you stay home. You don’t get tested, even when people come with flu a lot of times we don’t test them. We go, “you have flu. Here’s a medication.” You have COVID, go home, let it resolve and come back negative.

If you have no symptoms you should be able to return to work. Are you an asymptomatic viral spreader? Maybe, but we can’t test all of humanity. Sure we’re gonna miss cases of coronavirus, just like we miss cases of the flu. It would be nice to capture every coronavirus patient, but is that realistic? Are we gonna keep the economy shut down for two years and vaccinate everybody? That’s an unrealistic expectation. You’re going to cause financial ruin, domestic violence, suicide, rape, violence and what are you going to get out of it? You’re still going to miss a lot of cases. So we need to treat this like the flu, which is familiar, and eventually this will mutate and become less and less virulent…

I don’t need a double-blind clinically controlled trial to tell me if sheltering in place is appropriate, that is a college-level understanding of microbiology. A lot of times in medicine you have to make you have to make educated decisions with the data that you have. I can sit up in the 47th-floor in the penthouse and say we should do this, this, and this, but I haven’t seen a patient for 20 years—that’s not realistic.

If you’re healthy and you don’t have significant comorbidities and you know you’re not immunodeficient and you’re not elderly you should be able to go out without any gloves and without a mask. If you are those things you should either shelter in place or wear a mask and gloves. I don’t think everybody needs to wear the masks and gloves because it reduces your bacterial flora… and your bacterial flora and your viruses your friends that protect you from other diseases [if they] end up going away and now you’re more likely to get opportunistic infections infections that are hoping you don’t have your good bugs fighting for you."

[Techdread]

Re: After The Virus - What Next?

Those links are a story of utter incompetence on the part of our governments. Chronic and repeated incompetence, after being captured by the financial interests in The City, Wall Street, Bay Street, etc., and falling under the captivating spell of the so-called "Chinese Miracle" and "BRICS" (think of it as the 21st century version of the earlier "New Economy").

China will be a "world power" in the same delusional way Nazi Germany wanted to be a world power. And more destructive. Much more destructive, as we have witnessed already (this is a nation that will shoot its own citizens). And we are doing a fabulous job helping it along the way. Not long from now shoddy shoes and off-gassing plasterboard will be the least of our problems.

Are you seriously arguing that China should NOT have been locked down? Once it stopped lying about it. Really?

What do you think the current locking down the economies of most of the world is about. Yes, "delaying the spread", "flattening the curve", whatever you want to call it. Too late. While China locked down Wuhan and would not allow travel to the rest of China it continued to allow flights out of Wuhan to other parts of the world. And we were stupid enough to receive them.

210 countries and territories around the world have confirmed cases, including the Faroes and Falklands. And now we are visiting upon humanity what may evolve into the greatest exercise in mass impoverishment and hunger short of a world war.

Canada shipped 16 tonnes of medical supplies to China when the virus first broke out there. What do we get in return? Defective crap, empty airplanes, hasslesfrom the authorities when our planes are on the ground in Shanghai (my kid brother is one of the 787 pilots who volunteered to do these flights) and two of our citizens held on trumped up charges of espionage in conditions no western nation would legally tolerate.

China is already a world power, and I think they have all the hallmarks for being a super power, They have arguably the best AI company in the world, whose CEO has joined the ruling party instead of fleeing the country.
Do I like China? no I hate totalitarian societies, However there is no law that says they will not make it. When I was at college and the Berlin Wall fell, most of us thought the US might make it my economist house mate said the fall of Russia would just show the world how corrupt capitalism practised by the US is.

The Virus was too hard to contain and that the West squandered their chance to prepare, they are still squandering their chance to mitigate a worse disaster in climate change.

I am an optimist, this crisis will focus some minds on what really matters Like Universal Health, UBI, Science spending, Education, climate change & most importantly cooperation.

