Five days ago I tested positive for COVID. In spite of taking a vaccine (actually a genetic modification treatment) that was supposed to be 95% effective. It wasn't. And guess what. Except for very, very mild cold symptoms, I am not sick. I've continued to do my daily 10,000 steps, 21 flights of stairs and 125 minutes of intense exercise. In the rain, this last week. I know that my experience is anecdotal. Not in any way representative of any average result. But it's a pretty strong anecdote. After all, I'm 76, in that elderly cohort most at risk from COVID.
But my anecdotal evidence agrees with what I deduced from looking at the mortality statistics when COVID first became a thing in 2020. From its earliest days COVID had a fatality rate only a bit higher than the 1968 Hong Kong flu. Hong Kong flu came and went. Most of us who were old enough to remember it...don't. It was that inconsequential in the larger scheme of things. So should have been COVID.
But it was not to be. In 2020, Dr. Anthony Fauci was the head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Research. He had authorized U.S. money be indirectly channeled to the Wuhan Lab for research into gain-of-function research, ie, making viruses more virulent. It appears that U.S. intelligence sources informed Fauci early on that COVID had come from the Wuhan Lab, not the so-called wet market selling bats. So, apparently to cover his rear, Fauci did a 180 degree pivot on standard public health policy on pandemics and suggested to then President Trump the travel bans, lockdowns, paying people not to work, social distancing, masking etc. Trump jumped at the chance to appear heroic by "doing something'. Biden followed in his footsteps. The legacy media followed in lockstep. Dissenting voices on social media were stifled by implicit government threats of greater regulation. The Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury handed out free money to bandage over the economic problem that very little economic activity was causing. The result was supply chain shortages, inflation, a generation of kids missing two years of education, increased deaths from people not able to access routine medical care...the list goes on.
Finally, last Friday the CDC came out with its latest COVID guidance saying you can treat it pretty much the same as you would treat the flu. Just in time for me to come out of isolation. But I'm still waiting for the mea culpas from the CDC and the politicians. All I'm hearing is crickets. That's this week's Report From the Fields. See you next week.