Month: May 2021

I know a bit about science.  I have a bachelor’s in biology, a master’s degree in oceanography, a Ph. D in zoology and spent 33 years as a laboratory and field research scientist in which I published over 30 papers.  Although I am not an epidemiologist, I know something about statistics and a little about the uses and flaws of mathematical modeling.  I now write a blog and I can modestly say that I know a bit about how to communicate in this chaotic world we now live in.

When the Covid pandemic hit, I thought that I could help explain how this came about, what to do to protect oneself, presenting this information in a calm and logical manner that the lay person could understand.  Over the last year, I have spent many hours talking with friends, relatives, and commenting to perfect strangers on Facebook. Sadly, I have evolved into a Covid troll in the process. As a Christian I would like to stop doing this, try to walk in the shoes of the antivaxxers, the unmasked hordes, and Trumploidite’s who still claim that there is Democratic plot to make us into commies.  I guess I am going to hell, cause I just can’t. 

My surrender to the dark side started with my response to a Facebook post that stated, “mask can’t possibly work because viruses as too small to be stopped by two layers of cotton”. I responded that while technically this is true, virus do not flow through the air naked, they are carried on the much larger droplets of water or aerosols that waft through the air when you talk, cough, or speak German, and these are then absorbed onto the fabric of the mask. The result is if you are infected fewer aerosols that are released into the air and that if you are not, few is any can get into your nasal passages.  You see, dear friends, that virus when they get into your body need to reproduce before they reach the numbers that cause you problems.  Thus, a lower initial exposure will give your bodies immune system more time to respond and reduce the chance to a severe infection.

The responses I got to this thoughtful, logical, and exceedingly kind comment were varied.  “Fauchi said they didn’t work”, he didn’t.  “You are a sheep”, but I am allergic to wool.   “My sister got it while wearing a mask.”  Maybe if she had worn it over here nose or make it with a double layer of cotton fabric instead of some left-over afghan yarn, she just might have done better.  No shit, I was in Walmart last year and the checkout clerk was doing both of those things. “You build up carbon dioxide while wearing a mask and that will destroy your brain”.  Is that why surgeon’s die young?  Next time I will make sure that my doctor does not wear a mask while he is operating on my sheep brain.  SHUT THE FUCK UP AND WEAR THE GOD DAMN MASK YOU STUPID IGNORANT FUCKTARDS!

My next attempt to illuminate Facebook strangers was also a failure. There were many comments that Pfizer and Moderna were not vaccines but gene therapy.  First, I gave the definition of a vaccine.  A Vaccine is “a substance used to stimulate the production of antibodies and provide immunity against one or several diseases, prepared from the causative agent of a disease, its products, or a synthetic substitute, treated to act as an antigen without inducing the disease”.  Then I gave them a brief overview of how these two mRNA vaccines work.  The mRNA enters a cell, interacts with ribosomes to produce a protein that looks like the spike proteins on the surface of the Covid virus.  This elicits an immune response producing antibodies which then find and kill the virus. The mRNA does not hang around in the cell for long as is eventually disintegrates.  As the mRNA does not enter the nucleus of the cell it cannot interact with your DNA which is your genetic material. Therefore, dear friends, they are vaccines and do not cause mutations in your genes.

This science-based logic once again fell on deaf ears. I was called a liar, others insulted my parentage, or felt sorry that I had fallen for the big pharma lie.  “It’s a plot by Bill Gates to depopulate the planet.” WTF. It is “made from the lungs of aborted fetuses”, really, you have got to be kidding.  It’s a “poison that in 6 months will kill you”.  Why 6 months? Why not a month or a year or 10 years. “I got the shot and came down with shingles”.  OK, if you really believe this, take the Johnson and Johnson, it is a more traditional vaccine derived from a similar but attenuated virus.  “No way, I don’t want to die from blood clots”.  Are you a woman?? Are you under 50?? And even in that case only 7 in a million were affected, I think you sir are safe from that rare side effect, unless you have had a sex change.  “My sister died after the first shot”.  I see that you are from the great state of Tennessee.  Logically your sister GOT DRUNK AFTER GIVING YOU A BLOW JOB AND THREW HERSELF IN FRONT OF A TRAIN!

Another comment goes something like this: “I am healthy, and my immune system will defeat this virus as it has only a 1% mortality rate”.   I pointed out that this means it is 10 times more fatal than a seasonal flu and that this rate increases significantly with age and comorbidities.  My wife and I might have had it a year ago. At the start of this mess, my wife attended a sewing expo in Puyallup, Washington in March 2020.  5000+ women attended, rubbing elbows and swapping aerosols. A few days later, Covid hit the area with a vengeance. Judy came down with a “bad cold”. A week later I came down with it as well.  I wiped us out for 6 weeks. I slept on the sofa for 3 weeks so that I could elevate my head.  Then the diarrhea hit us both.  We survived but if i had not been retired, I doubt if I could have worked.  6 months later Judy developed a heart condition which almost killed her.  She is now on a drug which gives her the shakes in her right arm and will likely have to remain on it the rest of her life. We are not sure that was Covid. Would you really want to take the risk?  The response, “If only her doctors had proscribed hydroxy chloroquine and zinc she would have been fine”.   How about you INJECT CHLOROX AND SHOVE A UV LIGHT UP YOUR ASS INSTEAD, I WOULD PAY TO WATCH.

