Category: Medical

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For those of us old enough to remember…

There’s a chill wind blowing.

Way back in time there was this thing called AIDS. (Yes I know it’s called HIV now and it’s still around.)

In the early days it was called AIDS, Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome. In those early years it was most prevalent among gay men.

The Christian Right danced a happy jig because those “Filthy Fags were getting Gods righteous vengeance shoved up their asses” Those Christians were totally happy to see what they perceived as the Sodom and Gomorrah gays being wiped off the face of the earth.

The Christian Right was positively giddy about it. Anita Bryant became their poster child and the Televangelists across the country used their pulpits to suggest all gays should be left to die. (Hmm, that sounds similar to something a Washington politician said about those refusing the COVID vaccine.) Some went so far as saying all gays should be put into camps where they could fornicate themselves straight to Hell.

In the early years, the medical establishment wasn’t even sure what was causing it, or how it was spread. They had many suspicions, some of which were eventually borne out. There was a time when a lot of people (including Doctors) thought AIDS was transmitted by touch. Some thought it was airborne. Universally, though AIDS was a killer and an ugly way to go.

Eventually Researchers discovered it was apparently a virus. Then they concluded it was sexually transmitted. Oral sex to completion was off the table. Anal sex was the most likely route of infection, due to the potential for blood / semen contact.

It was a dangerous and dark time to be gay. Bathhouses, popular with some of the gay community, were closed by local government decree. Gay bars closed, and gay bashing, (always a popular pastime,) became more prevalent. “Bash a Fag for Jesus!”

By that time a whole generation of gay men were infected, and most of them died. Check out photos of the AIDS quilt.

The media spin was; Gay men were pariahs. Unclean, deadly, high risk to have in your home or in your office. Gay men were a health insurance plan nightmare and many companies cut their losses by summarily firing gay men. There was no protection against an employer terminating a gay person. In fact some employers terminated anyone diagnosed with AIDS regardless of their sexuality.

That only changed when straight people started getting AIDS.

Then a similar disease that had confounded Doctors in Africa was identified as AIDS. In the African nation, it was primarily a straight disease, and the narrative of gay men being the root cause began to wane.

COVID reminded me of those dark times. Not the disease itself but the media narrative and messaging. “Get vaccinated for others”, “Wear a mask to protect yourself and other people”, “The unvaxxed are pariahs who want you to die”

All of the narrative was just too eerily familiar.

Now we have Monkeypox!

OMG!

Some in the media are asking if this is the next pandemic and others seem to be trying to cause a new panic using the same tropes that were so successful with COVID.

A big difference is there is a conflation, intentional or not, of Monkeypox and Gay.

There’s this report from NBC News

Once again, the Gay community is ground zero and once again the media is making sure that everyone knows this outbreak seems to have started in the Gay community.

The most recent example is the two toddlers on opposite sides of the US who have monkeypox. The media has pointed out that both cases appear to have Gay parents.

Conservative Christians are already using this as fodder to promote that Gays are bad parents, apparently due to their “Unclean and sinful lifestyle”

One Washington politician, (I can’t remember who and I don’t want to give her any more press,) went so far as to ask, “How is it that children are getting a sexually transmitted disease?”

She with that one question demonstrated everything you need to know about her. Her implication is that the gay parents are having sex with toddlers.

One can also infer that she’s woefully uninformed about how monkeypox spreads, and probably is someone the gay community should keep a very close eye on.

The other thing I found interesting is there’s already a vaccine for Monkeypox. So the fear mongering is completely unwarranted.

This miraculous vaccine is called the Smallpox vaccine.

Read the box closely.

A lot of the recent pictures of vaccine vials have been edited to show only the word monkeypox. You can tell they’re edited image because a real vaccine vial typically has the manufacturer, the dosage, and information about the suspension the active component of the vaccine is delivered in.

Interestingly, the start of the smallpox vaccine was based on observations of milkmaids. There was a sharp physician dealing with a smallpox outbreak and he happened to notice that milkmaids were never among the smallpox victims.

When he investigated, he discovered that milkmaids would catch something they called cowpox. It was a one time annoyance and when it cleared from the milkmaids hands, they never got cowpox or smallpox.

Observation, led to innovation. Can you say anecdotal??? Thank God that sharp physician didn’t subscribe to the beliefs of St. Fauci of the Holy Mask. If he had, people would still be dying from smallpox.

