You Can Beat Covid-19.......But it Means Being Humble

Last week at a Congressional hearing on the Corona virus response we saw members of the House of Representatives all Republicans try to smear Dr. Fauci and of course spread wild and nonsensical conspiracy theories all to impress the President.  It was gross but it further extended the the supply of nonsense that is driving the people on the street who are not following public health orders and extending the now ridiculous rise in Covid-19 cases and the coming deaths.  As other countries continue to squash the rise of cases we see the US exploding and spreading of cases and more and more people saying they have had enough and not following the simplest of guidelines to help slow the pandemic.  We have become a rogue nation whose citizens are not allowed to travel to many other countries.  It is getting clearer every day that if we had had a nationwide shutdown and a real testing plan in March and April we could be closer to normal.  Now we are still having to worry about what we might encounter at a grocery store or even a park.  The President and his enablers have failed us and yet they still spew asinine things and retweet lunatics.  So here are a few things.

1.  Masks work, they help slow down the spread.  They will not make you sick.  They will not stop you from getting oxygen.  You won't breath in your own CO2 or bacteria.  Yes masks aren't perfect and help others if you are sick and don't know more than they help you as a wearer but Covid-19 is a disease you can have with few or no symptoms and still spread it.  If we all wore masks when we can't remain physically distance it will go a long way to stop the spread.  

2.  Kids can get it.  I am tired of people telling me kids are immune or don't suffer with this disease.  Kids have died.  Not just kids with serious medical conditions.  But even those that haven't they have suffered greatly.  We don't know the long term effects of this virus on the system.  We have to remember to keep our children safe.

3.  Which leads me to this, opening schools in many places is just dumb and dangerous.  In places the virus is not under control the opening of schools for in-person classes will cause problems.  We know this from a day care center in Arizona and an overnight camp in Georgia.  And now we know as schools began to open last week for the fall and students and staff at different schools had positive tests.  How are we going to keep kids safe in an environment that is not designed for it and that are already so underfunded in many places.  

4.  Sports can be a way to do things like the NBA and NHL with sequestering of players and regular testing and contact tracing.  (if only we could do that everywhere)  but the Major League Baseball which is not using a model where players stay in one place has already in the first week of play had to cancel games because the virus is spreading in club houses.  This is a tale of two models and while it is the worst of times for both we are going to see how best to proceed.  

5.  THERE IS NO CURE.  Hydroxychloroquine does not cure Covid-19.  It doesn't.  Studies have shown it.  Those studies that have suggested it does help were highly flawed.  The people promoting it are people who have no real background in the area of study and have lied about their practice.  The recent video that caused a stir because the President of the United States decided to retweet it and the right wing noise machine tried to amplify it was a goulash of gibberish.  The doctors (some of whom don't even practice medicine anymore) are part of a right wing organization that sounds like a medical society but really is just a repository of the ridiculous like HIV does not cause AIDS or that vaccines cause autism.  One of the doctors promoting this so-called cure believes that demons have sex with people at night and cause disorders and that a woman got pregnant from fantasizing about a celebrity and prayed the baby away.  Maybe it became a spirit baby and killed Renly, I just couldn't follow after a few minutes.  

6.  This is not a simple flu.  This is at least 10X more deadly than the flu and spreads a lot more easily.  And no you didn't have it in November so stop trying to tell us you had it then and you were fine.  You may have had the flu or a cold or just didn't feel good.  Who knows.  This is a deadly disease that will kill between 1-4 percent of the people who get it.  

7.  There is no conspiracy to take away your rights.  People keep telling me mask requirements and shut down orders are part of a grand conspiracy to take away our rights.  The masks show who is compliant with orders and the shutdowns are to make us see government as the savior.  They also say things like the vaccine that is coming is part of a way to put a chip in each one of us to trace our movements and monitor what we eat and do all day.  They posted this from their cell phone that they use to order take out that the company records so you can quickly order again.  The same phone that the OS will watch to target ads to you for things that you enjoy.  You know the phone whose GPS data is stored in the cloud for you for easy access from you smart home system.  The one where you log you heart rate and blood pressure while you trace your exercise routine that is sent to ap database to tell you when and how hard you should workout.  Here is the thing, the nanotechnology costs involved in creating a chip that can injected with the vaccine is unnecessary since you carry it with you everywhere you go already.  Why bother.

This is just a little of the stupidity that has become the norm under a President who loves to tell us he is the smartest person in the room and is fooled by the nonsense that is out there.  Who attacks people smarter than he is because they become more popular.  So a few rules:

1.  Go out only when necessary and if you must visit with people take care to physically distance.

2.  Wear a mask everywhere in public there are people, especially strangers.

3.  Stop trying make excuses why the virus is won't hurt you.  It can and if you don't take it seriously it likely will.  

4.  Listen to the voices of real researchers in the field and to the doctors treating real patients not metaphysical ones.  

This disease is terrible but many places around the world have shown we can beat it back.  Use common sense and act accordingly.  Wear a mask, wash hands regularly, and maintain distancing whenever possible.  It won't be magic if it disappears, it will be the effort of patriots and humans with empathy to slow the spread and help us find a way to use science to defeat it.  Our country did this 100 years ago, let's not let the sacrifices that they made in their pandemic go to waste.