NOTE: This is an email I set to the Kankakee Daily Journal in response to an article they ran titled “Observations from my foxhole.” I’m posting it here because it will either be routed to the bit bucket or dramatically shredded there.<\/p>\n
Let me be upfront and say that I don\u2019t subscribe to the \u201cGOP Propaganda Tabloid Daily (which doesn\u2019t print daily)\u201d \u2014 my parents do. Whenever I\u2019m back home taking a good Trump and voting at least twice, sometimes it is the only thing around to read. If this was the olden days with outdoor plumbing, I guess I could also put the paper to good use. Otherwise it is mostly a waste of trees, save for the couple of pages of local news. The only thing worthwhile they ever published from a syndicated point of view was Malcolm Burko. Sadly, he is no longer on the sunny side of the daisies.<\/p>\n
I debated quite a while about responding to your \u201cObservations From My Foxhole\u201d article. Some people are just gullible enough to watch the Fox Fiction Network and they simply can\u2019t be helped.<\/p>\n
What finally forced this tipping point was Trump suggesting people inject or ingest disinfectant to cure the virus. This was not a sarcastic comment, despite his later attempts to backpedal. This was the Imbecile-in-Chief being the Imbecile-in-Chief. I say that as a Republican. I was also deeply saddened to hear about the spikes in poison hotline calls resulting from that inexcusable suggestion.<\/p>\n
Contrary to what the White House claims, we don\u2019t have enough testing. I have no medical license or degree. I\u2019m just a traveling IT consultant and author who has worked on some medical devices and been in a few lab situations. Viewing this strictly from the \u201ccoverage testing\u201d point of view (an IT term for measuring the amount of code testing procedures being exercised), we need the following to have \u201cenough\u201d testing.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the minimum for enough. The healthcare workers need a 10- to 15-minute turn around on those tests. No, just having enough cotton swabs to do it isn\u2019t enough; you need all of the chemical agents and testing devices.<\/p>\n
Having groups of people gathering together in protest without wearing masks and standing way closer than six feet apart, e.g., that Jones character in various videos and photos, shows extreme disrespect for our currently overworked healthcare workers. It\u2019s the equivalent of spitting on a veteran returning from a war. You can be against the war all you want, but you can\u2019t spit on the veterans. They went where they were ordered to go. These same people disregarding the social distancing and shelter-at-home orders will be the ones demanding they get the best care when they fall victim. Part of me believes it is sad that medical facilities cannot refuse them, saying \u201cstupidity isn\u2019t curable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Shelter in place sucks. Being back on the family farm, I can at least help with planting and mowing. In a tractor cab out in a field, I\u2019m about as socially isolated as one can get. Someone living in a half a closet, which New York City calls a \u201cstudio\u201d apartment has got to be going insane. Still, it\u2019s the only weapon we have. Sheltering at home, washing hands often, and disinfecting surfaces is currently our only real defense. Soon we will all have to wear some kind of mask if we go out in public. It will suck, but it must be done.<\/p>\n
Mass re-opening will just be throwing more dry leaves on a fire before it\u2019s gone out. You will set off a blaze that will spread death to my and many other people\u2019s parents. You don\u2019t have that right.<\/p>\n
Meat packing plants have had to shut down. Despite precautions and protections in place, the number of infected got too high. Hopefully you watched \u201c60 Minutes\u201d last weekend and saw the story of how the Detroit auto plants now making medical devices require everyone to wear a wristwatch device that buzzes when you get closer than six feet to another person. It not only buzzes, but records who you came into contact with. That\u2019s scary, but will be the new norm for quite some time. Scarier still is Google and Apple teaming up to track people\u2019s phones and how far apart they are. Rent the 1984 version of \u201c1984\u201d while you are trapped indoors.<\/p>\n
https:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0087803\/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1<\/a><\/p>\n I\u2019m really tired of people regurgitating the baseless conspiracy theory that COVID-19 came out of a lab in Wuhan. I\u2019m also deeply saddened that current testing capabilities cannot test when a person was exposed or to which strain. The people who study the genome of viruses long ago debunked the Wuhan conspiracy theory, and still it keeps being regurgitated. Yes, the Chinese government has a deep-seated culture of \u201cdon\u2019t tell anyone I shat my pants.\u201d Yes, they try to cover up every catastrophic failure they have \u2014 just like our current Imbecile-in-Chief continually declares truth \u201cfake news.\u201d The two really aren\u2019t any different.<\/p>\n Here is a bit of reality that will take a few years and much better testing capabilities to prove. Coronavirus has been in America since November 2018 and possibly earlier. Not the current deadly strain \u2014 one of the precursors. Feel free to go look up the current symptom list for COVID-19.