[Woodsman]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

Okay, how about a rational lockdown exit strategy that acknowledges the failure of the lockdowns both from an epidemiological and socioeconomic perspective and aimed at resuming economic activity while minimizing the inevitable wave of new cases?

In other words, a strategy based on the reality principle, balancing those public health measures required and the absolute necessity of maintaining the highest possible functioning economic and social order. We can begin immediately by adopting those strategies that worked and abandoning what did not, based not on partisan politics, ideology, class, or tribalism, but entirely on sound science and medicine in the service of achieving broadest possible economic and societal security for all. Such a plan must be oriented toward restarting the economy as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost and involve the participation of private companies as full partners to government actions, taking as its primary lead the lowest level of economic activity and political representations/participation.

This strategy must be guided by the following principles:

1. While we work towards their enhancement, we cannot count on individual or collective immunity

At present, collective ("herd") immunity cannot be relied on to counter the spread of COVID-19 because the individual level of antibody induced during infection is too low and unstable and a high level of antibodies is associated in COVID-19 patients with a severe exacerbation of the disease. It must be recognized that antibodies are not always beneficial and that they can have deleterious effects.

2. Act with the knowledge that the dominant mode of transmission of COVID-19 is by aerosol.

No lockdown exit plan can be considered serious if it does not recognize this reality. We produce aerosols simply by breathing and infectious aerosols are the primary vector of the disease. Any plan that does not take this reality into account will lead to a second wave larger than necessary.

3. Admit that social distancing is simply ineffective for viruses that are transmitted by aerosol.

Considering a sneeze that can throw infectious droplets 8 meters and send microdroplets over even greater distances, a social distance of six feet does nothing to contain the virus. Only ubiquitous adoption of effective masks will allow a crowd density compatible with an almost normal economic activity.

4. Provide special consideration for schools.

Understanding what we know about SARS-CoV-2 and the doubtful claims that children will contribute little to the spread of the virus, the utmost caution should be exercised before schools are reopened. At a minimum, masks will be required to take the bus and return to school without endangering the community.

5. Accept that the cost of a second wave will be significant.

In addition to the significant cost associated with hospitalization, accept that patients do not always emerge unscathed from COVID-19. In addition to a long and costly rehabilitation for those who have survived an intubation in intensive care, hospitalized patients can have respiratory, cardiac, hepatic and neurological consequences that are serious and will impose a significant individual and collective cost.

6. Enable doctors to exercise their profession without political interference.

Physicians should be free to prescribe what their experience and conscience dictate and in informed consent with the patient, which should reduce hospitalizations, deaths and costs.

7. At the level of the general population, provide for ubiquitous use of masks, transition from masks from cloth, to surgical masks, then to N95 or better as rapidly as possible.

The easiest and cheapest way to crush the second wave is to provide progressively more effective masks, depending on their availability, to the general public. The more the second wave is crushed, the more the human and economic costs will be reduced.

[Techdread]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

Okay, how about a rational lockdown exit strategy that acknowledges the failure of the lockdowns both from an epidemiological and socioeconomic perspective and aimed at resuming economic activity while minimizing the inevitable wave of new cases?

In other words, a strategy based on the reality principle, balancing those public health measures required and the absolute necessity of maintaining the highest possible functioning economic and social order. We can begin immediately by adopting those strategies that worked and abandoning what did not, based not on partisan politics, ideology, class, or tribalism, but entirely on sound science and medicine in the service of achieving broadest possible economic and societal security for all. Such a plan must be oriented toward restarting the economy as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost and involve the participation of private companies as full partners to government actions, taking as its primary lead the lowest level of economic activity and political representations/participation.

This strategy must be guided by the following principles:

1. While we work towards their enhancement, we cannot count on individual or collective immunity

At present, collective ("herd") immunity cannot be relied on to counter the spread of COVID-19 because the individual level of antibody induced during infection is too low and unstable and a high level of antibodies is associated in COVID-19 patients with a severe exacerbation of the disease. It must be recognized that antibodies are not always beneficial and that they can have deleterious effects.