Smallpox was eliminated from the developed world in the 1970s and upon the declaration that the scourge of smallpox was eliminated, routine smallpox vaccinations fell by the wayside.

For those of us born prior to the mid 1970s monkeypox is probably a minor concern. For my part, I’ll run it by my doctor to find out if I should get a booster.

Since the vaccine for monkeypox is the smallpox vaccine, and since smallpox was eradicated no-one should be surprised that there isn’t a huge supply of the vaccine. Most vaccines have a shelf life after which they’re disposed of. So big Pharma is going to have to ramp up production of the vaccine and that is going to take time.

Not to defend government or big Pharma…

But what do you expect? What’s the point of having huge stockpiles of a vaccine that is only going to sit in a freezer or on a shelf and go bad? That’s not good business or a practical allocation of resources.

So to all of you out there complaining about the vaccine shortages, sit down, shut up, and give it some thought before you light your hair on fire with one foot nailed to the floor and run in tight little circles.

Monkeypox is generally not fatal. If you get it, follow your doctor’s instructions, and move on with life.

You know… sort of like what you should do with COVID.

From the CDC

How does Smallpox Spread?

Before smallpox was eradicated, it was mainly spread by direct and fairly prolonged face-to-face contact between people. Smallpox patients became contagious once the first sores appeared in their mouth and throat (early rash stage). They spread the virus when they coughed or sneezed and droplets from their nose or mouth spread to other people. They remained contagious until their last smallpox scab fell off.

These scabs and the fluid found in the patient’s sores also contained the variola virus. The virus can spread through these materials or through the objects contaminated by them, such as bedding or clothing. People who cared for smallpox patients and washed their bedding or clothing had to wear gloves and take care to not get infected.

Rarely, smallpox has spread through the air in enclosed settings, such as a building (airborne route).

Smallpox can be spread by humans only. Scientists have no evidence that smallpox can be spread by insects or animals.

Also from the CDC

Monkeypox spreads in different ways. The virus can spread from person-to-person through:

direct contact with the infectious rash, scabs, or body fluids

respiratory secretions during prolonged, face-to-face contact, or during intimate physical contact, such as kissing, cuddling, or sex

touching items (such as clothing or linens) that previously touched the infectious rash or body fluids

pregnant people can spread the virus to their fetus through the placenta

It’s also possible for people to get monkeypox from infected animals, either by being scratched or bitten by the animal or by preparing or eating meat or using products from an infected animal.

Monkeypox can spread from the time symptoms start until the rash has fully healed and a fresh layer of skin has formed. The illness typically lasts 2-4 weeks. People who do not have monkeypox symptoms cannot spread the virus to others. At this time, it is not known if monkeypox can spread through semen or vaginal fluids.

According to the CDC

Monkeypox virus is part of the same family of viruses as variola virus, the virus that causes smallpox.

That being said, I’ve not been able to find an exact name for the monkeypox virus itself. It appears the smallpox vaccine is effective because monkeypox is part of the same viral family.

So in my unprofessional opinion. I think monkeypox is going to be a big nothing burger. We have a tried and true Effective vaccine. We know the vaccine is effective because it wiped smallpox from most of the planet.

We also know anecdotally that if cowpox provided immunity to smallpox, and smallpox provides immunity to cowpox, then it’s probable a pox is a pox.

The politician who implied something nefarious going on in gay households with children obviously doesn’t know how to read, or apparently how to enter a search on the CDC.GOV website.

With monkeypox we need to shut down the narrative being spun by the media, religious zealots, and the just plain uninformed.

Of course monkeypox is going to show up first in the gay community. Pride Festivals were held for the first time in two years. They are nation wide throughout the month of June, and some people travel to multiple celebrations.

These people needn’t be having sex, (contrary to the salacious news,) all they had to do is hug and kiss one another. Is it so difficult to believe that people would be ecstatic to be able to travel and see friends in person that they hadn’t seen for two years?

I do find the timing interesting.

It could simply be a coincidence, but if I wanted to test the dissemination of a pathogen I can’t think of a better way than to introduce it during pride month. Precisely because it’s a month of celebrations and gatherings where lots of people travel to various cities attending multiple gatherings.

Talk about a great infectious testing platform.

Just sayin…

I’m prone to wonder about those kinds of things.

I mean, how the hell can a pathogen that’s typically confined to a small region in Africa suddenly appear all over the world at almost the same time?

