The COVID Wars: Fighting An Apex Predator...

Editor’s Note:

I thought I would highlight the last week we have experienced here down South of the Mason-Dixon Line- in pictures with annotations that are just a brief glimpse of the furious pace that we are engaged in, in terms of trying to circumvent a culling of our species, by an opportunistic Apex Predator. We all know that MAN is the ultimate Apex Predator, a designation that was usually assigned to the T-Rex of old, or today’s common Great White Shark. But Apex, means efficient, relentless, unstoppable, and remorseless in it’s pursuit of it’s prey. It says or implies NOTHING about the size of the hunter.

Typically we go LARGE here- images of huge creatures with horrible fangs and claws come to mind, death is immediate and so swift it usually takes seconds to recognize you imminent transition to the other side. Bur LARGE is easy to spot, the microscopic enemy is far more ambitious.

In this case, I go back to a seminal moment of clarity I had in a microbiology course, where I watched my professor almost relish in the perfection of viral organisms. He rendered an abject description of viruses and their ability to mutate and overcome their host. It was like he admired the simplicity of the process where a virus enters, interjects, and makes the host it’s prey- and ultimately its lingering feast. A true parasite with no particular agenda but to thrive and propagate. No different form us really, just smaller, invisible, and highly adaptive.

I remember having a very brief but memorable moment of anxiety, because the concept was frightening to me at the time.

I have a good friend who I was talking to recently that mentioned she was getting a lot of tests for elevated Liver Enzymes. We talked, and I couldn’t figure out why a person with no history of behavior that would lead to liver damage, could experience something like that, until she told me she almost died of COVID last December 2019. What is odd is that many people I have talked to experienced COVID symptoms way before last March and April, 2020. I know I did, somewhere in Southern Indiana, and again in Kentucky, and then again at my clinical setting.

Compounded with the Liver enzyme issue, was a diminishment of cognition- subtle yet real, brief “memory lapses”, some heart issues that someone her age should or would never normally present itself in a person so young. The odd thing was? Not one of her doctors tied it to COVID. Perhaps it was due to the fact that she presented so early in the timeline of this pandemic, but the bottom line is- she had the antibodies- and no-one connected the dots.

So as this pandemic explodes in our faces, the game rules keep changing possibly because plausible deniability is the easier clinical pathway to pursue, or we have gotten to the point that we are willing to accept out losses.

Wearing masks is definitely the way to go. BUT it is a low-tech option considering how sophisticated our level of medical intervention has become.

Stay Safe-

Pump Strong 🙂

Frank