132. Visible signs

When Smallpox ravished the earth, those who didn’t die were left with terrible pockmarks. English Queen Elizabeth’s came down with smallpox in 1562. She nearly died from the disease, and her skin was so scarred that she covered the pockmarks with heavy white makeup made of white lead and vinegar, which slowly poisoned her.

 

When polio stormed across the US in the 1950s, pictures of children in iron lungs were ubiquitous. And when August’s “dog days” hit in my northern Minnesota town, the bus no longer took us to the nearby lake to swim. 

 

We were afraid of polio, and the pressure to help those in the iron lungs and to find vaccines and cures impelled a national March of Dimes campaign. As a boy scout in Southern California, I and my fellow scouts solicited dimes from passersby and marched them up the curb along one of Oceanside’s main streets. Meanwhile, mothers went door to door in their March of Dimes. Defeating polio was not left to the scientists and doctors; we all participated. Nationwide empathy—as well as fear—raised money which contributed to the development of the vaccine. 

 

Covid is a trickier customer. For those who survive, it leaves no lasting marks—with the possible exception of the wasting bodies of some of the “long-haulers.” There are no pockmarks or limps to mark the survivors you encounter on the street, in schools, and the marketplace. 

 

I was talking with our smart, short-term cataloger, Charlotte, who has a degree in medical history, about the difficulties this poses. Maybe if the faces of survivors all turned bright red, or their head and body hair all fell out, vaccinations would be an easier sell.

 

The reinstatement of empathy is an even tougher task. We have watched TV screens show New York workers get bodies from homes and unload them into freezer truck temporary morgues. We’ve listened to exhausted doctors and healthcare workers describe their days and their patients. And still there are deniers, some of them working in health care. 

 

The way out of the current Covid crisis is still unclear, and the unintended consequences of the lengthening world-wide event are as unimaginable as the danger of lead poisoning must have been to Queen Elizabeth almost 500 years ago.

 

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125. “Freedom"

You—the unvaccinated—are free from the fear of smallpox, because I and millions of others around the world were vaccinated against it.  It is now gone—after centuries; after killing millions of American Natives when the first Europeans arrived with it; after George Washington gave his troops at Valley Forge a crude form of vaccination against it; after milkmaids in England showed milder cases of it and the first modern vaccines were developed; after the World Health Organization made it a priority to vaccinate the world, and enough were vaccinated so that the last major outbreak in the US was in 1949, and the world was declared free of smallpox in 1980.

You—the unvaccinated—are free of the fear of polio, because polio vaccines and massive polio vaccination programs were mounted in the 1950s and 1960s, and because the Gates Foundation and Rotary International have conducted major vaccination programs around the world—through wars, droughts, and objections by some that the vaccinations caused sterility and all manner of side effects. Polio hangs on in our midst, believe it or not, with many, including people in our own community, who survived the disease as children and now live with “post-polio syndrome,” a consequence of polio-weakened muscles that become debilitating with age. 

You probably don’t worry about measles, as I and my parents did when I was five or six and was put in a darkened room for a week lest eyes be damaged, an outcome that sometimes accompanied the disease. You were likely vaccinated against measles and other childhood diseases as children, even though you will not pass that gift on to your own children. 

If you are under 40, you probably didn't get or need vaccinations against smallpox and polio, and if you got measles, mumps, etc, or not, enough of your neighbors did to keep those diseases at bay.

The lesson is that your—and my—freedom often rests on the good work of others, and it always goes back to some common consensus among a broader community that we are all in this world together, and it is our obligation to consider the well-being of our fellow humans as we consider our own. 

In fact, it can be argued that if we look out for our fellow human-beings we will in the long run be looking out for ourselves. Vaccinating myself and my family members gives the Covid less room to run in our community—and in the world. Less opportunity to mutate and become deadlier (it’s already happened once, with delta now raging). Less likely to come back to me.

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104. It ain’t over...

I was checking out at the Safeway and casually mentioned that I was all vaccinated and had my post-vaccination two weeks in. The checker immediately told me that she was going to have nothing to do with the vaccine

 

She is white, and pollsters say that the highest percentages of vaccine resisters are among  young white Republicans and white evangelicals. I also know that there is an anti-vaccine group on the pollical left, anchored by a Kennedy. I don’t know if our Safeway friend belongs to any of above—but chances are….

 

I think back to getting my shots at Cloverleaf, the local fair hall. It was a super-efficient affair from check-in to shot to the required 15-minute post-vaccination wait.  I didn’t know everyone in the room, but I recognized several and talked to some. We were all in the 70+ category, and there were Republicans and church-goers among us.

 

All this went through my mind at the Safeway checkout. And it immediately occurred to me that those of us over 70—of all political and religious persuasions—have been exposed to polio stories if not the virus itself. As it turned out, one of my fellow vaccinees told me her own polio story during our 15-minute wait. Together we remembered the “dog days” of August, and, in my case, an end to the Minnesota swimming season. 

 

And we remembered chickenpox and measles—how our moms took us to a neighbor’s house to be exposed and infected so that we got chickenpox young, when it was less severe. I’m not sure on measles before it got its vaccine; I know I had it and was kept in a dark room for a week, my parents worried about the impact of measles on the eyes. 

 

We in the 70 + crowd have personal memories and experiences of diseases, and of vaccinations that work: measles, chickenpox, polio, smallpox—we got the vaccination; it’s no longer necessary as smallpox is eradicated! Most of us automatically okayed the new vaccines for our children. Now it appears that some 30-40 percent of those children are no longer believers. Enough of them to give our coronavirus the time and space it needs to keep mutating and moving among us, like the “1918 Flu” did a hundred years ago, when it went on for three or four years. 