But the most common argument I get to my informed Facebook replies is that “the government is not going to tell me to wear a mask, I am an American!” Ever been pulled over by a cop? Do you give him your divers license and proof of insurance? Do you pay your taxes? Nobody is forcing you to get vaccinate or to wear a mask, however, it is the patriotic thing to do.  The replies to this are chilling, calling me a commie, a fool, and unamerican. I have even been compared to the Japanese who bombed Pearl Harbor. The last comment was from a longtime Facebook friend.  I dropped that sonabitch with a caustic comment about him being a used car salesman, which he is.  In this country you have freedoms to choose.  You have the right not to wear a mask, you have the right not to get a vaccinated. Does that give you the right to infect and possible kill others? That is a right I choose not to have.  Exercising that right says something truly ugly about you.  So, EAT SHIT AND DIE MOTHERFUCKERS.

I have been to Washington D.C. several times over the years.  I would like to say that I have seen all the sites like the National Zoo, Congress, and taken a White House tour.  Nope, never got out of the Smithsonian.  On the trip we took to visit Marty it was going to be different.

It was not a pretty day when we drove to the Metro station in Gaithersburg, MD.  We left the car and rode the rail to the Capital Mall intent on visiting as many of the Museums as we could manage till the grandkids or grandparents gave out.  In the end we managed to visit only the Air and Space Museum.  Judy wanted to see the Lincoln memorial, so we rode a bus for a while, the wrong one as it turned out, and started walking in the memorial’s general direction.   After walking for a few blocks, we came upon a small park with a swing and slide and abandoned our son to his fate with the grandkids and went on alone with Nikki as a guide.  We cut across the seemingly endless park with grass still with its winter brown with only a few blooming cherry trees to add color to the grey of the day. 

The Lincoln Memorial, through crowded with Spring break tourists, was magical. Judy cried at the awesome majesty of the place.  I teared up as I read the words of the Gettysburg address, even though I have read then at least a hundred times before.  We walked back down the steps where my son and his darlings rejoined us for the long walk back. 

Although we had not planned to walk through the Vietnam Memorial, it was right there and well, why not?  I had not served in the military, and while there were probably names on that wall that were friends of friends, I did not lose anybody of importance to me in that war, or the wars thereafter.  Thirty-nine years before I had been 1A for a while but was cursed or blessed with a skin condition that flared up just at the right time to make me 1Y and then 4F when the 1Y deferments were ended.  Yes, I was lucky, but I never totally rejoiced in it as others not so fortunate went in my place.  Even after all these years, there still is a tinge of guilt.  Perhaps this is why I was reluctant to walk beside that black wall of etched names, but as everyone else was going down into that pit, why should I defer once more?

As I descended the incline, I held a granddaughter’s hand, looking at the wall with the occasional bouquet of flowers placed here and there in remembrance of a lost son, husband, or father.  Looking at the wall my eyes focused not on the names but on the muted refection of me holding my grandbaby’s hand and of my wife and son walking beside me.  We were the ghosts of what those lost men and women could have had if fate had been kinder. They died and I lived. 

They had done their duty, but it was a war that would have been better if left unfought.    They had died for nothing despite the grand rhetoric of those who had sent them.  There was no noble cause.  The world was not made better by their valor or made worse by my cowardice.     

My guilt that I had carried all these years left me to be replaced by anger.  An anger that still seethes within me.  

We have learned nothing.   We keep fighting wars with highly questionable purposes.  Johnson and McNamara knew in 1968 that Vietnam was a lost cause, yet it went on for years after claiming more American and countless Asian lives.   They were more concerned about their image than the boys they sent off to die.  I don’t blame them for starting that war, as many of us, including myself thought it justified in the beginning.  We saw the world in black and white back then. Our hubris in Vietnam was summed in a line from the movie Full Metal Jacket, when a colonel justified the war to Mathew Modine, “don’t you know that inside every gook is an American trying to get out”.   I had thought that we had moved on from that.

But then once we tried to change the face of two foreign nations into something resembling our own.  But this time it is far worse than Vietnam.  For those who lead us into these morasses are of my age.  They cannot have forgotten the pain of that not-so-long-ago war for it was a defining moment in their lives.  These latest wars should not have been.  My generation was going to change the world.  We had all the advantages.  We should have learned.  Yet here we were sending our sons and daughters into wars that were best left unfought and once again we continued to send them even though it is clear that it is wrong and lost.  This time there is no excuse.  Those that still believe we are doing the right thing are fools and those in power that continue to stay the course are far worse.  This madness must end now.  We do not need politicians who sacrifice soldier’s lives so that they can appear to be leaders.  We do not need another black wall covered in names and etched with loved one’s tears. 

Come this fall we maybe finally out of the longest war in our history.  We have spent thousands of live and trillions in treasure to convert Afghanistan into our image.  We do not understand their history or culture.  We lost just as the British and Russians did before us.  Signing off on this fiasco is the only thing Trump ever did that made sense.  Biden has extended the deadline, lets hope that he does not back down like Obama did.  I know that when the Taliban take control of the country once more, that terrible things as going to happen. It was that way before we invaded, and it will be so again.  All we managed to do in 20 years is make a terrible situation even worse.           

I wish I could write something funny here to make it all better.  I can’t and I won’t.  Sometimes the medicine needs to be bitter to make it work.