Who do you trust in the fight against COVID?
By Gregg Wendorf
Advance News Journal
My primary physician came down with COVID-19 last week and she sounded like crap. Which is how she described it during the televisit. Crap.
I sent a text Monday to a local political watcher I know, who sent me back a text saying both she and her husband just caught COVID. She was “feeling OK,” but they were trying to get her husband’s fever down.
Meanwhile, I’m thinking, none of this crap sounds good as I reach for the bottle of sanitizer I keep in the truck.
Granted this isn’t Texas, but over in Florida, the state surgeon general, Joseph Ladapo, is warning Americans not to take this latest COVID booster, which should be made available to the public this month, at least down in the Rio Grande Valley.
Don’t take it? I’m taking it.
According to Ladapo, not enough studies have been done on it, and besides, some studies show that people who had the boosters were more likely to catch COVID. Meaning, the same thing they are trying to escape by taking the booster?
Yep. See how crazy this world has become? Trouble is, if you take just a little time to research this question on your own — COVID boosters increase risk of catching COVID? — you’ll find no legitimate studies that validate that claim.
Yet, the story about the Florida surgeon general gets published in the DailyMail.co.uk., which has a sizeable readership, without sourcing his claim about the booster (increases risk of catching the disease), and a certain number of people will simply believe it and take it to heart because they read it somewhere.
“If it’s online, it must be true.” Vaccines and Big Pharma have become weaponized by American politics. The regulators at the FDA and the CDC are corrupt, we’re told by some, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Who do you believe? In Hidalgo County, more hospital beds are getting occupied by COVID patients, that I’ve been told by several hospital sources, but the respiratory illnesses aren’t as bad as they were circa 2021.
Speaking of Hidalgo County, getting any local data — how many new COVID patients, hospitalizations, etc., are being reported weekly — isn’t as easy as it used to be. The county quit sending out daily press releases, citing local COVID data statistics, about a year ago, and even getting weekly updates isn’t easy.
Meaning, one could say, it’s hard to know how cautious to be when you don’t know how much of the disease is floating around in the air, or even at a store’s countertop.
At the State Level
In Texas, earlier this year while the legislature was still in session, Gov. Greg Abbott asked lawmakers to prioritize legislation to “end COVID restrictions forever.”
Senate Bill 29 was signed into law, which prohibits local governments from requiring COVID-related masks, vaccines or business shutdowns. Some Republicans said the bill didn’t go far enough because it didn’t include “private entities.” (Source: TexasTribune.org.)
Trust me. I get the irony.
Good news is, still, today’s COVID isn’t what we were seeing two years ago, three years ago, in terms of either morbidity or mortality, sickness or death.
Reading up about medicine, disease, it’s usually a matter of where you go for info.
Dr. Billy Bob’s Fun House, M.D. website probably wouldn’t be the best place to go online for medical advice. The Cleveland Clinic, however, a nonprofit academic medical center with worldwide fame, is a good place to get up-to-date medical info. It's one among many legit sources.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, from a story dated Sept. 13, 2023: “Most people believe COVID-19 has turned into a common cold. For the immunocompetent, someone with a functioning immune system, that might be true part of the time,” says infectious disease specialist Ryan Miller, DO. “But we’re still seeing critically ill patients, people who are mostly older, with multiple illnesses and COVID-19 infections coming into the hospital with severe respiratory disease.”
Like anything with regard to our health, our age and current medical condition play a big part in staying healthy while making our way in this new COVID world that is apparently here to stay.
“Is that it? You’re going to end this story with that lame paragraph? ‘Like anything with regard to our health, our age and current medical condition play a big part in staying healthy’ ... why not tell us something we don’t already know.”
Yeah, how about, this voice inside my head is driving me crazy.
“That’s better.”
Last bit of news from the Cleveland Clinic: “COVID-19 is something everyone should be concerned about. Indeed, we’ve reached our new normal: COVID-19 is now part of a host of seasonal respiratory viruses that peak during the fall and winter seasons. That means, while you can get COVID-19 any time of the year, there are windows of opportunity in which new strains of the virus can cause widespread infection. You’re also now more likely to get COVID-19 again year-over-year like other common circulating illnesses, like the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and influenza (flu).
“The risk of getting a repeat COVID-19 infection changes with each strain, so it’s a moving target,” explains Dr. Miller. “We’ve seen that even vaccinated people can have high rates of some COVID-19 infections if the strain has changed significantly enough.”
Which is why I’m getting the new booster. Hopefully this week. Besides the booster, who else can you trust to keep you COVID free? God?