2. Act with the knowledge that the dominant mode of transmission of COVID-19 is by aerosol.

No lockdown exit plan can be considered serious if it does not recognize this reality. We produce aerosols simply by breathing and infectious aerosols are the primary vector of the disease. Any plan that does not take this reality into account will lead to a second wave larger than necessary.

3. Admit that social distancing is simply ineffective for viruses that are transmitted by aerosol.

Considering a sneeze that can throw infectious droplets 8 meters and send microdroplets over even greater distances, a social distance of six feet does nothing to contain the virus. Only ubiquitous adoption of effective masks will allow a crowd density compatible with an almost normal economic activity.

4. Provide special consideration for schools.

Understanding what we know about SARS-CoV-2 and the doubtful claims that children will contribute little to the spread of the virus, the utmost caution should be exercised before schools are reopened. At a minimum, masks will be required to take the bus and return to school without endangering the community.

5. Accept that the cost of a second wave will be significant.

In addition to the significant cost associated with hospitalization, accept that patients do not always emerge unscathed from COVID-19. In addition to a long and costly rehabilitation for those who have survived an intubation in intensive care, hospitalized patients can have respiratory, cardiac, hepatic and neurological consequences that are serious and will impose a significant individual and collective cost.

6. Enable doctors to exercise their profession without political interference.

Physicians should be free to prescribe what their experience and conscience dictate and in informed consent with the patient, which should reduce hospitalizations, deaths and costs.

7. At the level of the general population, provide for ubiquitous use of masks, transition from masks from cloth, to surgical masks, then to N95 or better as rapidly as possible.

The easiest and cheapest way to crush the second wave is to provide progressively more effective masks, depending on their availability, to the general public. The more the second wave is crushed, the more the human and economic costs will be reduced.

I think your action plan is good,
I would add better testing so that the R0 in communities can be attained and lock-down eased or raised when it goes above a certain thresh-hold.
Also and this is controversial a smartphone app, so that people are warned if they have come into contact with someone who has recently tested positive.
Schools are a thorny subject because a lot of teachers are in the at risk group, maybe slim down the class sizes and make the children go a couple of days in the week, though that will have an adverse effect on workers.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: After The Virus - What Next?

I can't argue with a word you said. Your children are very lucky to have you.

Cheers! Like most parents, we’re just trying the best we can to raise good humans.

[jk]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

So say's the pshrink cosplaying as a virologist and epidemiologist.

he maybe, but his analysis is spot on.
And if you disagree lets see some coherent arguments, not your bullshit conspiracy theories.

This is more of a data collection exercise, I know it goes against your supposedly freedom and privacy upbringing.....

i did a year of graduate work in mathematics as well as going through medical school. i think i know enough to understand most of what i read about the virus and the illness. and i also know enough to recognize when i don't understand something. and to admit it.

[Woodsman]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

Good for you, Doctor.

[shiny!]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

"herd immunity" remains a hope, a fantasy, without any basis in fact. that doesn't mean it might not be theoretically possible. but there's no evidence for it.

there's no evidence for ANY immunity after having had the illness. there are cases of re-infection, including that chinese doctor in his early 30's who died when he caught the virus A SECOND TIME, only about a month after the first time. you can argue the virus had never left, that it was dormant, but that means we can never know if someone is really healthy again. or you can argue that it has something to do with the dose of virus to which he was exposed, which still goes to show he didn't have immunity, or didn't have ENOUGH immunity.

even if you get some immunity after having had the illness, there's no reason to believe that it would last more than 1-2 years, at which point you'd be vulnerable again. lifelong immunity after exposure is the exception, not the rule.

so all these plans built around "herd immunity" are castles in the sky. they have no basis in any scientific knowledge currently available. that could change as we learn more, but that's the state of play right now.