With AIDS, which also came out of a relatively small region in Africa, patient zero was alleged to be a flight attendant.

The coincidence and similarity just makes me wonder.

Call it my suspicious nature.

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I was looking at the VAERS database the other day

I’ve been watching VAERS for a while. Not just over COVID but I’ve been curious for a long time if the Anti-Vax movement had a leg to stand on.

I’m still undecided about the Anti-Vaxxers in general.

I noticed something interesting in the charts located here.

In the conservative media there’s been a lot of talk about adverse reactions to the COVID vaccine and the VAERS database does tend to back up their allegations. Bear in mind this is only one data source and there may be contributing factors such as other comorbidities.

It is, and always has been that the sudden rise in death wasn’t necessarily only the COVID vaccine. It’s possible that the deaths might be associated with the vaccine triggering a cascade of issues that resulted in the patient’s death. This is very much in the vein of the CDC and others revising their COVID cause of death statistics.

In both situations, if the patient had diabetes and perhaps pneumonia then it’s possible that having COVID contributed to the patient’s death but was not the sole reason they died. Likewise a patient getting the vaccine may have died after getting it, but the vaccine is not necessarily the sole reason they died.

It pays to keep that in mind when looking at the data.

To get a clear cause / effect relationship you need to exclude everyone who had comorbidities or some other pre-existing condition. Only then, can you reasonably draw some conclusion as to whether the vaccine is dangerous. If the preponderance of deaths due to adverse reactions were in an otherwise healthy population, that should raise a red flag.

The overall numbers of deaths isn’t my point. What caught my attention was that the number of “Vaccine Related” deaths is dropping.

If, as the Anti-Vaxers say, the COVID vaccine is universally bad and dangerous, I wouldn’t expect to see the numbers dropping off.

Thinking about it. I came up with three hypotheses.

1 The really vulnerable population has died off. That’s gruesome to think about, but doesn’t exclude it from the realm of possibility.

2 Fewer people are taking the COVID vaccines. If those people who were never going to take the vaccine in the first place are still not taking it, and the population that ran to get the vaccine have already had it, then the numbers wold start to fall pretty much due to reason #1.

3 People are giving up on reporting adverse reactions because they’ve come to the belief that the government won’t listen anyway and therefore it’s pointless to report anything.

As I said, these are only hypotheses. Like all hypotheses they can only be proven or disproven. The science, (A.K.A. Truth,) of the situation doesn’t care if it hurts my feelings. Since I’m not a “Scientist” my hypotheses are pretty much not going to matter in the least.

However, this little exercise might give some of you insight into the workings of my mind. I’m dogmatic to be sure, but there’s a part of me that’s always asking, “Are you sure?”

It’s the “Are you sure?” That makes me go back and reevaluate.

While I may think the traditional Anti-Vaxxers are incorrect in their declaration that all vaccines are bad, I keep looking at their data and determine for myself if I agree.

I suppose it’s along the same lines as watching Ancient Aliens. I find that sometimes there are points they make, that clearly can’t be explained away with our current knowledge of ancient civilizations. There are items, stories or customs that don’t seem to make sense.

In those situations in my mind I relegate the Ancient Aliens “proof” to anomalous items. A kind of a TBD pending further research. I don’t believe that every odd shaped stone, pot, or weird custom is proof of alien contact.

For all we know, 4000 years ago an apprentice craftsman did something weird and the Master craftsman said, “Run with that, you’ll find out why it won’t work for yourself,” The apprentice may have put the item on their workbench as a reminder not to get too wild with innovation.

I myself have done this. I’d hate to think that 4000 years hence, a cult of some sort rose up around one of my failures.

Anecdotal evidence in my mind isn’t evidence. It’s an observed situation that deserves further inquiry. That’s why I reevaluate the Anti-Vaxxers data from time to time. That’s why I’ve been interested in all the COVID issues. That’s why I have always liked science in general. I like testing the anecdotal against the provable.

I like being able to convert anecdotes into demonstrated facts, or disprove anecdotal evidence as an odd coincidence.

The latter is more interesting. You can have a repeatable event, that anecdotally looks like proof but when you really look at it, you discover that what appeared to be a clear cause / effect relationship was dependent on a bunch of conditions that weren’t obviously related.

The puzzling part of that kind of discovery is the most fun to figure out. Then again, I like puzzles so it’s probably just me.

