Just as polio killed or permanently handicapped millions worldwide before a vaccine was developed, medical experts are now drawing comparisons in scale with the coronavirus.
Covid-19 is “this generation’s polio” declares Nicolas Hart, the British physician who recently treated UK PM Boris Johnson.
With the false claims of “it’s just the flu” now disproven, we’re now faced with how to live under the threat of covid-19 infection until – hopefully, as there are no guarantees here – an effective vaccine is developed and deployed at scale.
How do we find a way to work, shop and socially interact without unacceptable risk to an invisible and highly-infectious virus that can kill us or leave survivors with long-lasting damage to our lungs and other organs?
Ready or not, we’ll be figuring that out over the coming months…
Don’t forget to get your free download of Peak Prosperity’s book Prosper!. Given its relevance to preparing for any kind of crisis, pandemic or otherwise, Chris and I are now making it available to the world for free during the covid-19 lockdown.
Hi Chris and Adam, another great video that really pulled me in. I am a polio survivor, see my story here: https://medium.com/@examinedlife/we-are-the-blind-and-the-lame-3d503387f35f
I am trying hard not to be a COVID-19 survivor… uh, let me rephrase that, I am trying hard not to catch it, but if I do, I hope to survive it like I did polio. Geez, would that be something, a two time pandemic victim AND survivor!
Your description of CFR vs IFR threw me, listened to it twice and it didn’t click, so I found this : https://www.virology.ws/2020/04/05/infection-fatality-rate-a-critical-missing-piece-for-managing-covid-19/
"CFR is the ratio of the number of deaths divided by the number of confirmed (preferably by nucleic acid testing) cases of disease. IFR is the ratio of deaths divided by the number of actual infections with SARS-CoV-2. "
So it sounds like IFR is estimated simply based on symptoms ? Because the case has not been confirmed, either because the test came back negative or they were never tested ? Can someone clarify that for me ?
Anyway, to recap, having grown up struggling with the world around me, and being a naturally ornery person, I have never taken anything at face value and am a prolific reader of any and everything. So I REALLY appreciate the info I get here as it helps shape my response and how I try to inform others. Suddenly everyone in the extended family is coming to me for advice. One relative said “Well if I wasn’t a prepper before I sure am now”. <sigh> Better late than never I guess…
I wish Chris ( and so many others) would stress the link between vitamin D levels and skin color.
If you are a person of color living in cold temperate climates your vitamin D levels are going to be very low, especially during half the year. Even very light skinned people have a hard time keeping D levels adequate.
It’s true that many POC have socio-economic reasons for having bad outcomes for Covid-19. I did read that the only physicians to die of Covid-19 in UK were immigrants/POC. So that does seem to remove most factors except skin color.
AFAIK, the only (physical) benefit of having lighter skin, is better absorption of vitamin D.
Maybe people had better outcomes in Sweden v Spain because over thousands of years, they have evolved to have higher vitamin D levels during winter and it has nothing to do with foods being fortified?
Here you go: https://www.zerohedge.com/health/trump-mobilizes-military-deliver-covid-vaccine-hhsdod-unveil-massive-contract-injection-hhsdod-unveil-massive-contract-injection
Trump is not wrong. If you want mass vaccination you need to step ahead on the delivery system. I wish Trump stepped up to the line with data in Feb. during the cluster phase. Originally said “actions” instead of “data” but that enforces the current US dependence on Gov. when “actions” should be taken locally based on data.
There’s been to many shenanigans surrounding vaccines to instantly jump on the vaccine solution. My hope is effective treatment studies (CQH, zinc et.al.) will overwhelm the current narrative. I’d like to see studies including quercetin as the zinc ionophore because that’s what I’m currently doing and all I’m likely to obtain.
If you can call it good news; If the mass vaccination side effects are severe enough, and my guess they will be, then sheer numbers should overwhelm the narrative fairly quickly. I’ll be dragging my feet as can.
I have tried to post this three times on three different threads … poof!
Part 3 of Whitney Webb’s excellent ‘Engineering Contagion’ series is now out on both Mint Press News and The Last American Vagabond. Part 3 is called Head of the Hydra.
Both of these alt news sites are among the ones that seem to trigger the disappearing comment thing… Both are well worth checking on a regular basis, IMHO.
Jan
An article in the SCMP described a peer reviewed study recently published in Cell Research.
Some passages from the article:
“Coronavirus patients discharged from hospital could still carry the virus deep in their lungs, undetected by conventional testing methods, a Chinese study has found.
The study was based on the postmortem examination of a 78-year-old woman who died after having had the coronavirus……. After receiving antiviral treatment, she was deemed ready to be discharged on February 13, having returned negative results in three rounds of testing, based on samples from the back of her nose and throat. Her condition had improved significantly, backed up by a CT scan. A day later, however, she suffered cardiac arrest and died. The postmortem of the woman found no trace of the coronavirus in her liver, heart, intestine, skin or bone marrow. However, the researchers found complete strains of the virus in tissue deep in her lungs.
