How and Why do Pandemics Die?

Indeed! How do they? This question perplexes the mind. We start with hypotheses, also called notions, or assumptions or just plain hair-brained ideas. And from that gels a composite. Much like the Wall Street Market Place, now a cavern of blazing colored screens that digitally-talk to each other without much human interaction, but once not too long ago was the hub of commerce and invested loans between humans, yes this very market place is the ebb and flow of the ethereal serum that vitalizes and replenishes the collective sense between humans and the machines and arbiters the value of a company. Similarly, the virus that is the basis of the pandemic also is the requisite arbiter of desolation, destruction of some human lives. But once the collective ire of the humans in the form of understanding and immunity has been raised to a level worthy of a firewall, well, then the little “bastard” dies. But good does come of it. As Camus’ Father Paneloux cries from the pulpit, “This same pestilence, which is slaying you, works for your good and points your path.” Indeed, all joy is remembered relative through the lens of hardship. So instead of the fear of death, perhaps we might look to the wonders of living. Even while the dues, for these viral mutations that change its potency and virulence, we as humans are paying with the currency of our demise, we know as a species, overcoming these odds is just a matter of time. Our systems are equally built to outlast the rigors of this insolent microbial beast and be the stronger for it.

Perspective:

(from: Visual Capitalist)

What then is that collective firewall, that I spoke of earlier? It is often termed as the “herd.” To keep this monolog short let me make it simple so that even I can understand what I am about to say. 

Perhaps we should delve just a bit into the 1918 Influenza pandemic. The graphics from history books show that there were three phases of infections. The initial one followed by a much larger one and then a small one. Theories abound as to the potential causes of these phases. Some say, the hot summer months during World War I, helped reduce transmission and the winter months exacerbated due to confined proximity between individuals. Perhaps precautions were undertaken and relaxed after each phase died down? Or perhaps it was not anything to do with the human endeavor? Perhaps it was all in the magic circuit of the four nucleic acids of the small RNA chain within the envelope of the virus itself? Viral emergence can be by chance or perhaps manufactured as suspected in COVID as one with “gain of function” by a Chinese scientist in the Wuhan lab and reiterated by a molecular biologist in Hong Kong. Chance as well as scientific conceit will inflict pain on us and that ultimately becomes a conduit for our understanding. We suffer from this indiscretion but much more in our imagination than in reality as Seneca would say. There is a creative endeavor by a few folks to harness the power of the mind and catapult it into the catacombs of manufactured disasters. True, COVID causes death. It has killed 150,000+ Americans over the past four months and infected 4+ million in its wake. Denial does not obviate such reality, but it also should bring some perspective. And that seems to still be lacking from this 30,000-foot perch where I sit in my imaginary loft wading through the clouds, envious of the simplicity and grace in nature that we have become blinded to.

Let us ponder on that for a minute. What am I implying in that last sentence? Perhaps each phase or cycle of infection is a natural phenomenon for the virus to find a new herd of hosts that have not been infected? So, if we are to “shutdown” or go into a “lockdown” for a period of time and then as the infection rate diminishes significantly, we open up society, which happens. The dormant guest reignites and launches itself into another herd of uninfected hosts. The size of infection may be less or more based on the degree of transmissibility and the guest’s ability to mutate enough for its own survival. Such mutations define the very nature of viral infections. The virus, if considered a life-form has its own issues of surviving. The more access it finds to uninfected hosts, the more likely it is to leap at the chance. And so, it does. Humans cannot be in a perpetual phase of a lockdown unless we as humans plan to live as troglodytes or die-off as a species. No commerce, no work, and eventually people die of starvation from food, from suicides, from illnesses, from a host of other maladies that afflict the flesh that can be managed with proper care.

That then brings us into another conundrum. Should we lockdown at all? That question seemed to have had answers from Sweden and some other European nations that did not move into the drastic action of shutting down their societies and their economies and lived to tell the tale. True, the number of deaths was more than in neighboring nations, but their story may not have been written as yet. By that I mean, artificial attempts at shutting down societies to prevent transmission may be a temporary phenomenon that perhaps makes us as humans feel that we are doing something, yet it may have little to do with reality. In other words, the virus will continue to linger and find new hosts for its perpetuity and survival, until it finds the firewall of fewer and fewer uninfected or immune individuals. 