realistic proposals of opening up the economy recognize various levels of risk and vulnerability. start with allowing people under 35 or 45, who do not have any significant comorbidity, to go about their business, but also require they wear masks, practice hygiene, social distance and so on.

if we learn that there is indeed such a thing as immunity after infection. AND if we develop an accurate and reliable antibody test,[that's 2 "if's"] we can also release people who have the relevant antibodies. then work your way up the ladder of risk, graded by age and comorbidities.

so you don't quantine just the sick. you quarantine the sick and the vulnerable, and you build your capacity for virus testing, and for antibody testing if indeed it's meaningful. and you learn what might be helpful in treating people who become ill. and you try to develop vaccines.

you're playing for time, and balancing risk against risk.

a slogan like "don't quarantine the healthy" is just that, a slogan, simplistic and misleading. life is more complex than that.

We have two factions if you will, with two very different sets of needs. One faction, the medical scientific community, is driving the narrative: Covid-19 kills, we don't know enough about it to make accurate predictions, we haven't figured out how to treat it, and it can overwhelm our shamefully underequipped hospitals. I totally get all that.

However these arguments are tragically out of step with the acute and very real needs of the other faction, namely the laypeople who are being destroyed by the side effects of the Covid-19 response. For too many people, the Covid-19 response is like a chemotherapy that might destroy the tumour but kills the patient in the process. I don't think the medical faction cares about this at all. We're supposed to care about their needs but they don't care equally about ours.

I'm seeing the medical faction do to an entire society what they have done to me for the past 30 years: Ignore, discount, shame and threaten. It's the same pattern:

For 30 years I have suffered with ME/CFS, or what I thought was ME/CFS. My very real suffering was discounted by doctors as either trivial or all in my head: "I don't know anything about that. All your blood work is normal. Go see a specialist (knowing full well that there aren't any). Have an antidepressant."

The one "doctor" who actually believed that something was seriously wrong with me was actually a nurse P.A. But she still didn't know what was wrong, so she referred me to 5 different specialists who typically ignored and dismissed my complaints.

Remember that "asthma-that-wasn't-asthma" that I asked this board about several years ago"? It took me nine months to recover my lung function. Never got a diagnosis. A few months later I developed GI problems. There were more and more days when I couldn't make it to my part-time job - the only job I could handle with my chronic fatigue. Once again the doctors were at a loss. They suggested drugs for IBS-D. Just the act of getting dressed and going to a doctor would leave me exhausted, in bed, for days afterwards.

I continued to deteriorate. One day while struggling to get a glass of water my knees buckled when a door slammed. Any sudden sound caused me to collapse to the floor. I remembered seeing a patient collapse like that in a doctor's office many years before. I had asked the doctor what was wrong with the woman who fell down when the phone rang. He told me she had adrenal insufficiency.

CLICK!

I took a 4-mg tablet of Medrol, prescribed for my dog. Within a few hours the oncoming "flare" slowed. I kept taking Medrol. The "flare" reversed and was gone in two days. Not six months or nine months like all my past flares. Two days. So I read and I studied. I kept adjusting my daily dose to the lowest that would keep my symptoms at bay. Fortuntely I had a big bottle of Medrol to work with, cheap from the vet (why so much cheaper from a vet than when prescribed for humans?).

My crippling CFS improved. "IBS-D" disappeared. Widespread pain diminished. My thyroid stabilized practically overnight. Mood stabilized shortly thereafter. I had a life again!

The next time I saw my doctor, the medical expert, I told her how my life had dramatically improved on 3mg of Medrol daily. I could now go to the grocery store without collapsing for days afterwards. I could make a sandwich, sweep my floor, take out the trash. I no longer had to crawl to the bathroom because I was too weak to walk.

I told her that based on this empirical evidence, I suspected secondary adrenal insufficiency was at the root of my long illness, or at least a factor. Which makes sense, since ME/CFS shares over 36 symptoms with adrenal insufficiency.

