A Stitch in Time

A word to the wise is now in order because as Ben Franklin said, “A stitch in time saves nine.” We had better concentrate now on one thing above all others: doing it “someday” is probably a greater threat than most of us know. That is, doing the right thing about the COVID 19 pandemic right now.

*How it works: The more widely a virus can spread, the more opportunities it has to mutate. If the U.S. and ultimately the world don’t vaccinate a sufficient percentage of the population, we’ll be setting ourselves up to let the virus keep spreading, and keep mutating, continuing to give us new variants that will continue to pose new threats.

*The concern isn’t necessarily that the facts on the ground today could end up being disastrous. The vaccines work against the British variant; the South African variant is not, at this point, a dominant strain within the U.S.; and we will eventually be able to vaccinate at least some children, helping the U.S.’ progress toward herd immunity.

*But if we don’t control the virus well enough, then even years into the future, we could be living through more new variants — some of which might be more deadly, some of which might be more resistant to vaccines, some of which might be more dangerous for certain specific populations.

*(2)That would translate into an ongoing risk of illness or potentially death for unvaccinated people and new races to reformulate vaccines as new variants keep emerging.

*(3)And it would lead to a world in which today’s vaccine-eager population would have to stay on top of those emerging risks, get booster shots when they’re available, and perhaps revive some of the pandemic’s social-distancing measures, in order to stay safe.

The bottom line: This darker future is preventable, and our abundant supply of highly effective vaccines is the way to prevent it. The more people get vaccinated now, the smaller the role COVID-19 is likely to play in the rest of our lives.

[All the above starred & parenthesis has been borrowed from Sam Baker’s article, “The Warning Signs of a Longer Pandemic.”]

So we can see by this the wisest and best informed choice is simply to counter or ignore those who’ve been spreading the chain-nonsense on every social media platform. By chain-nonsense I mean the kind of information that’s a product of passing on information that soon becomes negated because of the human inability to repeat accurately what one has read or been told. The old classroom demonstration where one student is told a simple sentence and then has to pass it via whispers to the nearest student. The very last repetitions are invariably garbled beyond recognition. That’s chain-nonsense and its especially well illuminated now that “anyone can go online.”

I can’t be the only one in the U.S. who’s grown sick and tired of seeing all the mangled information posted online. And it started when “everyone” was given the ability to “publish” whatever entered their heads without having to be confronted with consequence. In other words it began when the Internet became available to even half the people capable of using a keyboard.

But lets keep this about the current COVID 19 situation. Right now there are at least two tested and approved vaccines. But according to most estimates it’ll be a miracle if even 80% of the population accepts either one.

It’s got to be even closer to 100% before there is a real chance of eliminating the contagion threat as has been demonstrated. Polio, measles, and rubella, have all been eliminated in the United States. Smallpox has also been eradicated worldwide. Vaccines have been instrumental in the elimination of all these illnesses.

I can only hope that enough people will see this and conclude that we must focus only on getting as near 100% vaccinated in the U.S. before we can be free of both the disease and the too-easily manipulated “information” we’re being sabotaged with.

I believe that both right and left wing “political schools”are the worst threats to our civilization since Communist China and Stalinist Russia. And the biological threat rides like another horseman of the Apocalypse right along side the Political Horsemen.