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THE OTHER SIDE: COVID 2023

I was about to forego writing about COVID these last few days. But I recently realized that there are many ways to conduct and suffer from war.

All of my years, even as a boy marching to the United Nations with my peace pin, I have worked to end war. This has been an excruciating time for so many. Besides the slaughters—ethnic, territorial, religious, and otherwise—that too often take place in Africa and Asia and Latin America without major notice of much of the world, so many of us have witnessed the amorality of Putin’s campaign to level schools, neighborhoods, markets, and train stations to punish Ukraine because it wishes to live without him. And now the barbaric terror of Hamas. Somewhere along humanity’s way of waging war, it has become unnecessary to distinguish between soldier and civilian. Always it is the citizens caught in the middle who suffer and the evil who use and abuse and mock the cause of the innocent to kill other innocents—as if the so-called leaders of any or every stripe ever cared for their people more than power. The leaders of Hamas live lives of luxury in Qatar. Here at home and abroad, it has become ever more difficult to embrace the light in the face of such darkness.

I was about to forego writing about COVID these last few days. But I recently realized that there are many ways to conduct and suffer from war. Humans have become so very adept at exacting a price for our anger and disappointment, slipping ever more seamlessly from victim to executioner. As the sociopaths of Hamas, ISIS, Al Qaeda preposterously claim theirs is a Holy War. As Putin, forgetting the horrors of the Soviet Occupation imagines he is part of a Greater Russia.

These days I have some simple tests. Do any of these movements or regimes believe in and practice democracy? Do they ban books? Imprison their opponents? Slaughter the innocent? Educate girls and respect the rights of their minorities? Do they punish those whose sexual identities differs from theirs? Do women have absolute control of their bodies?

As for casting blame elsewhere, are you surprised the American right fails some of these tests? Is it any wonder they are the fiercest advocates for abandoning Ukraine to the Russian genocide?

I am not about to weigh and balance and attempt to equate the costs victims have suffered. Having lost too many these last many years, there is no scale that has ever worked for me. My pain and grief is mine, and yours is yours, and theirs is theirs. We have all had the occasion to answer the question posed by doctors and nurses, “How bad is your pain, from one to 10?” How about we agree on 10.

At the risk of annoying some—don’t worry as an activist, a filmmaker, a columnist, I have annoyed more than my fair share, but here goes—without much recent attention or reflection, we have been fighting and losing a war that almost no one wants to talk about, a battle that still rages, a war that has taken a staggering number of innocent lives. This is a chart that reveals that toll, with numbers I imagine few have really absorbed:

Our World in Data: U.S. cumulative COVID deaths up to October 4, 2023.

Lest we forget the COVID victims from all around the world:

Our World in Data: Gobal cumulative COVID deaths up to October 4, 2023.

As for me, well I should have known that day at DeWitt Clinton H.S. in the Bronx in Mrs. Rogers’ biology class: The formaldehyde got to me and I couldn’t help wondering what the frog was thinking as I contemplated the dissection. Everybody seemed comfortable with the notion that their frogs were dead and wouldn’t feel pain, but I wasn’t sure about mine. I probably had heard Burl Ives and Pete Seeger sing “Froggy Went A Courtin’” too many times. Luckily, my lab partner’s hands were steady.

I should have known then that I wouldn’t make it as a biologist. But somehow the notion of studying penguins still sustained me and it took until I flunked both biology and analytical geometry as a freshman at City College for me to realize I wouldn’t make it through any of the requirements necessary to get the degrees all the other professional penguin watchers had gotten.

And I got my degrees in English and American Literature. So, believe me, all these years later, in the face of growing skepticism and the wholesale replacement of fact with fiction, it is still a bit odd to find myself such a defender of science and the scientific method—and all these years later, one of the few who continues to wear masks against an ever-evolving airborne virus most people desperately want to convince themselves is no longer a concern.

Just the other morning at Fuel, a friend told me he had been to the Great Barrington Farmers’ Market this past Saturday, and a woman and a child were standing very close behind him as he waited to be served. He got his weekly sausage, and, as the woman moved even closer, she reached for and put on a mask and then acknowledged out loud: “I’ve got COVID, and he does, too!”

