Outside The Box

“When you gonna get to me, g-get to me
Is it just a matter of time Corona?” From the song “My Corona” by Chris Mann

I was loaded up for a trip to the tropics (south Georgia) to see my brother. Tracey had a case of the sniffles. “I’m fine. You go ahead and go.” She felt warm to me; too warm. “I don’t have a fever!” Her temperature was over 102.

“It’s just a sinus infection.” We gave her Tylenol, and the fever came down a bit but persisted to the next day. I began to look for those Covid-19 tests leftover from the pandemic. Still haven’t found them. One drugstore was out and didn’t know when they would have more. The other two drugstores in town were closed. A kind neighbor gave us a test kit, and it showed a positive result. We repeated the test to be sure.

At this point, I’m happy to report that our much-maligned and heavily burdened healthcare system worked, and it worked very well. We logged into our medical provider on a Friday at about 3:30 PM and requested an online consultation. We were talking to a doctor within 15 minutes, and I had a course of Paxlovid in hand within an hour, thanks to the tired and overworked but devoted and kind pharmacist in town. I can’t mention the name of the pharmacy, but you drive past it on Main Street every day.

Let me tell you, that stuff works. It leaves a taste in your mouth that’s a cross between quinine and wood ashes, but it works. Tracey’s fever was gone by the next morning, and within two more days, she was feeling almost normal.

I was just about to congratulate my immune system on keeping me from harm when I noticed a burning in my eyes. At first, I wrote it off as having used a bee smoker working with the hives, but it persisted, day and night for two days while my antibodies did battle on my behalf. Then on the third day, the runny nose and sneezing started, and I had a low-grade fever. After almost 3 years of precaution and dread, fear and hype, and vaccinations, my Corona had finally arrived.

And I’m here to tell the story. The current mutation is for most of us akin to a bad summertime cold but with a fever. For others, it’s more like a case of the flu.

Yes, it will kill some people. Colds and flu will do the same. Like many of us, we also lost family to Covid during the pandemic. Or perhaps it was the flu, the result is the same. The point is when we take a hard look at the numbers, there are curiosities to consider.

According to the CDC, in the 2019-2020 flu season, there were up to 56 million cases of flu. During the pandemic, there were 9 million cases but over 35 million cases of Covid. What happened to all the flu?

Thus far in the US, Covid has been associated with over 1.1 million deaths in just under 4 years for an “average” of about a quarter of a million deaths per year, but more at the height of the pandemic. Compare that to cardiovascular disease, which kills about 875 thousand in the US every year. A third of Covid deaths were among people 85 and older. Ninety-two percent of the deaths were among people 65 and older. According to some number crunchers, the majority of death occurred among people who had approached or exceeded the average life expectancy in the US.

So Covid, like many diseases, culls the herd. It targets the elderly and the unhealthy and the otherwise healthy who have certain genetic traits that are not as yet thoroughly understood. For the vast majority of people, it will pass like any annoying cold or flu. For a few, it will be a death sentence or leave behind chronic health problems.

Covid is most assuredly something to avoid. It calls for common sense precautions, even vaccinations if your doctor recommends it. In my own experience so far, Real Doctor is 4-1-0 while Dr. Internet is 0-1-4 when it comes to advice on how to stay healthy during a pandemic. Your Real Doctor is where you need to get the information you need to act upon, not from the networks, pixel pushers, friends and neighbors, newspaper articles, or even the government.

Whenever the government gets involved, the cure is often worse than the disease. We’re coming into an election year as well, and these partisans will do anything to gain or retain power. The last thing we need going into the fall and winter is a fearful public conditioned by the never-ending onslaught of breaking news and permanent emergency. The next-to-last thing we need is the other half of the public who thinks the whole thing is a conspiracy and refuses to take any precautions whatsoever in some kind of misguided political gesture.

Yes, the ‘rona is among us and on the hunt again. Stay calm. Use common sense. If you feel sick, stay home. There is no reason to fear it, but if you don’t respect it, you may soon come to regret that decision.