Thanks, Dr. Fauci

Thank you, Dr. Anthony Fauci. We are getting to the hump in some places, and know how to get there in others. Now step aside and put an immunologist in charge of determining when to get back to work.

The FDA has approved an ELISA (antibody) test for COVID-19 that works for its close cousin, SARS. I suspect that if SARS had been a pandemic, COVID would have had little impact. Our super-bug finally got here, as feared. Let's see who has gotten it and gained immunity from these strains of Coronavirus.

The best immunity for any such virus is to get it.  The easiest way is to fight it off and not get sick. Thus is what a vaccine does, FDA approval not required. Getting it bad enough to notice it also means immunity. Even with a vaccine, an unhealthy percentage will get sick and gain immunity that way. Some will be disabled and some will die. The question is how to minimize the latter.

The best defense is a healthy immune system. The medical fraternity, which is hierarchical in nature, has long championed hand washing, sneezing into elbows, not shaking hands, wiping down surfaces and social distance. COVID has helped illustrate that point and was a test in whether it worked. Senior citizens have long been living in such dystopian conditions. It is why they are dropping like flies.

Hierarchies always impose rules. Not making others sick is the new version of sexual purity imposed by the Church. The healthy responses to each are no and no. I suggest therapy for social anxiety for the few, not hygiene rules for the many.

They also like to control information. COVID exposure testing allows for the purity agenda to go forward. Mass production of the Cellex ELISA test ends the need for social distance and immunosuppressive hygiene rules. Power cedes nothing without a demand. The probability of hyperinflation with lots of money chasing too little labor is very real.

ELISA will also show that the best thing for health workers, their families and their patients is to get sick while letting the older doctors hide or retire. The social dynamics of the medical profession are not worth creating a climate of fear.

There are other short and long-term questions that will be answered with time; better sooner than later:

Does social distancing leave so many people without immunity that it is the cause of the second wave?

Does utilizing ventilators lead to recovery for patients or does it simply lengthen coma? Do these effects have to do with age?

Are seniors who get sick occasionally more or less likely to die of COVID?

In Italy, how many older people who died were alive longer than expected due to local mutations which reduce cardiac disease?

Are racial disparities in COVID infection and death due to poverty, including Food Stamp allocations that limit protein and increase carbs?

Is anyone checking how this pandemic is affecting workers in the field and factory that provide us with food?

Is this the time to increase the minimum wage radically to get people off of unemployment (with indexing and no phase in)? How about much higher refundable child tax credits, distributed with pay and indexed to inflation?

Are hospitalizations more likely because emergency rooms remain the primary care source? Are paid sick leave or irregular office hours required to get people out of the E.R.?

Will private insurance survive the current crisis or is a wave of bankruptcy likely? If so, is this the opportunity we need to get single-payer rather than expanding Obamacare or phasing in Medicaid for All? (Not a typo). Let's not waste a good crisis.

Can we quit talking about our senile national grandfather? Would you put your Fox News addicted parents on TV for public shaming?