That level is now projected or estimated at 30-35% of the population. Countries that were considered free of the COVID pandemic, like Japan, Australia, and New Zealand are now having a rebirth of this microbe. Apparently, you cannot forcibly put the genie in the bottle that easily and proclaim a faux victory. The only time when such a controlled lockdown would have worked was probably at the Wuhan Lab and its outskirts. But that is a tale in itself, raising its hands to broadcast.

If one looks at countries like Pakistan and India where millions and billions live respectively in relatively smaller parcels of land. Healthcare and hygiene are all not educationally enforced in those societies as it is in the western world. The travel there is a form of expected chaos, with bodies upon bodies riding on four-wheeled vehicles meant to carry only six. And large numbers of family members cohabiting in confined spaces sometimes with limited water supply, electricity, and sewer drainage creates rampant transmission. Hence, proximity lends itself to easy transmissibility of such urchins as seasonal flu and viruses, that constantly linger at the doorsteps of humanity. The recent data from these two countries in particular show the rapidly declining rate of infections and deaths after the peak. One, then has to consider the question, “Why?” It seems to mimic the graphic from UK and Sweden when compiled together....and perhaps reconciles the past and the future as well?

Perhaps the previous melting pot of viral infections within these societies and the antifragility related to previous coronaviral interactions with the human hosts have hardened the T-Cell Lymphocytes into creating long-term immunity against the newcomer? This newcomer, the COVID, has origins in the ancient version of the influenza virus and therefore immune-recognizable. Thus, when provoked into action to spread its progeny, only the previously uninfected (or without immunity) are falling ill to the disease and the elderly with comorbid conditions are dying from it? That must give us pause, for just a bit. Shouldn’t it?

On a sidebar, did you know that the human intestine plays host to billions of resident bacteria, and the Human DNA has tiny snippets of viral material protected and placed in the once termed, “junk DNA” or the introns. So, no matter how much alcohol and chlorine one uses to wash the outside, the inside is a teeming hotbed of miniature creatures. Let that sink in.

The 64K question then is, “Are we deluding ourselves by shutting down?” Will the flattened curve keep haunting our societies until the magic number of 30-35% infected population has been achieved? That question remains unanswered. But it is thought-provoking.

Perhaps knowing the modus operandi of the virus as we now seem to know, suggests that those infirmed, elderly, and with other co-morbid conditions need to be protected and the rest of the country would do better to continue on its merry way with prosperity for all.

I ask these questions to probe potentials. I ask these questions to light a fire of understanding. I ask these questions so that another point of view can gain traction rather than the constant drubbing by the well-placed mouthpieces that lose credibility by opening their mouths much too often. Using John Keat's famous words, we are here to "unweave the rainbow" not its beauty, but the reason behind the colors, and use that reason not to stifle the imagination but to advance the knowledge and understanding of things, as they exist.

“I’d rather have questions that cannot be answered than answers that cannot be questioned.”

 -Richard Feynman

The FOG of a PANDEMIC

There are certain things that one can predict with ease; All pandemics are bad for human beings. All pandemics assert a certain degree of fear and panic among those that know about their deadliness. And yet, all pandemics die-off in search of a host when none are available to infect. Simple truisms are hard to ignore even in these days flooded with a boatload of information. However, this fog of this pandemic, one can slice through with a knife. 

It seems this is different when you take its pulse. It started off in the Chinese province of Hubei in the city of Wuhan. Where and when it actually took its origins, remains a mystery shrouded in an enigma. But there was a certain flare and drama associated with its birth. The Chinese provided us with a televised theater of street spraying and authoritative policing control of its citizenry for a full 2-month period. Then, under the auspices of a willing World Health Organization, it was broadcast that the virus showed no human to human transmission. Amazing how this was swallowed in toto without a question. Surprisingly this followed in the wake of the daily TV drama from China of the human toll, but no one seemed to take notice. The powers that be encouraged mingling with the crowds and people were encouraged to “live your lives.” A good thing these past events have been documented, or else, we would be labeled delusional. Some might reflect with a snort of derision, but facing reality is always a good antiseptic to all the virtual illnesses afflicting the human mind.

