COVID: Real people get the disease.
Statistics and charts.
Much of the COVID reporting is on vaccination rates, death counts, county-by-county positivity rates, mortality rates. This blog has been part of that.
COVID isn't just about numbers. A Guest Post contributor wanted to remind me that we are talking about real people here.
Southern Oregon Chiropractic Physician Marc Heller sent me an email with stories about two people. COVID was on his mind. He had just learned someone close to him had died of it. He wanted to make a point to me that COVID happens to real people--simple as that. He didn't want me to get lost in the numbers. Marc has a 41-year career dealing with patients in pain. He is a specialist in diagnosing and treating musculoskeletal problems, especially ones involving the lower back. His patients are there in front of him in flesh and blood. They aren't abstract.
His overall orientation is toward natural treatments, and he wanted to talk to me about vaccinations, so I found his observations especially interesting.
Here is his first email to me.
My wife’s first cousin David Brush died of COVID, a couple of days ago.
He lived in Colorado Springs and he and his wife decided not to get the vaccine, because of all of the stories they heard about the dangers of the vaccine.
I do not fully know why he and his wife chose not to get the vaccine. I strongly suspect that within his “world"--his social set of friends, neighbors, work-colleagues--the vaccine was not popular. It was some Democratic thing.
He was 67. From childhood, he was a type-1 diabetic. He had some health challenges, typical for diabetics. He had a couple of toes amputated; he could not walk well. He was kind, he loved his wife and daughter, he was active in his church. He had a productive and happy life, having worked for at least 30 years at Hughes Aircraft in Orange County, California. He was not obese; he ate healthy food. His co-morbidity was his diabetes. That diabetes wasn't his "fault." He didn't over-eat or over-drink or otherwise somehow bring this on himself so that I or anyone else could mentally blame him for his early death. He caught a bad break with childhood diabetes and then managed it like a responsible person, then he got COVID and died.His death, in hindsight, was obviously preventable. It makes me sad. Misinformation is very dangerous.
The other case is my eldest son, Jason Heller.
Jason is 50 years old.
He was so very heathy, extremely fit, had a great diet. He wore a mask; he was careful. He had no known co-morbidities. He lived in Portland, and worked himself to the bone running a restaurant.
He got COVID in October of 2020.Marc, wife Beth, and Jason at age 5
At first it seemed relatively mild. And then, it turned into Long COVID. He has not been healthy for the last 8 months. He has lung problems, heart problems, digestive challenges, and on and on. He is basically disabled. He used to be able to run four miles. Now he struggles on bad days to walk up a single flight of stairs.
There are no clear-cut medical answers for this condition. It is a chronic disorder of the immune regulatory systems.
He got vaccinated recently, while dealing with his lingering malady. He had severe reactions to both the first and the second vaccine; he was wiped out like with a bad flu for several days, but it may have helped a bit with his Long COVIDI don’t have a moral or conclusion to impart. Jason sure wishes the vaccine was around before he was exposed. It probably would have protected him. COVID has profoundly changed his life, but he is still alive. There's that. David lost his life and left a hole in the lives of his wife and daughter.
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A few days after sending me this report Mark Heller sent me a follow-up. Being close to the victims of the illness turned Mark into an advocate and cheerleader for getting vaccinated. He wanted me to share it here:
I am writing to encourage everyone who reads this to get the COVID vaccine. It’s all about the risk vs the reward. In the US, people are still getting sick and dying every day from COVID. Writing on June 9, the number of cases is down, but people--particularly unvaccinated ones--are still catching the disease.
COVID is a terrible illness, especially for older people or those with other health conditions. For people in my age group I calculate about a 10% change of being hospitalized, a 3% chance of ending up in Intensive Care, and over a 1% chance of dying--if we contract the virus. But, of course, I am vaccinated, so my chances of getting it and getting very sick are low. Some people, including people my age, say they are "too busy" to get it, or say they don't want it. They are taking a big risk.
The risk for people of all ages is Long COVID, which affects 10-20% of those who get infected and have up to 70% chance of long-term damage. If you are younger and get COVID, you also put your older friends and family at risk.What about the newer mRNA vaccines? Are they risky? There is a tiny risk, yes. Maybe someone has gotten a little ill from it, but it is negligible compared to the risk of COVID itself. For a younger person, the vaccine is at least 40 times safer than choosing to not get vaccinated. For older people, it is at least 1600 times safer to choose the vaccine.
I am a natural medicine doctor and I encourage people to live a healthy life. I have no great love for big Pharma, but unprecedented situations call for different actions. How do the mRNA vaccines work? The vaccine injection carries a small stretch of genetic material known as messenger RNA or mRNA. It instructs cells in the body to make a small piece of material that looks like a part of the virus. Those bits, in turn, get recognized by the immune system as a foreign invader, and your body starts to make antibodies and immune cells that can recognize and neutralize the virus if you are exposed to the virus. The vaccinations are very effective and what they do is consistent with my whole approach to medicine. The vaccination does what good food, good exercise, strong muscles, and healthy living does: it prepares your body to deal with the things that come along.