You know what this doctor told me? The one who had given me no help and no hope? "Stop self-medicating. You are not a doctor! You shouldn't take matters into your own hands."

This is the same professional arrogance as when I got sporotrichosis from a rose thorn. Two "specialists" made snap judgements of trigger finger. I didn't have symptoms of trigger finger, but they both wanted to schedule me for surgery. When I suggested sporotrichosis based on the rose thorn and my symptom progression (backed by a medical paper which I tried to show the doctor), said doctor SCREAMED IN MY FACE for reading!

This is the same professional arrogance as when I had breast cancer. I got tired of seeing women I love die horrible deaths after following conventional treatment. When I made an educated decision to go with alternative medicine and "unproven" treatments, doctors scolded me like a naughty child: "If you don't do surgery, chemo and radiation you will DIE!!!"

The fact that in every one of these cases I was right and they were wrong did not interest them at all. The fact that in every case I got well meant nothing to them.

How about the dentist who, with a handful of sharp tools in my mouth, asked me if I had accepted Jesus as my savior?

How about the gynecologist who performed cryosurgery on me without anesthesia when I was thirteen? He scolded me for crying because in his words I couldn't feel any pain "down there." He ordered his nurse to hold me down and threatened to hurt me more if I cried out. I call that rape.

I have nothing but admiration and respect for nurses, ER and ICU doctors. But other doctors? They have not earned my respect. As a class they have earned my fear, distrust and contempt. My life is proof enough that most doctors are intellectually lazy, willfully ignorant, arrogant a$$holes. If a doctor wants my respect, they're gonna have to earn it.

Those clowns at the NIH and CDC? I wouldn't piss on them if their hair was on fire. Now they are treating the entire country with the same callous disregard that the medical profession treated me. They only care about the medical logistics at their end. Lock everyone up because overcrowded emergency rooms are a problem. Well they can find workarounds for that problem easier than we can find workarounds for no longer having any work to go back to.

While we wait on the CDC and the NIH and the FDA and the whole damned alphabet soup to come up with policies, our quality of life is irrelevant. Our ability to work, to provide for our families, to keep a roof over our head is irrelevant. Lasting harm from battery, depression, poverty and even suicide are irrelevant. Remain passive and follow orders.

[Woodsman]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

Why shiny, don't you know medicine is a sacred calling, noble, and represented by the finest humanity has to offer? Not only are they instruments of healing, but its very source! Shouldn't you be more grateful and humble before your betters?

We have two factions if you will, with two very different sets of needs. One faction, the medical scientific community, is driving the narrative: Covid-19 kills, we don't know enough about it to make accurate predictions, we haven't figured out how to treat it, and it can overwhelm our shamefully underequipped hospitals. I totally get all that.

However these arguments are tragically out of step with the acute and very real needs of the other faction, namely the laypeople who are being destroyed by the side effects of the Covid-19 response. For too many people, the Covid-19 response is like a chemotherapy that might destroy the tumour but kills the patient in the process. I don't think the medical faction cares about this at all. We're supposed to care about their needs but they don't care equally about ours.

I'm seeing the medical faction do to an entire society what they have done to me for the past 30 years: Ignore, discount, shame and threaten. It's the same pattern:

For 30 years I have suffered with ME/CFS, or what I thought was ME/CFS. My very real suffering was discounted by doctors as either trivial or all in my head: "I don't know anything about that. All your blood work is normal. Go see a specialist (knowing full well that there aren't any). Have an antidepressant."

The one "doctor" who actually believed that something was seriously wrong with me was actually a nurse P.A. But she still didn't know what was wrong, so she referred me to 5 different specialists who typically ignored and dismissed my complaints.