The dissociative fugue that has followed in this fog of uncertainty is quite a remarkable evolution of events. A short time ago, there followed a flight of fancy from the “epidemiologists” that sparked a fear almost as inexorable as the pull of gravity. The experts with M.D.s after their names or Professor before opined with daily graphics showing the meteoric rise in the numbers of COVID infected cases and there followed the numbers of daily dead across the country in large bannered headlines. The Grim Reaper was nearby, “Stay away, Pull on the mask, pull down the shades and dissolve yourself into a state of oblivion. The litany continued unabated. But over time things began to settle down a bit. Call it regional herd immunity or shutdown policy. Whatever that was, was a welcome course of events. And curiously at about the same time, an unfortunate event sparked protests that grew in momentum and continue to rage across the country, and some enlightened parts of the world soon were collaborated with arson, looting, and destruction of personal property. The protestors were in full gear in large numbers compressed within wide streets, miles long, and were hailed as heroes, expressing their First Amendment rights. Then as if on cue, two weeks later the infection numbers that had been declining started to rise again. There was plenty of blame going around and mostly on the “premature reopening of commerce and trade,” yet no one seemed to point to the hundreds of thousands that had, and continue to clog the streets, as perhaps partially responsible for potentially initiating the infection spike. But semantics is the order of the day.

The expert professors expressed their vociferous consternation against those violating their dictates and more projections started arriving at the doorsteps of the newspapers opined by various professors and M.D.s with a certain flair for authority that the world was in a tailspin and unless all commerce was to cease immediately there would be millions who would lose their lives. One gentleman, a former government employee, specifically meted out a 90% shutdown of all movements across the country. He never specified who or why the 10% were exempt. One wonders, if the COVID patients had not been relegated via some state decrees to the nursing homes and the elderly resident there had been protected, potentially up to 80% of the deceased might have been protected? 

Counting is the new Game. Even in this whole drama of counting daily infections, a case of a car accident with a positive COVID virus test was recorded as a COVID death, sparked an interest in the curious minds. Questioning eyes started to ask the Centers for Disease Control for answers and even one of their chief supporters, a mostly cautious Dr. Brix suggested that she could not trust any data from the CDC. Now here is where we must pause. Pause, because the significance has to be underscored. The CDC was considered god-like in its powers over anything “infectious” after all the hierarchy at the CDC was full of veterinarians and were considered experts in zoonotic diseases.  And because the rhetoric seemed to follow the initial playbook of wild estimations by the epidemiologists and the statisticians that seemed to fall in line with the latter group’s thinking. The statistical game of fear was afoot. Alas, humans being error-prone creatures had used the wrong variable and that potentially dramatic deadly future frosted over quickly. The charade, however, was still on. It was now onto counting numbers. The CDC the beacon of information was over-zealous in reporting of any human with a suspected infection, exposure to an infected individual, false-positive result, might be, or symptomatic with fever, cough shortness of breath from any illness, was a recorded as a potential case even without proof and any death in the hospital where the COVID infected cases were present was considered a COVID death. In other words, most anyone dying during the pandemic was considered a case. Given the expansive, inflationary universe of “suspected but never proven” infected individuals the numbers started a second meteoric rise. Counts of infected meant those with a positive RT-PCR test (a potential 20% error rate) and a positive antibody test suggesting a past infection were included in the daily “new” cases. Thus, began the systematic abrogation of all the scientific rigor, supplanted by pseudo-intellectual complex high-minded speeches and op-ed pieces perpetuated as a meme by the media into the soft underbelly of the groupthink crowd. The higher the daily number of those testing positive the better the narrative of the professors and their exalted M.D.s. The more their graphics got retweeted and likes, the happier they got with this new-found popularity. The more graphics got dished out to the eager crowd. The need to perpetuate the narrative seemed an imperative of some consequence in the U.S.  The only problem was the lagging-indicator-death-rate was not showing a similarly meteoric rise. But infection-rate was infection rate and thus all activities were to come to a screeching halt immediately was the mandate from high above. Yet in India, which continues to remain unadulterated by the western science of IFTTT (has its own different sets of problems to contend with) had realized the potential of herd immunity concept and embraced it. Sweden, a much-maligned country by the “experts” during this entire deadly drama has emerged as the sanest of all countries.  Common sense does exist after all.

