COVID-SARS Research Questions

How common is having an initial heavy cold, an interim period of no symptoms and then respiratory symptoms, followed by a period of extreme fatigue as antibodies are produced?

Do people who have had a more sever form of the virus have long term immunity (more so than a vaccine)? Is the best way to gain immunity to have it?

Do medical personnel who have been sick need PPE for their own safety or for the reputational value, or esprit de corps, of the profession?

For resuscitated victims, both for SARS and generally speaking, what is the death rate? What is the cost in terms of resources diverted for not letting people who came in dead stay dead if there is almost certainty of death?

For patients requiring hospitalization or who have extended illness, what is the mortality between those who have, in the past, adhered to CDC guidelines on sanitation vs. those who have not? What is the rate of prior respiratory infection, other infection, for each group?

Should antibody testing in the population at large show widespread immunity from prior illness, is a rebound effect more or less likely? What would such findings do to the enforcement of social distance (and adherence to CDC guidance on avoiding infections generally (and do the latter disable immune systems more than limiting disease spread)?

Do the CDC and NIH consider these to be inconvenient questions? Are they considered dangerous questions, likely to put people at risk? If so, why? Is this a social or epidemiological question?

Regarding the Flynn memo

Yesterday, the U.S. Attorney for D.C. submitted a motion to end the case against Flynn. This allows him and Attorney General Barr to look loyal to Trump while doing what the original prosecutors wanted to do long ago: clear the case without penalizing Flynn for cooperating in the Russia investigation (both the Special Council and any related, yet undisclosed, investigation by the National Security Division at DOJ.

The delay came because Flynn did a victory dance, probably for Oval Office consumption, which infuriated the judge who was about to bless the original sentence. He confronted Flynn and had him request a continence. After calming down, instead of walking the delay back and ending this distraction, it started a process by a Fox News personality to make motions designed to draw a Trump pardon. I suspect that someone told Trump that a pardoned Flynn would be compelled to tell everything he knows. The mini is the way out.

What has gotten lost in the indignation about Barr and the U.S. Attorney is that the whole prosecution, which was about Flynn being questioned about lying to the Vice President, gives the Vice President plausible deniability on his own involvement in the attempt by Putin to get sanctions lifted due to his interference in the 2016 election and invasion of Ukraine. The document release this week shows a failure of imagination by the FBI for not pursuing such a line of inquiry.

It strains credulity to think Pence was not involved with what was essentially espionage under cover of presidential power. No one has the courage to call it that, nor did they during impeachment.

If Putin was not a 2 bit KGB thug, he could have gotten boundary adjustment without sending in Oligarchs or troops. Trump never would have been opportuned over the Moscow Project (which would never have happened because it would have ruined the Moscow skyline). He would have had to have found another hill to embarrass himself on.

Pence with deniability is Pence that can pardon Trump. Pence without deniability would have had to resign if the likely truth came out. Of course, it might be hiding someplace, to show up when the time is right; probably just after the Supreme Court decides the question of Trump's claim to absolute presidential immunity (which is not a thing). The argument is Tuesday and the Court Conference is one week from today. If the announcement of the decision is immediate, the GOP leadership will have an excuse to rid themselves of its orange devil.

Trump thinks he pulled off a win today. Nope.

Pandemics as religious experience.

Religious, not spiritual. Spiritual experiences and religious experiences both occur in groups, but religion is more social than spiritual.

The COVID19/SARS2 pandemic is both a biological and social phenomenon. The social is as important as the biological. It is the nature of infection. I have written about the pandemic as cultural. This essay is about how it is like religion.

Religious behaviors are obvious if you look for them. Medicine has become orthodoxy. Doctors are the new priests.

To speak outside or against the medical canon law is treated as heresy at best and murder at worst. Doing so is seen as being an agent of the Devil, although in this religion, the Devil is not red, he is orange.

Heretics are ordered to be quiet, for they are surely possessed. They are threatened with excommunication (unfriending on Facebook), even in families. As in ancient days, prophets become martyrs.

How the virus works is the sacred mystery that only the priesthood can really speak authoritatively on. Even for them, It is the great unknowable.

Social distance and handwasing are the new purity. ER and ICU nurses and those who have died are the new saints. Being on a ventilator, the new Purgatory. Watch MSNBC for public veneration and excoriation. The News has become scripture and repetitive prayer.

To have COVID is to be cursed. It is both death sentence and scarlet letter. To have survived it is seen as hubris, with the inquisitory challenge, "have you been tested?" Miracles must be verified by the priest class. Fear is used by the priests to keep others in line.

There is both venial sin, COVID, and mortal sin. SARS. No one wants to die from mortal sin.

Masks are the new chastity belt, PPE is talisman and sacred garb (even for priests who no longer need it. The Faith is religious rather than faith, which is spiritual and personal. One must be as loyal to the faith as most were to the Church.

The vaccine is the holy grail, more holy than gaining immunity through the taint of exposure or illness (paganism). It is prophesy. It is the coming if the Lord. Look busy.

Sadly, I am not being humorous. The Pandemic, like Religion, is deadly serious. In religion, fear both keeps social order and defines personal purity.

Religion and pandemic are both useful, but the extent to which they rely on fear is dysfunctional. Just as no one wants to confess their sins, no one wants to seek medical attention. Hospitals are places of fear. Avoiding the admission of sin is deadly. It is how COVID 19 becomes SARS2.