Last week, I was feeling like I was coming down with a summer cold. Coughing, a fever, etc.
My daughter, being a genius, suggested I test myself for COVID. I felt a grim sense of nostalgia sticking that swab up my nose. A return to the bad old days. Usually, you wait a few minutes for that second pink “positive” bar to show up on the test. This one popped up in 30 seconds.
So, I just followed the advice I found: get rest, drink fluids, take fever reducers, and the like.
Around 2 a.m., I got up to get a round of cough medicine, and upon standing up, it seems my bronchial tubes collapsed and I could not get air into my lungs. I gasped for air as hard as I could to no avail, and I realized I was being asphyxiated.
I thought of two things: now I know what a ventilator is for, and this is one crappy way to die. I struggled to breathe, and my efforts were all for naught. I felt like a trapped animal, completely helpless.
I found the couch and once I was horizontal, I got immediate relief. I was breathing again. My God, that was close.
I spent the night in the ER.
I came home with a box of Paxlovid, and I thought about what I had escaped. And then I thought of the million who hadn’t.
I thought how unbearable their suffering must have been from going through days of what I experienced in less than a minute. How merciful death must have been compared to heaving and gasping in futility for air, hours on end without relief.
I thought how the country witnessed their passing, and it seems it isn’t even a footnote in our history. A million souls, gone, and no sense of reckoning or remorse. Stalin was right.
And I thought about the ghouls who downplayed the danger, including our own leader of the Western World, who suggested ultraviolet light and horse paste as viable treatments. And this being America, millions believed him. And some helped spread the message.
There were the five “conservative” radio talk show hosts who told people not to take the vaccine, don’t mask up, and who died from the virus.
No telling how many listeners they took with them. I’m sure the replacements in their time slots are no less dedicated to the spreading of ignorance.
There was the Georgia police captain who pushed horse dewormer on his Facebook page, told people where to get it, and when Facebook banned him, he protested he was being censored.
He died of COVID too, leaving a wife, three children and eight grandchildren.
As the Independent reported, “The drug (Ivermectin) has exploded in popularity among conservatives and anti-vaccine advocates, who see it as a viable alternative to taking the FDA approved coronavirus vaccines.
Fox News personalities including Laura Ingraham, Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity have also promoted the drug to their viewers despite its risks.”
In the sane version of America that existed before the Murdoch Press obliterated it, these vultures would have been shamed out of society in disgrace.
Then there is our own George Marlin.
I spend a fair amount of time interacting on social media, and I think I run with a pretty smart crew. A well-known economist asked “What are the most dangerous threats to America right now? Fascism? World War 3? Climate change? Economic collapse?”
A former policy maker answered: “Long term? The monetization of distrust and institutional degradation. “
That effort has succeeded beyond its wildest aspirations. And it killed a lot of people. And given a chance, it may also blow up the American Experiment.
It’s funny how politics has bisected even common-sense health precautions.
Who would believe that even a quack drug could have its own political affiliation? But it shows how pernicious the rot in our national polity has become. And just how emblematic the quackery is of so many other things.
In any case, be careful. There is a new variant out there and it is highly transmissible. I suspect I caught it from being at a Broadway matinee in a packed theatre a few days before.
Don’t tempt fate. Every day is a gift.
Donald Davret
Morristown