More than 160 recovered patients in South Korea have tested positive for a second time, according to South Korean health authorities earlier this month. Similar cases were reported in mainland China, Macau, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam and Philippines, among others. Some positive tests came as long as 70 days after the person was first discharged, according to mainland media reports.
A research team in China last month found that some patients, especially young people, had too few antibodies after recovery, meaning they could be infected again or unable to suppress the remaining viral strains in their body.
About 14 per cent of seemingly recovered patients assessed in a study in Guangzhou in February were hospitalised again following positive test results. Another study last month, led by professor Tong Xialin with the Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, found that the rate was nearly 16 per cent among patients taking Western medicine only, and less than 3 per cent among those taking herbal drinks at the same time.” https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3082200/coronavirus-may-lurk-deep-lungs-after-patients-recover-study
The Insurance companies will tell employers that they won’t cover them if their employees don’t get the vaccine as a way to mitigate their loses from people getting sick. Employers will mandate current and future employees get the vaccine, much like they force you to take a drug test at hiring, or randomly during employment.
Drug tests aren’t about worker safety, they are a way for insurance companies to refuse covering your medical bill should you have an injury. People who showed up high or drunk, were easily spotted and you were sent home. Have an accident and if they can say, “Look you smoked marijuana in the past few days! We won’t cover you and will fire you.”
Same with the covid vaccine. Don’t take it, and if you get the virus, we won’t cover your medical bills.
Your choice will be to take the vaccine or not work. Maybe you can find gig work, or under the table work at minimum wage but if you want to actually make enough to live on you WILL take the vaccine.
Actually I’m not that worried about the forced vaccine issue. First, they haven’t had much success creating a vaccine for any of the corona viruses so far. I have real doubts they will get one for this virus either. Second, a vaccine isn’t as profitable for big pharma as a expensive treatment regime. Why develop a $200 one shot vaccine, when people who do get sick can be charged thousands of dollars for a drug that one or two companies have the patent on?
My above post on Cuomo and tech taking over the world, needs some background.
Eric Schmidt who is the former ceo of Google is the main character in the article. He comes from a long line of Silicon Valley aristocrats that really got their start with government funding. Specifically that funding came from the intelligence community and defense. Sitting at the epicenter of SV is Stanford. https://qz.com/1145669/googles-true-origin-partly-lies-in-cia-and-nsa-research-grants-for-mass-surveillance/
I too had polio, but a much more benign experience than yours at the time, as my family was embedded in a religious tradition that preferred their God to medicine as a treatment protocol. This was not a successful choice in many instances, but it saved me from the brutal medieval treatment that was served up in the hospitals of the time. However, PPS started early, and since I had been “healed”, it was blasphemy to suppose that the constant aching weariness and mental fog that accompanied most days had to do with the illness, so it must be my personal failings. A small child doesn’t question these things, but they’re built into your view of life. But like you, after a lifetime of observation, I’ve come to regard polio as one of those heavily disguised blessings “they” talk about. Being forced to come to terms with what you can’t change, instead of just whinging about it, and seeing comparable struggles in the lives of others, does enlarge one’s view of “life, the universe, and everything.” So, I salute you, I salute you and your partner’s “orneriness”, and wish for the world now the same “benefits” as we received from our generation’s COVID.
The thing about Cov2, as with other of the nastier viruses, is that they leave a swath of post-viral effects. They can take effect immediately, or, like polio, start up 15 or more years later.
Polio, as I understand it, attacked the brain stem - it either went for the area that controlled the respiratory system (bulbar), or the muscles in the arms and legs, or maybe it went through your gastric system and you just thought you’d had a bad flu - it was called the “summer grippe” at the time. If it didn’t kill you, you eventually either fought it off (with or without generally well-meaning but dubious medical help), or maybe viruses have a best-before date and fade off on their own, but they leave a mess behind. With polio, the destruction of the connectors to your brain stem, to some degree, healed itself - the brain is an amazing organ - and the remaining healthy nodes of the stem sprouted new ganglions to reconnect with your leg muscles or whatever, and you were off and… walking, anyway. That’s if you were lucky, like I was. Or at least it died out in your system and you were no longer fighting for your life. BUT, it left detritus in your brain that randomly blocked neuroreceptors, most visibly to do with memory.
And eventually, those overloaded brain stem nodes start shedding the extra ganglions for your muscle systems, and gradually (or suddenly) walking or whatever gets harder and harder and less and less activity makes you impossibly weary. Even some of those who just had the “summer grippe” have ended up with the post-viral effects.