As the fog cleared in some minds, two reports caught my eye. One, a Connecticut lab discovered flawed data on 90 people falsely reported as positives were recanted. And the second was in Texas where 3484 people were removed from the COVID related death roster since no verification was available. These poor souls who had succumbed to natural causes outside of COVID had been added on as “might be” or “probable cause” to inflate the numbers. Other cities, counties, and states have yet to clean out their databases. When all is said and done, and reality rears its sovereign head, this whole debacle might be perhaps the biggest manufactured crises the United States, nay the world has ever known.

Meanwhile, groupthink is in progress, any thinker with a different idea or opinion is rendered a kook. There were furious attacks on thinkers and skeptics. If someone brought up the subject of a drug called (HCQ) Hydroxychloroquine, then a sudden plethora of poorly designed studies claimed it didn’t work. But no one asked the physicians who had been treating patients in their clinics whether there was merit to the drug. Why was the vitriol against the drug so amplified that anyone discussing its benefits was considered a “Charlatan?” Why? As “blind” luck would have it, a new drug emerged and was touted as the next thing since sliced bread against COVID, but the data was weak, yet it was the chosen one and millions of doses were bought by the government for a paltry sum of $3400.00 compared to $200 for the HCQ. So much so, that the company received a multi-billion contract to supply millions of doses, all based on an “interim analysis,” of the data. The HCQ use in early cases of COVID infections still remains under fire by the professors and the experts and the political football is still in the air, waiting for an interception. 

Life has come to a screeching halt, mostly. Schools are closed for children and at least one Harvard Professor issued her concern that children should not be taught at home, fearing the loss of the curriculum-induced-indoctrination. Her motives seem very strong and personal to her. Yet the State Governors continue to delay the reopening of the schools. Their motives seemed even stronger.  If we look at the infectivity rate in children, it is virtually “zero”(0.0026%) in the 0-20 age population. One wonders why then? But closing the schools is an opportune moment since it prevents the parents from going back to work as well. It affects those more so in the middle-class service and vocational industries who have to do physical labor, rather than the finance and money-transferring industries where most can sit at home in PJs and work from home or from their vacation resorts via computers. The very core of the sector these “experts’ claim to help save is the one systematically and financially being decimated.

Indeed when one sets one’s mind to inquire into the goings-on during this pandemic that seems to continue to this day and will probably go on for some time, there appear to be forces within the medical and scientific communities that are so attuned to rhetoric, so vested in the narrative, so hardened in their resolve, so entrenched in their way as the only way, that they fail to see the forest for the trees (a perfect metaphor here). These experts seem to have a deeply vested future in claiming that all previously cherished life-norms have to be undone. That commerce has to cease to kill the virus once and for all. Yet in their “deep thought” they have lost their concern for the loss of life from other ailments that need care. And speaking of such care, hospitals have realized a decline in their revenues because all elective surgical and medical procedures were canceled by governmental fiat and thus as a fallout, they have furloughed doctors and ancillary healthcare personnel. Clinics and hospitals with limited resources have closed to the detriment of the communities. Meanwhile the “public good” rhetoric goes on. But the reality of the numbers of patients with diseases that have unfortunately succumbed to these expert-opined-practices might never be known. What is known is that Suicide Rates have soared by 600% over the past few months. I am sure that there will be subtly stated spin that absolves the masterminds and inflicts this happenstance on those who resist their rhetoric. When it ends, and it will one day, is anyone’s guess. One cannot with certainty theorize the end date. Time will hold these fabricators to answer for their actions. 

It is a sad commentary on this dissociative fugue that has claimed the minds of the “scientists, economists, professors, and some elitist doctors.” And that is a shame. In the end, one wonders, what drives their motives?