Remember that "asthma-that-wasn't-asthma" that I asked this board about several years ago"? It took me nine months to recover my lung function. Never got a diagnosis. A few months later I developed GI problems. There were more and more days when I couldn't make it to my part-time job - the only job I could handle with my chronic fatigue. Once again the doctors were at a loss. They suggested drugs for IBS-D. Just the act of getting dressed and going to a doctor would leave me exhausted, in bed, for days afterwards.

I continued to deteriorate. One day while struggling to get a glass of water my knees buckled when a door slammed. Any sudden sound caused me to collapse to the floor. I remembered seeing a patient collapse like that in a doctor's office many years before. I had asked the doctor what was wrong with the woman who fell down when the phone rang. He told me she had adrenal insufficiency.

CLICK!

I took a 4-mg tablet of Medrol, prescribed for my dog. Within a few hours the oncoming "flare" slowed. I kept taking Medrol. The "flare" reversed and was gone in two days. Not six months or nine months like all my past flares. Two days. So I read and I studied. I kept adjusting my daily dose to the lowest that would keep my symptoms at bay. Fortuntely I had a big bottle of Medrol to work with, cheap from the vet (why so much cheaper from a vet than when prescribed for humans?).

My crippling CFS improved. "IBS-D" disappeared. Widespread pain diminished. My thyroid stabilized practically overnight. Mood stabilized shortly thereafter. I had a life again!

The next time I saw my doctor, the medical expert, I told her how my life had dramatically improved on 3mg of Medrol daily. I could now go to the grocery store without collapsing for days afterwards. I could make a sandwich, sweep my floor, take out the trash. I no longer had to crawl to the bathroom because I was too weak to walk.

I told her that based on this empirical evidence, I suspected secondary adrenal insufficiency was at the root of my long illness, or at least a factor. Which makes sense, since ME/CFS shares over 36 symptoms with adrenal insufficiency.

You know what this doctor told me? The one who had given me no help and no hope? "Stop self-medicating. You are not a doctor! You shouldn't take matters into your own hands."

This is the same professional arrogance as when I got sporotrichosis from a rose thorn. Two "specialists" made snap judgements of trigger finger. I didn't have symptoms of trigger finger, but they both wanted to schedule me for surgery. When I suggested sporotrichosis based on the rose thorn and my symptom progression (backed by a medical paper which I tried to show the doctor), said doctor SCREAMED IN MY FACE for reading!

This is the same professional arrogance as when I had breast cancer. I got tired of seeing women I love die horrible deaths after following conventional treatment. When I made an educated decision to go with alternative medicine and "unproven" treatments, doctors scolded me like a naughty child: "If you don't do surgery, chemo and radiation you will DIE!!!"

The fact that in every one of these cases I was right and they were wrong did not interest them at all. The fact that in every case I got well meant nothing to them.

How about the dentist who, with a handful of sharp tools in my mouth, asked me if I had accepted Jesus as my savior?

How about the gynecologist who performed cryosurgery on me without anesthesia when I was thirteen? He scolded me for crying because in his words I couldn't feel any pain "down there." He ordered his nurse to hold me down and threatened to hurt me more if I cried out. I call that rape.

I have nothing but admiration and respect for nurses, ER and ICU doctors. But other doctors? They have not earned my respect. As a class they have earned my fear, distrust and contempt. My life is proof enough that most doctors are intellectually lazy, willfully ignorant, arrogant a$$holes. If a doctor wants my respect, they're gonna have to earn it.

Those clowns at the NIH and CDC? I wouldn't piss on them if their hair was on fire. Now they are treating the entire country with the same callous disregard that the medical profession treated me. They only care about the medical logistics at their end. Lock everyone up because overcrowded emergency rooms are a problem. Well they can find workarounds for that problem easier than we can find workarounds for no longer having any work to go back to.

While we wait on the CDC and the NIH and the FDA and the whole damned alphabet soup to come up with policies, our quality of life is irrelevant. Our ability to work, to provide for our families, to keep a roof over our head is irrelevant. Lasting harm from battery, depression, poverty and even suicide are irrelevant. Remain passive and follow orders.

