plague « Janet K. Ray

Red Doors and Vaccine Refusal Hits Home For Me

London, 1665. The city was gripped in an epidemic of bubonic plague: the “Black Death”. The skin of victims turned black and lymph nodes grew swollen and painful. Death usually followed a few days later.

To prevent the disease from spreading, a victim was locked in their house, along with their entire family. A red cross was painted on the door of the home, along with these words:

“Lord Have Mercy Upon Us.”

Last week, hospital staff at Dallas’ enormous Parkland Hospital watched with dread as red doors went up, marking “COVID-only” spaces. The red doors first went up in March 2020 and came down in March 2021.

They’re baaaack.

In Texas and in other areas of the country with low vaccination rates, Delta variant-driven COVID infections are overwhelming emergency rooms and packing ICUs.

Lord have mercy on us.

Vaccination is no longer seen as a common responsibility of all in order to protect our families and our communities.

Love for neighbor is no longer the goal. Individual rights trump all.

Jared Byas, author of Love Matters More, put it this way:

“I’m learning that “Freedom” in the wrong hands devolves into ‘You’re not the boss of me’ playground immaturity. Without love at the center, freedom becomes selfish entitlement. Paul makes a lot more sense to me now.”

This week, it hit home for me – right into the heart of my family.

My mom suffers from a rare form of dementia and reaching a crisis point, my family made the difficult decision to move her into a memory care facility.

She has been hospitalized for more than a week and the plan is for her to be dismissed soon, directly into care. She is scared and confused and has no idea what is happening.

But during this critical time of adjusting to the care home, she will have limited contact with her family. My dad can only see her two hours a day and cannot eat any meals with her.

Rising COVID positivity rates automatically trigger restrictions for long-term care centers in Texas. And before she even enters care, family presence in her hospital room is restricted.

Packed hospitals, exhausted healthcare workers, and scared dementia patients are paying the price for vaccine-refusal.

Lord have mercy.

What do we know at this point about the three vaccines available in the United States?

Vaccines do not prevent you from harboring the virus. Vaccinated people can pass the virus to others for about six days, but then their vaccine-primed immune responses kick in and stop the spread.

Vaccinated people have a 59% reduced risk of having symptoms if they are infected.

But here is the really big deal: while vaccinated people might get infected and might have symptoms, what vaccinated people are NOT experiencing is severe disease and death. This, according to epidemiologists, is nothing short of miraculous.

The vaccine keeps you out of the ICU.

The vaccine keeps you off a ventilator.

The vaccine keeps you from months and months and maybe more of long-COVID, the feeling that you’re wrapped in lead and might cry if you have to do ANYTHING. As Baylor medical professor Dr. Peter Hortez put it:

“COVID does so much more than kill.”

And this is important: a vaccinated population prevents the evolution of new variants.

Mutations (variants) can only arise in warm, human-sized petri dishes. The more a virus is transmitted, the more it has opportunity to mutate. Right now, 73% of counties in the country are in a state of “high transmission”.

We can stop this.

Lord have mercy.

Located halfway between London’s posh Barbican theater district and the famed Smithfield Market is a plot of land with a gruesome past. Excavation in the 1980s revealed bodies – loads and loads of bodies. So far, 600 bodies have been catalogued, but there are probably at least 2,400 total.

The year was 1348, and after devastating the continent, the Black Death had arrived in England. By 1350, one-third of Britain was dead of plague.

At the height of the plague in London, 200 people per day were buried in the mass grave known as “East Smithfield”. London’s churchyards could not accommodate such a colossal demand, so the city created the five-acre burial pit. Hastily, the dead were buried en masse, some neatly lined up, others tossed in haphazardly.

The plague struck hard and fast in Britain and across Europe, and in a short time decimated the population.

Prevention measures (as best as possible in the pre-scientific, pre-modern epidemiology days of the fourteenth century) were practiced. In order to avoid the “bad air” thought to spread plague, doors and windows were shuttered, suspending easy access to family, friends, and neighbors. Households with plague were quarantined.

But for the survivors, the story took a bit of an uptick.

For generations after the plague years, survivors were generally healthier and lived longer than did the general population pre-plague.

Interestingly, modern genetic studies suggest that some survivors had innate genetic resistance to the plague or to its fatality.

However, there was probably an additional environmental factor.

As much as half the population died in some areas. With the weak winnowed out, survivors had access to more food, more meat, more and better bread. After four years of lockdowns and quarantines, survivors were ready to return to life as usual.

Blinking in the plague-free sunlight, survivors emerged, ready to get on with life, with socialization, with commerce.

Centuries later, we, too, are weary of lockdowns. Our modern plague is world-wide, and the death and damage rates are frightening. Thankfully due to modern therapeutics, we are not looking at a death rate of one-third of our population.

Still, we are tired of it all. In the decade (it seems) of 2020, we have endured multiple claims of those who offer shortcuts to our misery: the “Plandemic” video, America’s Frontline Doctors’ white-coated press conference on the steps of the Supreme Court, and the Yale doctor with his hydroxychloroquine conspiracy.

After their fifteen minutes of fame, each faded, answered by evidence and the scientific method.

Enter the ostentatiously titled “Great Barrington Declaration”, signed on October 4 and currently muscling its way into the headlines.

The document argues that Covid-19 should be allowed to spread uncontrolled among the healthy, while presumably protecting the vulnerable. The result of such a strategy (according to the document) would be “herd immunity” without the use of a vaccine.

In the last few days, heavy hitters in the field of epidemiology and infectious disease have weighed in, including Anthony Fauci (“total nonsense”) and the prestigious Lancet medical journal (“a dangerous fallacy unsupported by scientific evidence.”) The director of the World Health Organization called the plan “scientifically and ethically problematic.”

Sponsored by a Libertarian think tank, The Great Barrington Declaration is penned by three scientists associated with big-name universities. The Declaration’s website claims tens of thousands of online signatures from medical practitioners and public health scientists, but the signees were recently made anonymous after too many Fakey McFakenames were found on the rolls.

In cases of viral diseases for which we have a vaccine (like measles), it’s true: we rely on herd immunity to protect the very young, the immunocompromised, and the few who (unknowingly) do not mount an immune response following a vaccine. But in the case of measles, herd immunity is not achieved by deadly disease sweeping through an entire population, killing and maiming many but leaving a few survivors with resistance. With measles, herd immunity is achieved without the devasting effects of the actual disease.

The Great Barrington Declaration is problematic scientifically:

A pandemic control strategy that relies on herd immunity is seriously flawed and is not supported in scientific literature.
Uncontrolled spread of Covid-19, even in a young population, increases the risk of death and long-term damage.
At this point, we do not know how long natural immunity to Covid-19 lasts. Relying on natural herd immunity could result in repeated epidemics, as we saw before the advent of vaccination.

The Great Barrington Declaration is problematic ethically:

Uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 increases the risk to frontline health workers, already at a heightened risk.
The Great Barrington Declaration advocates protecting vulnerable populations, but how do we define “vulnerable”? So, we isolate all the sick and elderly in nursing homes. What about people with unhealthy BMIs? What about people living in crowded homes with multiple generations of family? What about people with limited access to healthcare? That’s a lot of people to isolate while we let a virus run free.
Marginalized communities are at a higher risk, and many are young, the demographic in which The Great Barrington Declaration would allow the virus to run rampant. Are we willing to winnow the marginalized in pursuit of a shortcut to social normalcy?

No one wants endless lockdowns and the destruction of the economy. Social safety, common sense, increased and affordable testing, contact tracing, and mask-wearing are not draconian.

It’s not all or nothing.