I would like to say I was surprised, but, in fact, it is this kind of unthinking and pervasive denial that drives me to keep writing about COVID. I don’t doubt that, in some ways, she imagines she is taking care of them both—if not anyone else who unsuspectedly comes anywhere near her.

For many years I stood in front of Great Barrington’s Town Hall with a sign that said: “Support Our Troops — It’s Time To Come Home.” In some ways, it was a rather insignificant gesture in the face of all the massive machinery that goes into making war, but it seemed a small but necessary way of acknowledging some of my close friends who had fought and paid a steep price for fighting in our wars following Sept. 11. I stopped when our government abandoned the Kurds in Syria to find ISIS on their own. Realizing there was a time to stay, not come home.

In some ways, wearing a mask seems a similar response to yet another war we are waging—yet another war most Americans imagine they are safe from. Again, it is the others who have paid the price, or will with severe illness, death, or, perhaps, Long COVID, just not them.

Officially, COVID arrived in 2019. Known more formally to health authorities as novel human coronavirus disease 2019, COVID-19 first appeared in Wuhan, China. The World Health Organization (WHO) was first told by China that they were dealing with cases of pneumonia with no known cause, but by January 7, 2020, they recorded the first cases specifically identified as 2019-nCoV.

By January 30, 2020, WHO shared with the world their evolving evaluation of the escalating COVID-19 outbreak: determining it was a Public Health Emergency of International Concern:

“They reported fourth-generation cases in Wuhan and second-generation cases outside Wuhan, as well as some clusters outside Hubei province. They explained that strong containment measures (closure of public-transportation systems are in place in Wuhan City, as well as other nearby cities) … Of confirmed cases, 25 [percent] are reported to be severe. The source is still unknown (most likely an animal reservoir) and the extent of human-to-human transmission is still not clear …”

From the beginning, this global public health crisis was inextricably mixed up in politics. Internationally, China’s unwillingness to accept any responsibility resulted in its hesitation to share critically important details of the genetic makeup of the virus or its escalating spread and symptoms. Here at home, the Trump Administration seemed more interested in blaming the Chinese than marshalling a comprehensive and truly national response to the epidemic. On both the international and national stage, transparency and honesty took a back seat to political expediency and denial. Science was sacrificed.

Here at home, our experience was shaped by an excruciating combination of incompetence and stupidity. Denying its existence, and the threat it posed, meant our response was haphazard and limited. By promoting mythology over medical reality, meant that we never fully marshalled a comprehensive and strategic and medically-appropriate reaction.

Nothing better illustrates these failures than some of the earliest comments of President Donald Trump:

Donald Trump tweet of February 24, 2020. Highlighting added.

Then, rather than urge caution and awareness and sensible countermeasures, President Trump embraced nonsensical and dangerous alternative treatments. At a press briefing on April 23, 2020, he told the nation:

“So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it. And then I said supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right? … And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it’d be interesting to check that. So that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful.”

The misinformation spread from the most powerful podium in the land had a profound effect. One of the most damaging and widespread impacts was the presumptuous assertion that any opinion about COVID was as valid as any other. We repeatedly had Donald Trump contradicting someone who had spent his entire life successfully combating global pandemics. The president took offense when Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), suggested we needed to increase widespread testing of Americans to better understand the extent of the spread of COVID. Here is Donald Trump at that same briefing:

Transcript of Donald Trump at a COVID Task Force meeting on April 23, 2020. Highlighting added.

Quickly, a variety of amateur pundits floated the notion—and some made small fortunes hawking them—that all sorts of inappropriate remedies could successfully treat COVID. Sales of ivermectin—a treatment for a variety of tropical and parasitic diseases, but not approved for viral diseases—surged as unscientifically tested but anecdotal testimonies about its success spread across the internet. You can read more about this in “THE OTHER SIDE: You Are Not A Horse.”

Every sensible intervention, every simple but absolutely necessary step ordinary citizens could and should take, what the medical profession considers non-pharmaceutical intervention (NPIs), instantly became a matter for controversy. An odd but influential collaboration of right-wing politicians, and anti-vaccine activists mobilized their energy not to fight the virus but the scientists, doctors, nurses, educators, and public health officials whose jobs are to keep us safe. Medical personnel, already over-worked and emotionally exhausted from the growing pandemic, were attacked and mischaracterized as deep-state members trying to limit our liberty.