[Mega]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

The British NHS saved my Brother's life & my Mum......they did everything for my Father but his age caught up with him.
It great but its expensive as well, in the UK its the cornerstone of our lives.........

Mike

[bpr]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

The British NHS saved my Brother's life & my Mum......they did everything for my Father but his age caught up with him.
It great but its expensive as well, in the UK its the cornerstone of our lives.........

Mike

You keep that socialist garbage on your side of the pond, friend. You say it's "expensive;" I say we pay twice as much and our care is at least 4x better than anywhere else because we're America. Read Shiny's post again, Mike, maybe you missed the part where she said our for-profit system is the best in the world, bar none. :-P

[jk]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

We have two factions if you will, with two very different sets of needs. One faction, the medical scientific community, is driving the narrative: Covid-19 kills, we don't know enough about it to make accurate predictions, we haven't figured out how to treat it, and it can overwhelm our shamefully underequipped hospitals. I totally get all that.

However these arguments are tragically out of step with the acute and very real needs of the other faction, namely the laypeople who are being destroyed by the side effects of the Covid-19 response. For too many people, the Covid-19 response is like a chemotherapy that might destroy the tumour but kills the patient in the process. I don't think the medical faction cares about this at all. We're supposed to care about their needs but they don't care equally about ours.

I'm seeing the medical faction do to an entire society what they have done to me for the past 30 years: Ignore, discount, shame and threaten. It's the same pattern:

For 30 years I have suffered with ME/CFS, or what I thought was ME/CFS. My very real suffering was discounted by doctors as either trivial or all in my head: "I don't know anything about that. All your blood work is normal. Go see a specialist (knowing full well that there aren't any). Have an antidepressant."

The one "doctor" who actually believed that something was seriously wrong with me was actually a nurse P.A. But she still didn't know what was wrong, so she referred me to 5 different specialists who typically ignored and dismissed my complaints.

Remember that "asthma-that-wasn't-asthma" that I asked this board about several years ago"? It took me nine months to recover my lung function. Never got a diagnosis. A few months later I developed GI problems. There were more and more days when I couldn't make it to my part-time job - the only job I could handle with my chronic fatigue. Once again the doctors were at a loss. They suggested drugs for IBS-D. Just the act of getting dressed and going to a doctor would leave me exhausted, in bed, for days afterwards.

I continued to deteriorate. One day while struggling to get a glass of water my knees buckled when a door slammed. Any sudden sound caused me to collapse to the floor. I remembered seeing a patient collapse like that in a doctor's office many years before. I had asked the doctor what was wrong with the woman who fell down when the phone rang. He told me she had adrenal insufficiency.

CLICK!

I took a 4-mg tablet of Medrol, prescribed for my dog. Within a few hours the oncoming "flare" slowed. I kept taking Medrol. The "flare" reversed and was gone in two days. Not six months or nine months like all my past flares. Two days. So I read and I studied. I kept adjusting my daily dose to the lowest that would keep my symptoms at bay. Fortuntely I had a big bottle of Medrol to work with, cheap from the vet (why so much cheaper from a vet than when prescribed for humans?).

My crippling CFS improved. "IBS-D" disappeared. Widespread pain diminished. My thyroid stabilized practically overnight. Mood stabilized shortly thereafter. I had a life again!

The next time I saw my doctor, the medical expert, I told her how my life had dramatically improved on 3mg of Medrol daily. I could now go to the grocery store without collapsing for days afterwards. I could make a sandwich, sweep my floor, take out the trash. I no longer had to crawl to the bathroom because I was too weak to walk.

I told her that based on this empirical evidence, I suspected secondary adrenal insufficiency was at the root of my long illness, or at least a factor. Which makes sense, since ME/CFS shares over 36 symptoms with adrenal insufficiency.

