Bertram's Blog

It seems rather unfair that while we are dealing with isolation and the effects of the current crisis, we are still having to field spam calls and emails. You’d think they’d give us a rest from their machinations, but apparently uncertain times make people ripe for the picking. And these callers are not minor players, but corporations in themselves — big business.

Something else that’s adding to the burden of isolation is this allergy season. Everyone I know who has been sick enough and worried enough to get tested for The Bob turned out to be negative for any virus and positive for allergies. Is this a worse allergy season than normal? I don’t know. There doesn’t seem to be any information on any other medical crisis. All that anyone talks about is this novel virus, which I have dubbed “The Bob” because of a bit of dialogue in A Spark of Heavenly Fire.

Speaking of other medical crises — whatever happened to the seasonal flu? According to various articles before the onslaught of The Bob, this had been a particularly bad and atypical flu season. It started earlier than normal and with the wrong flu strain. Generally, the A types of flu came first, followed by the B types, but this year, the B came first, followed by a long A and B surge. According to the CDC, as of February 12, 4.6 million flu cases had been diagnosed so far this year. Then came all the talk about a novel virus, and that was the end of the information about this atypical flu season. What happened to it? Did it simply disappear? No one is saying.

Oops. Here I am at it again — talking about the ramifications of The Bob. I was going to stay away from any more discussion about this situation because it seems to upset people, but then came a whole slew of spam calls as well as learning about friends’ allergy problems, and it got me started questioning again.

Well, in for a penny in, for a pound or maybe, since I’m not British, in for a dime, in for a dollar. A friend sent me a link to a television interview with two doctors from Accelerated Urgent Care in California who have studied immunology and microbiology extensively. Whenever they’d say something that echoes my concerns — that isolating healthy people is damaging in the long run because it is the contact with all sorts of pathogens that builds up our immune systems, and that delaying non-viral-related hospital visits will place an undue strain on hospitals after the restrictions are lifted — the interviewers would interrupt and try to get them back on the party line: lockdown good; business as usual bad. The doctors very patiently stuck to their script and managed to say what they needed to, not just about the immune system but about seeing abuse and suicides on the rise.

Although it seemed to make the interviewers nervous, the doctors weren’t wearing masks because, as the doctors explained, they knew the truth how the immune system worked. They also said now that so many people have been tested and found to have or have had the disease, the fatality rate is so very much lower than was predicted. And that hospitals are way below capacity, doctors and nurses are being furloughed, and that anyone who dies with the coronavirus is considered to have died of the corona virus.

Perhaps that’s where all the seasonal flu deaths have gone? Swallowed up in The Bob statistics?

I don’t know, but it is a question I don’t see answered anywhere.

In case you haven’t yet downloaded a free copy of my novel  A Spark of Heavenly Fire about a novel pathogen that caused a pandemic and forced Colorado to be quarantined, click here to get your free ebook: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1842. Be sure to use the coupon code WN85X when purchasing.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.