Dr. Lane’s Thoughts XVII

1) Today is April 9, 2020.  I am limiting my time in the office severely both from common sense and from a very strong response from my wife that has made it clear that I am endangering her and the girls, as well as the dog.  I am not certain about the dog but she is right about the people (update:  I just learned that dogs are not susceptible or carriers of coronavirus)

It  was only a few years ago that the study and medicine of infectious disease was considered a dead-end for an American-trained doctor.   For American doctors there was simply not enough infectious disease to keep them challenged and when it did occur it was brief and geographically contained (e.g, hantavirus or Legionaire’s Disease). The only concerns that American doctors needed to concentrate on ,we were told, were chronic diseases such as diabetes or heart disease. The average American was more likely going to face the issues of old age and infirmity than an incurable infection from a virus or bacteria (especially if they did not travel much); longevity was the goal and the curse of medicine.

Infectious diseases were manageable and, if they were encountered, we knew two things: modern medicine could fight it and, most importantly, the populations affected were more than likely “over there”, meaning AFRICA and parts of ASIA – those people who ‘were not us’.

The US and Europe pride themselves for being the elite and self-named “first world” and certainly not the formerly named ‘third world’ (but now, generously named by us, ‘developing countries’).  We consider that we are self-sufficient and not dependent on any other nations other than each other to provide the majority of our needs.

The image of dying by the multitudes of a disease that inflicts itself on a population with increasing death rates conjures up small villages, huts, inferior technology and overwhelmed regional hospitals that would not pass for even a clinic in our country.

We take pride in how this sad image of damaged populations was last seen in the US over 100 years ago, a time before antibiotics and germ theory.  It was easy to feel superior and invincible.

It is 2020 and the virus (not bacteria, which is easier to fight) has crippled the nation.  I learned today that despite the idea that our country and its inhabitants have the city of Wuhan in China to blame, that it was most likely spread to NYC from people in Europe before being introduced by them to the US.  Diseases are like that, they do not respect boundaries of race or income and, most of all, they do not attach themselves to blame.

It was easy to see the problem on some level to “Chinese people” in small communities who do not have a way to prevent the spread of disease as being the cause of this calamity but quite another to see this as a problem which comes down to a single thought: an infectious disease anywhere is a disease everywhere.  Our best barrier to infectious disease HERE is a good public health response EVERYWHERE.

Like the ‘heroes’ that saved humanity in “War of the Worlds” and the topic of books and movies of recent memory, viruses are still the greatest threats mankind can face.  A virus is not even, technically, alive in that it cannot survive on its own without a host.  It has no means of living on its own.  A virus is nothing more than DNA or RNA in a traveling capsule that attaches itself to a cell and pushes its material into the genetic material of the host and, thereby, continues its own survival – a survival without purpose, truly the basis of all existence since the idea of ‘life’ has existed.


2)  My wife gave me a haircut a few days ago.  it is incredibly good.  It seems that she studied videos on how to get it right and I provided the cutter / trimmer which I have owned for about 20 years.  I have also used this home isolation to grow a beard,  How long that will last after I return to my public life is still undecided but it could become my new look. 

3) It occurs to me that many of you have no idea what I looked like until now.  You are welcome!  I admit that it is far more fun to look at my lovely Colombian wife but that may never happen (I can’t afford to have people fall in love with her).

My wife and I will probably get married a third time in Colombia in the next year.  This is how we can include her family who could not travel to our first 2 weddings (November 15, 2016 [civil, in front of a judge] and May 20, 2017 [Jewish with a rabbi]).  This wedding will be Catholic.

4) I know someone who is convinced that COVID-19 was created in a lab in China.  For many reasons this is both ridiculous and impossible. (1) Nature is much better at killing people with illnesses than humans can ever be (2) The amount of work it would take to do this and keep it a secret is beyond what any group of people is capable of (on the level of trying to fake the moon landing or hide Bigfoot) (3) Bacteria and viruses can only spread easily if a host organism (where it lives until it can be spread) is not going to die while it is inside of it – bats are perfect but human cells (which is where it would have to be raised in a lab to create it) are hard to raise and keep alive and grow (4) to be successful, a man-made virus would have to spread through a population of other people who have the greatest chance of infecting your enemies – killing a bunch of people in Wuhan China in order to infect people in other parts of the world doesn’t seem to be a good use of your virus if your goal was to kill non-Chinese people (5) Actual germ warfare (which is the name of the branch of the defense industry designed to stop enemy combatants using diease agents) has never been successful in the past and has limited itself to using known diseases to small groups of enemies, such as giving smallpox-infected blankets to Native Americans (6) You can’t really be certain that your enemies are going to be the only ones who die when you infect everyone equally (7) Killing non-combatants (the term used for populations who are not actively involved in the military or war process) is against every part of the code of war that was approved by the Geneva Convention.  Failing to follow the Geneva Convention is considered a war crime. (8) Killing people for reasons not related to the military or the act of war is calle MURDER and it never allowed by any country without cause (9) The way that a bacteria or virus survives in its host is to be benign or offer a survival advantage which allows it to spread without killing its host.  COVID-19 offers no advantage to the bats it probably started in (though this has never been shown definitively and is only suspected) (10) Every country in the world has been affected by COVID-19 so no one gained anything from stopping every economy worldwide.

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