<\/p>\n https:\/\/nypost.com\/2020\/03\/06\/coronavirus-symptoms-whats-the-difference-between-a-dry-and-wet-cough\/<\/a><\/p>\n —<\/p>\n While a fever is the most common symptom of Coronavirus (Covid-19), about two-thirds (67.7%) of patients get a cough \u2014 specifically a dry cough, according to the World Health Organization (WHO)<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cA dry cough is what we call a non-productive cough, because no phlegm is brought up,\u201d Javaid tells The Post. It is usually characterized by a scratchy throat.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n During November 2018 there were people staying home sick, then coming into work saying \u201cit wasn\u2019t really the flu, just a really bad cough and I felt icky.\u201d I heard the same things during flu season in 2019.<\/p>\n I\u2019m an IT consultant who has had to do a lot of analysis in his 30+ year career. Viruses, like weeds and some<\/i> humans, evolve. This thing has been here a while, hopping from host to host, finding the weakest host to gain a foothold, then learning how to be a more efficient killing machine.<\/p>\n On some level, all creatures are parasites. When the parasites live in harmony, it is called an ecosystem. Putting it in the simplest of terms: cows eat grass and drink water; they poop and pee on the pasture, providing nutrients for the grass. As long as they never eat more grass than the pasture can produce, it\u2019s a circle. Yes, weather plays a part. I said I was using the simplest of terms.<\/p>\n I really kind of hate it when a family of diseases is given a name. HIV (AIDS) is one name, and in the minds of many it is a single disease. In reality it is many different strains. It is also one disease we have never defeated. You may have seen commercials for a \u201cprep\u201d drug to help prevent getting HIV. Despite all of the money and research thrown at that disease early on, that\u2019s as close as we have to a vaccine. The \u201cmanage it\u201d drugs have reportedly gotten better, but there still is not a bottle of something you can take to get rid of it. Take a moment and think just how long ago it was that Rock Hudson was in the news for AIDS.<\/p>\n We finally have a vaccine for 2009 Influenza A\/H1N1, also called \u201cswine flu.\u201d<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/h1n1flu\/vaccination\/general.htm<\/a><\/p>\n When the Spanish Flu (another H1N1) hit in 1918, it was a novel virus. In this case, \u201cnovel\u201d means it was too new for anyone to have developed immunity.<\/p>\n Covid-19 is a novel virus. I just don\u2019t think it is quite as novel as researchers currently believe. Again, I\u2019m making a non-medical observation based on something going around for at least two flu seasons where quite a few people stayed home with a bad dry cough, feeling icky for days.<\/p>\n One thing that bothers me are the images on some news broadcasts about victims in mass graves. From the images, it looked like they were just using some kind of white body bag. It\u2019s not so much an issue with mass graves as much as not having heard any research on how long the virus can live in a human body after death. I always fear the mass burial vs. cremation solution when the deaths are from a pandemic. Yes, mass graves are easier and cheaper, but . . . it could be like toxic waste, leaching out and coming back to get us later.<\/p>\n COVID-19 isn\u2019t the first of its kind to go on a killing spree. You may remember Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). COVID-19 is actually SARS-CoV-2 \u2014 or as some may call it, \u201cthe little brother.\u201d SARS is listed as having run from November 16, 2002 (discovery) through some time in 2004, so hopes of COVID-19 going away in a couple of months seems to be mere wishful thinking. There is a distinct possibility we could still be dealing with this when the next flu season rolls around. Dealing with a new wave while still trying to crest this wave.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/future\/article\/20200302-coronavirus-what-can-we-learn-from-the-spanish-flu<\/a><\/p>\n https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Severe_acute_respiratory_syndrome_coronavirus<\/a><\/p>\n There is a lot of talk about \u201c2nd<\/sup> wave\u201d going on now. My personal belief is that we are currently on at least our third wave. The first two were those \u201creally bad coughs and icky feelings\u201d nobody thought much about over the past few years. To quote Londo Mollari from \u201cBabylon 5\u201d:<\/p>\n \u201cBig concerns grow from small concerns. You plant them, water them with tears, fertilize them with unconcern. If you ignore them, they grow.\u201d<\/p>\n The first two (possibly more) attempts at gaining a foothold in the human species didn\u2019t work out well for Coronavirus. People got over it and we ignored it. It learned. It adapted. This time it was a lit match in dry grass. All of this talk about a \u201cvaccine soon\u201d has me pointing to HIV. I remember hearing that same phrase when HIV was making headlines and raging through the human species, contaminating the blood supply, causing widespread panic and homophobia. To date, as far as I know, we don\u2019t have a cure or a vaccine. I won\u2019t hold my breath for a COVID-19 vaccine that actually works showing up any time soon. I\u2019m also a bit leery of the SARS vaccine that was never sold.