Simple, obvious measures like masking and social distancing and limiting the ways large numbers of people gathered to work, learn, listen to music, or watch sports were transformed from a matter of precautionary public health policy to a question of political ideology. Politics masquerading as policy made it increasingly difficult for public health officials who desperately struggled to find ways to limit the spread of a virus that was infecting millions of people around the world.

Katelyn Jetelina, Your Local Epidemiologist, alerted me to an October 2021 Nature journal survey that found that many health professionals were attacked even as they labored to better protect COVID sufferers: “Dozens of researchers tell Nature they have received death threats, or threats of physical or sexual violence.”

The reality was so very different from the rhetoric. Anyone who was willing to look could see how quickly hospitals were overrun by COVID. Intensive care units couldn’t handle the escalating need to care for patients and lacked a sufficient number of ventilators. Doctors and nurses had a limited supply of protective gear and had to recycle masks. Portable morgues appeared parked beside urban hospitals.

All the while, a combination of extraordinary scientists worked feverishly to craft vaccines that could effectively blunt the worst effects of COVID, yet so often their work was criticized instead of celebrated. And anti-vaccine zealots spread largely inaccurate statistics gathered by the CDC’s own VAERS database.

CDC Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). Highlighting added.

While the CDC made clear its limitations, anti-vaccine advocates either deliberately or misguidedly confused anecdotal, unconfirmed, and unverified reports of adverse effects from the first COVID vaccines, while ignoring or denying the results of proven rigorous peer-reviewed studies that showed the vaccines were safe and effective.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. inaccurately questions the safety of COVID vaccines for pregnant women in a February 23, 2021 Facebook post.

Almost immediately, the medical response to COVID was enveloped in the larger Culture War being waged by the Right and zealots like Kennedy. Much like ultra conservatives who ran successfully for local school boards dedicated to ending the discussions about racial bias, or the devastating reality/legacy of slavery and segregation, and the attempt to address gender bias, so too anti-vaccine advocates got elected to local and state boards of health and moved to impede efforts to vaccinate and enforce social distancing.

And, as a result, policy that had been crafted for years by health-care professionals, prompted by rigorous and careful scientific study, was questioned, contradicted, and countermanded by those with little or no medical training, yet absolutely certain their opinions ought to win the day. It hardly mattered that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. routinely misquoted and/or distorted the findings of vaccine studies. It was never disqualifying that talk-show hosts like Joe Rogan, who knew nothing of the science of vaccine development, felt no qualms whatsoever in trashing the lifework of medical professionals like Fauci and Dr. Peter Hotez. In a world where Donald Trump spewed misinformation on a daily basis, facts no longer mattered.

As a result, enormous numbers of people chose not to be vaccinated with dreadful consequences. And, not surprisingly, as time has passed and we have had the chance to learn more and more about the easily demonstrated difference in hospitalizations and deaths between the vaccinated and unvaccinated, none of these so-called experts have apologized. Rather, much like Donald Trump and his never-ever proven claims of the stolen election of 2020, they have double-downed with their lies. (See: “THE OTHER SIDE: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. v. Peter Hotez.”)

Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis chooses to cynically use his platform and power to boost his standing in a Republican party that increasingly embraces willful ignorance by suspending basic public health interventions:

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs legislation opposing COVID mandates on November 18, 2021. Highlighting added.

Increasingly, the war on science, the massive disinformation campaign, costs untold human suffering and countless unnecessary deaths. And yet, for those willing to look, we know more than we ever did. Ever more peer-reviewed studies show the marked difference in hospitalizations and deaths between those who remained unvaccinated and those who received their COVID shots.
Here are some national statistics from the CDC for adults aged 18 to 49 based on their vaccination status from November 2021 to February 2022:

COVID Hospitalizations of 18- to 49-year-old adults based on their vaccination status. Highlighting added.
Our World in Data graph showing COVID deaths by vaccination status, October 9, 2021 to April 1, 2023.