 

It ain’t over till it’s over, as Yogi Berra said.

 

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93. Covid Hits the County

The first 8 or 10 days in February saw 27 new cases of the coronavirus and our fourth Wallowa County death. Numbers have continued to mount—with one or two cases each new day. Our sense of splendid isolation from Covid-19—and many other ills of modern society—has cracked. 

 

Most of us now wear our masks like we put on a sweater on a cool day or take one-a-day vitamin. Some few still fight convention and find an argument for personal freedom in walking into Safeway or the hardware store without a mask. While we mask wearers have become “naturals,” unthinkingly pulling it over the nose as we go through the Safeway door, the anti-maskers must have to constantly think about this expression of personal freedom. 

 

They forget, of course, the admonition of most gospels of freedom—the staunchest libertarian puts a boundary at the point at which his or her liberty infringes on the liberties—or the wellbeing—of others. 

 

Advocates of the “Swedish solution”—herd immunity—are quieter now. Although there are still stories of Covid Parties on college campuses, the idea being that enough young people—who mostly rebound quickly—will get the disease, heal up, and create the herd. I’ve not heard arguments from herd immunity folks about what are now called “long haulers,” people who contracted Covid-19, maybe even with mild symptoms, and then, weeks later, have heart, liver, or muscle problems. 

 

I know of no local cases, but in an interesting parallel, I do know two who suffered from polio more than 50 years ago and are now suffering from “post-polio syndrome”—muscle weakness and pain, etc. That long ago viral scourge is not done with us yet!

 

I know a few who wear masks and keep their distances carefully—but worry that the vaccine will not work or work ill on them. They will keep the Covid at bay on their own terms, without the help of big pharma, because no vaccine has ever been developed this quickly, because Bill Gates had something to do with it, or maybe because they just don’t like shots! 

 

There are, even among the careful mask wearers, staunch anti-vaxxers. Robert Kennedy, Jr. is national leader in this group. The son of the assassinated former Attorney General and nephew of President John F. Kennedy, has a long and successful career as an environmental lawyer—which puts him in the “liberal” section of our country’s sometimes strange politics. He leads a group that promotes the idea—debunked by most medical experts, that autism is linked to vaccinations. 

 

Among the anti-vaxxers and the reluctant waiting for more information there are stories of deaths after vaccinations. A friend says she knows of four healthy people who have died after being vaccinated. Robert Kennedy apparently claimed that baseball legend Henry Aaron was killed by the Covid-vaccine. Aaron, 86 years old, in a wheelchair and poor health, stepped up to take the vaccine to encourage more black Americans to do so. The Atlanta coroner found his death to be natural, having nothing to do with Covid or with the vaccine.

 

I’ve searched the press for stories of vaccination deaths; you would think that they would be prominent. Although there are stories of strong reactions, including one in our hospital—I can find no substantiated death stories. With millions of vaccinated, you would assume a few deaths. The most complete story I found was about 23 deaths in Norwegian nursing homes. Examination showed that “common adverse reactions of mRNA vaccines, such as fever, nausea, and diarrhea, may have contributed to fatal outcomes in some of the frail patients.” Their advice was to stop vaccinating the elderly who are sick.

 

In the U.S., over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines were administered from December 14, 2020, through February 7, 2021. During this time, 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people who received the vaccine. On examination, none of the deaths has been attributed to the vaccine. I think the message is that .003 percent of any group of 41 million will perish in a two-month period, and/or that vaccinating the very ill might speed their dying.

 

I guess there are still a few who believe that it’s all a big hoax, a plot to sell vaccines, or to promote the work and wealth of Bill Gates. But they are quieter now, and from press reports, the skeptical of all kinds are quietly taking their places in line and getting their shots.

 

I got my first shot last week, joining farmers and teachers, old friends and newcomers, Republicans and Democrats, at Cloverleaf Hall, where a joyful group of professionals and volunteers efficiently moved us towards immunity. I invite my “younger” friends and neighbors to get in line and grow Wallowa County’s herd of the immune. 

 

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79. The Willing

Scott Gottlieb is a physician, medical entrepreneur, Republican, former Commissioner—under Trump—of the Food and Drug Administration, and a frequent news show guest on Covid-19 and the vaccines. This morning the conservative talk show regular hit my liberal nerve with a call to vaccinate the “willing.”

 

It has seemed to me for some time that a primary public health task right now is to get as many people as possible vaccinated. Yes, it’s nice to have priorities, nice especially to get health care providers who are in the midst of the fight, vaccinated first. I think that the priority lists are still fine, but that little time should be spent trying to convince the anti-vaxxer nurse or the doctor who is still doubting the testing and waiting on more definitive results. 

 

Roll out those vaccines; get them to states and hospitals, and then into the arms of the willing. If the science is good—and I am not a science always has the right answers guy—the checks and balances, the accounts across national and private/public agency lines, all indicate that we’ve got a good chance of pulling off another Salk-Sabin-Polio win. 

 

Joe Biden has a plan to vaccinate 100 million in the first hundred days of his administration. He’s proposing money for states, money for a propaganda campaign to convince the public that vaccination is safe and efficacious. 

 

But the most important thing that he has already done is get himself and VP Harris publically vaccinated. Now our job is to follow the very public Biden-Harris model, and line up to get the shots. Docs and nurses first—if they want it; nursing home staff and patients—the volunteers; and then folks like me, over 65 or 75 or whatever number they want to pick—the wiling. 

 

I’ll be in that line. Hope you—or your parents, uncles, and grandmothers will be there with me. With longer days and the sunshine of a new health team and attitude at the top, we might just make 100 million by tax day in April.

 

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