You know what this doctor told me? The one who had given me no help and no hope? "Stop self-medicating. You are not a doctor! You shouldn't take matters into your own hands."

This is the same professional arrogance as when I got sporotrichosis from a rose thorn. Two "specialists" made snap judgements of trigger finger. I didn't have symptoms of trigger finger, but they both wanted to schedule me for surgery. When I suggested sporotrichosis based on the rose thorn and my symptom progression (backed by a medical paper which I tried to show the doctor), said doctor SCREAMED IN MY FACE for reading!

This is the same professional arrogance as when I had breast cancer. I got tired of seeing women I love die horrible deaths after following conventional treatment. When I made an educated decision to go with alternative medicine and "unproven" treatments, doctors scolded me like a naughty child: "If you don't do surgery, chemo and radiation you will DIE!!!"

The fact that in every one of these cases I was right and they were wrong did not interest them at all. The fact that in every case I got well meant nothing to them.

How about the dentist who, with a handful of sharp tools in my mouth, asked me if I had accepted Jesus as my savior?

How about the gynecologist who performed cryosurgery on me without anesthesia when I was thirteen? He scolded me for crying because in his words I couldn't feel any pain "down there." He ordered his nurse to hold me down and threatened to hurt me more if I cried out. I call that rape.

I have nothing but admiration and respect for nurses, ER and ICU doctors. But other doctors? They have not earned my respect. As a class they have earned my fear, distrust and contempt. My life is proof enough that most doctors are intellectually lazy, willfully ignorant, arrogant a$$holes. If a doctor wants my respect, they're gonna have to earn it.

Those clowns at the NIH and CDC? I wouldn't piss on them if their hair was on fire. Now they are treating the entire country with the same callous disregard that the medical profession treated me. They only care about the medical logistics at their end. Lock everyone up because overcrowded emergency rooms are a problem. Well they can find workarounds for that problem easier than we can find workarounds for no longer having any work to go back to.

While we wait on the CDC and the NIH and the FDA and the whole damned alphabet soup to come up with policies, our quality of life is irrelevant. Our ability to work, to provide for our families, to keep a roof over our head is irrelevant. Lasting harm from battery, depression, poverty and even suicide are irrelevant. Remain passive and follow orders.

you've had at least 2 bad problems in your dealings with doctors: you've been unlucky in that your doctors [sound like they] were jerks, self-important and without humility. there are plenty of those so perhaps not even unlucky, in that the odds may be that that's the majority, i don't know. the other is that you've had vague systemic symptoms which have not been well understood. there have been a number of controversial diagnoses over the years, including fibromyalgia [now apparently recognized as something real], chronic fatigue, epstein-barr, chronic lyme disease - all syndromes which some doctors don't believe are real illnesses, while others think they are

not enough doctors are willing to admit to ignorance, so they take a stand. there are a number of factors which push doctors to think that way, the most salient in my mind being the responsibility they bear. in medical school innumerable lectures would include a line that boiled down to: "you better remember this thing that i'm saying, or you'll kill someone." so i think many defend against that anxiety by deciding they're omniscient. obviously, this is pure speculation on my part, and perhaps just a projection of my own anxiety whenever i heard those intimations.

as to the trade off between health and economics, i agree that the medical authorities pay little or no attention to the social and economic costs of shutting down the economy. of course, that's not their job to do so. that's the job of political leaders who are elected to make wise judgements for us all.

[Woodsman]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

...Places like Georgia may see a spike or the trend may continue downward, but you can be sure that any "good news" will be minimized and any increases will be heralded as a catastrophe, and being in the South, undoubtedly linked with a nefarious racial conspiracy. ...

Gee, that was a real outlier prediction of mine, wasn't it?

[shiny!]

Re: After the Virus? Cognitive Dissonance

Gee, that was a real outlier prediction of mine, wasn't it?

"It's a real burn, being right so often." -Mal Reynolds