Other viruses can have these longer term effects too. With the less headline-worthy ones, we probably don’t notice so much - they just accumulate as the various ills the flesh is heir to. But CoV19 seems set fair to leaving a hell of a trail of long-term effects behind it as well. I don’t know if that’s part of what that British doctor had in mind when he referred to this as “this generation’s polio”, or if he just meant it was fearsomely infectious from multiple sources. But 65 years after my encounter with it, I’ll tell you, it’s the post-viral effects that worry me the most.
Incidentally, the cocksackie viruses (another polio-like series) were also having a field day at the same time as the polio epidemic waves, but they got less press. I ended up with antibodies to both, but in the memory-jumble of my childhood years in bed, I can’t recall which one that was. Just wondering whether it had PV effects as well. Probably.
Edited to add: The purpose of this is not to dump a lot of personal stuff, but because post-viral effects tend to be very similar across a wide range of different viruses, and they can be unexpected. Already, debilitating fatigue is a noticeable feature of the current one.
In brief - Chris is right - not catching it is the best option, if you can possibly avoid it.
Hi Scotthw,
Wow, just read your medium article. How thoughtful, how inspiring. ?.
Btw: student of Quantum Mechanics? This is not the place, nor time to discuss about it, but I’m not surprised, what is not to like about QM! As a hobby project I’m working on a different theory, just for fun. Most probably nonsense, but who cares, it is like the buddhist beautiful sand made mandalas, when finished, forget about it.
After Chris’s recent video highlighting the problem with belief systems, I’m suprised that he continues to suggest that some countries who have controlled this virus without requiring facemasks for all did so by having a facemasks for all policy. I’ve mentioned to him a couple of times that New Zealand does not, and did not, have a facemasks for all policy. Again, in this video, he’s ticked off step 1b (facemasks for all) as though this was something that helped New Zealand. It did not. Perhaps he was fooled by the NZ Prime Minister claiming they’d stockpiled 9 million masks and then doing a simple calculation that that is enough for 5 million people. In actual fact, all of that stockpile was for health workers and even then there were distribution problems. For the general public, facemasks were almost impossible to get for the first couple of months of the epidemic and even now can only be bought expensively (so disposable masks have to be reused) with no widespread availability.
Just to be clear, there are countries who have brought that daily case rate right down but without having widespread use of facemasks. Some of that was sheer luck but step 1b is clearly not needed in all situations.
WASHINGTON – Five sailors on the aircraft carrier sidelined in Guam due to a COVID-19 outbreak have tested positive for the virus for the second time and have been taken off the ship, according to the Navy.
The resurgence of the virus in the five sailors on the USS Theodore Roosevelt underscores the befuddling behavior of the highly contagious virus and raises questions about how troops that test positive can be reintegrated into the military, particularly on ships.
All five sailors had previously tested positive and had gone through at least two weeks of isolation. As part of the process, they all had to test negative twice in a row, with the tests separated by at least a day or two before they were allowed to go back to the ship.
Nordic countries use sun lamps to combat SAD in the 1960’s filament ones were UV where goggles were needed, today there’s a huge range in use. They also eat all the North Seas oily fish which are common around Britain’s shores as a daily dish, herring haddock place etc whilst the UK is Bass & Cod which are nordic water fish, fish oil is high in vitamin D.
I agree with you. For me, the biggest worry about this virus has not been surviving it, most people will, but it’s the sequelae they will live with. That’s why it’s important to listen to survivors of other pandemics and to understand what might be coming, since we’ve been through this all before.
It’s eerie to go back and look at the old pictures of medical officials posting daily Polio statistics on town bulletin boards for the public, and to see trucks spraying down the streets in an effort to eradicate the disease. I appreciate you and Scott’s posting on your experiences. Information from pandemic survivors is crucially important to help inform us today.
This virus has and will continue to divide people. The have’s and - -the have nots.
Those with means can, will and are isolating themselves and I suggest will continue to do so. They are also not experiencing the same ill effects as those with lesser means.
Those without, or with lesser means are left to live with the risk of knowing they are much more likely to be exposed. Regardless of mask wearing or distancing.
The well-to-do and quarantined have the luxury of being afraid of the virus. Those who work with the public, have less advantages and those who have had the virus are, I would suggest less afraid.
A business owner might ask - why is it okay to decimate a persons successful business they have worked a lifetime to build and achieve so people can feel safe. 20, 30, 40 years of hard work, gone. Message, start over, it sucks to be you? Many employees, - - sorry, you have no job, go home! And now, little prospect of a new, good job.
Eventually, disparity issues will become front and center. Unemployment will end, stimulus will be gone, summer will pass into winter and the “it sucks to be you” crowd will become angry. It’s not talked about here, yet, but it will be. It will be interesting because the majority (IMHO) of the readership isn’t in the “it sucks to be you group” they are in the well-to-do, lets check the stock market, evaluate the economic landscape and work on our garden and preps group. Conversations will be interesting.
We are well on our way of developing a “caste” system. Which group will you be in, I wonder.
Just speculating.
AKGrannyWGrit
