Comparing the polio epidemics and Covid19

I’ve been anti-shutdown for weeks, but I only saw this video today.  https://youtu.be/lGC5sGdz4kg  So it has had no influence on me.  I’ve watched how the people of Ohio have been led into complete submission while our small businesses have been destroyed. Big box and chains are open.  I watched our sensible, conservative Republican, Trump-supporting, Governor DeWine and his sidekick Dr. Amy, appear every day on TV always quietly oozing more fear and regulations.

If you’re old enough to remember the polio epidemic, the video makes a lot of sense.  I recall my cousin Jimmy Corbett who died in 1949 of polio, and the Kable children I think 4 of the 5 had it, but all survived. We had a big gathering of Corbetts at the John Corbett home (parents of Jimmy) because of visiting relatives from California.  We had a wonderful time and within days Jimmy was dead from polio and about a week later my sister Carol had it. We all were quarantined (in those days they quarantined the people most at risk to contract the disease not the entire country), but not the adults.  My father moved out of our home in Forreston and moved in with his parents in Mt. Morris so he could earn a living (novel idea for 2020)—all had been at that family dinner.  So why weren’t they afraid for the adults?  Immunity.  Most adults born in the late 19^th or early 20^th century had some immunity to polio, a disease that had been around for centuries. Whether it was improved sanitation (indoor plumbing) or something else, I don’t know, but children of the 1930s and 1940s were being struck down.  Some young adults did have it—like FDR, and I wonder if it was his somewhat pampered life (flush toilets) that created the vulnerability whereas my Dad used an outhouse and met his first flush toilet at 14 when he started high school in Polo, IL.

Our son Phil died a week ago and we’d been caring for him (no wife or children for a safety net) first in his home, then in ours as we began to wear out. Under normal circumstances, my 82 year old husband would have seen his own doctor as soon as he began to have breathing problems, but it was postponed due to our situation and because of the shut down/telemedicine.  He needed testing and that isn’t done on the phone. Eventually the squad took him to the ER when he realized he was exhausted walking to the neighbor’s to get ice cream we’d stored in her freezer. He was admitted, tested, and found to have some serious cardiac issues.  The hospital, the largest in Columbus, was virtually empty. Everything—heart, lung, knee, hip, brain—was postponed because of the pandemic scare.  And how many thousands and thousands either didn’t go to their doctor or weren’t diagnosed because of the focus and policies about Covid19? Even today, the death toll nationwide is higher than normal, and the bump isn’t due to Covid.  It’s probably due to people not going to the doctor when they should have—technically, we’d created a nation of uninsured.

I think our president has been misled and so have many of the governors. Whenever I hear the word “data” I mentally flag it.  Dr. Birx of the president’s task force often said, “the data show. . .” Data is not information, information is not knowledge, and knowledge is not wisdom.”
With more sifting and examination the data are actually showing that over 90% of those who died had one of three, or all three—obesity, hypertension, or diabetes.  So meanwhile, reporters who think will probably not be sent to investigate and all the sheeple get are stupid memes about injecting Lysol.

If you’re too young to remember polio, think about how HIV/AIDS was misreported and politicized (still is) as a disease that all of us would get in the 1980s.  And that’s nonsense in service of an agenda.  It’s still isolated for the most part to gay and bisexual men and drug users, and it’s behavior, not homophobia that spreads it.