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It’s going to be a lot harder to be a Doctor or Patient

I’m not an anti-vaxer by any means. I had all the usual vaccines during childhood and have as a result lived a pretty healthy life. I keep up to date on the boosters like tetanus etc.

That being said, I haven’t had a COVID vaccine. This is in part due to medical advice based on a physician observing how my body reacts to drugs that seem to work for everybody else. If there are weird rare side effects associated with a particular drug, I’m the one to exhibit them.

Elsewhere in this blog I’ve discussed my desire to be vaccinated against COVID and my confusion, worry, and ultimate selection process of the vaccine.

To be honest I didn’t see the necessity of being vaccinated against COVID, but was considering the vaccination as a gateway to employment, and resuming normal life. President Biden really. made a mess of employment rules with his attempted mandates and subsequent statements.

Regardless of where you come down on the vaccination question, more data is coming out daily that suggests the COVID vaccines may not be all they were cracked up to be.

First we were told the vaccines would prevent COVID.

Then we were told the vaccines would reduce the spread of the COVID

Then we were told the vaccines would reduce the risk of hospitalization. (This one may still be true for some populations.)

We were told the vaccines were safe and effective. The effectiveness is at this point demonstrably questionable, and the safety question is still out for debate.

We were told we needed a booster, now it looks like another booster may be required every six months.

All this for a virus that is 98% to 99% survivable.

When you put the questions raised about the COVID vaccines against the other medical screwups over the past 20 years it begs the question.

Does the medical / pharmaceutical industry really have the high ground?

Leaky Breast Implants, weight loss drugs (Phen Phen), vaginal mesh, defective replacement knee or hip joints, pacemakers, and a plethora of medications that were found to be harmful enough that they were removed from the market after years of common use because the law suits piled up.

These issues, have always made me question my personal doctor. But now with the constantly shifting story about COVID vaccines, I find that I’m going to be demanding more time from my Doctor during my annual visit. I also find that I’m far less trusting of the medical establishment in general.

As a patient, I’m probably going to be labeled “Difficult” because I’m going to demand logical and concise explanation of the problem, and options to address or solve the problem. I’ve never been one to look at the “One Size Fits all” solution as the only solution. But now…

I’m going to be asking a lot more questions and I’m going to be expecting real answers not platitudes, or hand waving. I’m going to be much more likely to walk out of a medical practitioners office if I’m not getting real, verifiable, information. That information had also be in reasonable, normal, everyday English, not some heavily accented pigeon English.

I’ve always believed if a doctor couldn’t explain something in plain English, they didn’t really understand the subject matter.

I worked with computers. People have a hard time with computers and computer people have our own variation of English or terms to describe the functions of machines. Generally speaking it’s the terminology that causes folks to stumble. The trick is converting all the technical jargon into something that a non-computer person can relate to.

There are some computer terms for which there is no direct translation, at that point it’s best to draw a picture either with words or literally. If a computer person really knows the subject matter they can effectively do either. If they don’t know the subject matter and really understand it, typically they’ll try to baffle with bullshit jargon.

I believe that medical professionals have for too long gotten away with the jargon and perhaps don’t understand drugs, procedures, and medicine as well as they should. I’m all for holding them to the same standard as the lowly computer technician.

This is going to lead to more time spent with patients and impact the Doctor’s bottom line. Their insurance billing is based on number of patients and number of diagnosis per day. I personally think this is a shitty business model that doesn’t really serve patients but that is another story.

Being a Doctor is a tough job. I generally respect the profession.

But given that I feel the medical establishment had obfuscated and perhaps flat out lied to me and every other person on the planet for the past two years, I can’t say that I trust them. I doubt that I ever will trust them again.

This is not just about St Anthony of The Mask, a.k.a. Dr. Doom, a.k.a. Sir Follow the Science.

This is also about those Doctors who were silent, those who didn’t question, those who went along with the establishment and didn’t feel it was necessary to do their own research or thinking.

I especially loath those Doctors and researchers, who abdicated their responsibility to question what they were being told in favor of a fat paycheck and Wednesdays on the golf course.

Don’t be surprised if you see a lot of Doctors retiring. Some of them are probably realizing that the loss of trust their patients are showing, signals the end of the gravy train.

Others may simply be retiring in shame over how so many of their profession have behaved. These doctors are as much victims of the medical establishment as the rest of us.

I don’t think I’ll ever in good conscience be able to write Doctor as a title of respect anymore. I wonder if anyone would notice that I write doctor and md in lower case and what I mean by that.