Perhaps some of these statistics will have greater impact if we look at a single month in a single American state. Here is the data from the state of Washington from August 4 to August 31 of this year:

Washington State COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths by vaccination status. Highlighting added.

The report notes:

“Although COVID-19 vaccines work well to protect against severe infections, being hospitalized, and dying from COVID-19, some people who are vaccinated with the primary series or who have received a booster dose will still get COVID-19 if they are exposed to the virus. As more individuals become vaccinated it is natural to see more vaccinated individuals get COVID-19, and even be hospitalized or die from COVID-19. However, because people who have completed the primary series and received at least one booster dose are much less likely to be hospitalized or die compared to those who are unvaccinated, increasing vaccination rates remains important to protect Washingtonians from severe COVID-19 infections and save lives.” (Emphasis added.)

Even younger residents are less likely to be hospitalized if they have been vaccinated:

Washington State COVID hospitalizations amongst 12- to 34-year-olds. Highlighting added.

Unfortunately, I am not being rhetorical when I say those who have spread lies about the COVID vaccines are responsible for deaths that could have been prevented:

Washington State COVID deaths from July 13 to August 9, 2023 amongst unvaccinated individuals 65 years and older. Highlighting added.

As a white American, I have been horrified my whole life by the never-ending damage of racism; as the son of a father who was Jewish and a mother born to Roman Catholic Italians, I have seen up close our festering anti-Semitism; as a straight male, I’m amazed that so many are still so threatened by those whose sexual preferences differ. But I confess, I am still taken aback by those who would risk their own lives and the lives of others when it comes to deciding how to a respond to a virus whose one purpose in life is replicating and causing havoc in the human body. A virus that cares nothing about who controls the House of Representatives or one’s position on Critical Race Theory or which God one prays to.

If we have learned anything from the Trump years, it is the sad reality that ignorance and fear-mongering and serial lying are not disqualifying. Disinformation can all too easily triumph over thoughtfulness, analysis, and science. Two recent polls provide evidence that we are indeed in danger of losing that battle:

News Medical reports on a new study in Vaccine Magazine:

October 5 2023 article in News Medical about ongoing vaccine hesitancy. Highlighting added.

And a recent poll taken in September by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that only 50 percent of Americans were planning on taking this fall’s newly configured COVID vaccine:

Kaiser Family Foundation COVID-19 Vaccine Monitor, September 6–13, 2023.

Kaiser continued:

“While the new COVID-19 vaccine is recommended for children ages 6 months and up, fewer than four in ten parents say they expect to get the vaccine for their children ages 12-17 (39 [percent]), ages 5-11 (36 [percent]), and ages 6 months through 4 years (34 [percent]). More than half of parents with children in each age group say they probably or definitely won’t get their children vaccinated.”

Most troubling is the continuing tendency to politicize medicine. The recent Kaiser study reveals: “As has been true throughout the pandemic, a much smaller share of Republicans (24 [percent]) than Democrats (70 [percent]) expect to get the new COVID-19 vaccine — 46 percentage point gap.”

It would be one thing if personal choice and political persuasion had no impact on anyone other than the unvaccinated. But in this case, their actions—more importantly their inaction—help to spread a disease that so easily infects others.

Let me end with some recent analysis from the Yale School of Medicine:

“The updated vaccines are not expected to prevent all cases of COVID, including those causing mild illness; rather, their aim is to reduce severe illness, hospitalization, and death from infection. According to the CDC, COVID is still a major cause of serious respiratory illness, with more than 200,000 reported deaths since January 2022. That figure includes more than 600 deaths in adolescents and children ages 19 and younger.

“Older people (especially those ages 50 and older) are more likely than younger people to get very sick from COVID. Immunocompromised people and those with chronic medical conditions, such as diabetes or heart disease, are at the highest risk of severe disease and death, but some young, healthy people have also gotten very ill and died from COVID. In addition, the CDC recommends the vaccine for pregnant women to protect both mother and baby.

“An analysis by the CDC suggested that making its vaccine recommendation universal could prevent 400,000 hospitalizations and 40,000 deaths in the U.S. over the next two years.” (Emphasis added.)

Yes, this is a war. With 200,000 casualties since January 2022. And I am going to do everything I can to alert as many people as I can that the war continues.

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