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.discovermagazine.com\/health\/sars-vaccine-could-be-stopgap-measure-against-the-new-coronavirus-study<\/a><\/u><\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019m not anti-vaccine. I just want those \u201cburdensome regulations\u201d put to good use via lengthy clinical trial so we can really measure the downside. I also want a vaccine to be north of 80% effective, instead of the 30% the flu vaccine was one year. That year did more to stop people from getting the flu shot than any conspiracy theory ever could. That was an epic fail. If you really can\u2019t understand why I, and most thinking individuals, like those \u201cburdensome regulations\u201d and lengthy clinical trials, read up on Zantac and cancer. That trial process was obviously too short.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/health\/2019\/11\/07\/how-did-zantac-become-potential-cancer-risk-fda-wants-find-out\/2509043001\/<\/a><\/p>\n SARS got a foothold in China and got out. The never-admit-you-shat-your-pants Chinese government tried to hush it up. Once it was worldwide, they couldn\u2019t hide it anymore. No different than Russia trying to cover up Chernobyl. Yeah, like radioactive waste that high in the atmosphere wasn\u2019t going to be picked up by sensors in other countries. Even the cheap sensors can detect truckloads. On the plus side, those countries now know the sensors actually work.<\/p>\n China will be, for the foreseeable future, where these pandemics originate. It has a third-world culture in many areas despite having an industrial and technology base. Many Chinese make enough money to travel and send their kids to college in America and other countries. Adding insult to injury is this fetish that CEOs have for off-shoring factory jobs to China, which leads to a massive amount of shipping coming back.<\/p>\n Yes, I heard the story about the NIH funding Coronavirus research in Wuhan. It\u2019s no conspiracy theory. You have a high-tech lab not far from a third-world culture (wet markets); not too far from a lot of bats. Given what happened with SARS, it also makes sense to have \u201cboots on the ground\u201d so intelligence can get a heads up when another pandemic has taken root.<\/p>\n I haven\u2019t worked in a lab setting in a long time. What I remember from what training I had years ago is that you typically look for either a common weak strain or a common weakness. Common weak strains can be grown in large quantities and used as a vaccine to train the human body. Scan through the history books for a time when we used cowpox to vaccinate against smallpox. A common weakness is flaws in the DNA or required nutrients one can exploit to wipe out 80+% of the most deadly strains.<\/p>\n https:\/\/duckduckgo.com\/?q=cowpox+vaccine+for+smallpox&t=canonical&ia=web<\/a><\/p>\n Theoretically, if an entity has only one food source and you eliminate the food source, you can starve the entity to death. I say theoretically, because that approach didn\u2019t work out so well for HIV.<\/p>\n Read up on the discovery of CRISPR. Our antibodies actually \u201csnip\u201d a portion of viral DNA and add it to themselves. This appears to be how it both remembers and kills more efficiently next time.<\/p>\n Having said that, we do need to fund research on bats. Wuhan is a good place to do it. It has a lot of wild bats \u2014enough that people catch and eat them. When you read up on just how many diseases deadly to humans can be carried by bats, you realize there is no way anyone could eat a bat safely without charring it to a lump of ash.<\/p>\n We need to intensely study bats \u2014 not because they are the only mammals that fly, but because they have developed a physiology that can carry all of these diseases without any obvious impact on them. Putting this in \u201cWar of the Worlds\u201d terms, bats are the humans and we are the Martians. If you remember, weapons didn\u2019t kill the Martians. It was the common cold.<\/p>\n So, not far from a lab in Wuhan is a geographic region with lots of bats and basically a third-world culture (wet markets). When you combine that with a don\u2019t-tell-anyone-I-shat-my-pants government philosophy, you get pandemics. This we know. This we can defend against if we have boots on the ground in labs and hospitals to give us a heads up. In fact, we did know this.<\/p>\n https:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Politics\/intelligence-report-warned-coronavirus-crisis-early-november-sources\/story?id=70031273<\/a><\/p>\n The boots on the ground passed this information back. Not only a SARS-like, but a SARS-based virus had lit the pile of dried leaves and grass on fire in China. The fact that this happens to be the best location to research such things also provides us an early warning system. Sadly, you have to have an actual President instead of a Twitter Tantrum-in-Chief busily grubbing money from everywhere to build a wall that falls over in a stiff wind.<\/p>\n https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=bOebX099dG4<\/a><\/p>\n Not to mention a wall that a $100 hardware store saw quickly cuts through.<\/p>\n https:\/\/slate.com\/news-and-politics\/2019\/11\/smugglers-usd100-hardware-store-power-tools-saw-holes-in-trumps-usd10-billion-wall.html<\/a><\/p>\n Where was he getting that money from? Was it the money that was supposed to expand the stockpile of ventilators? Was it just the money for someone to test and maintain the medical equipment? There is no good explanation for why 170 ventilators shipped from the national stockpile to California arrived in non-working order.<\/p>\nNobody should eat a bat.<\/h3>\n