Observations From the Spectrum

Wildfires very quickly get out of hand just like a virus and left unchecked, will leave nothing but scorched Earth in its path. Every year, thousands of heroes risk life and limb use the tools available to them to stamp out wildfires. Why are we not as colletively interested and diligent towards Covid?

Thinking Big Pharma is only about profiteering is the equivalent of thinking that cars are only for transportation and technology is only for porn and video games. It’s not the case.

Technology advances all of our lives regularly whether we like it or not. We live longer and our ability to communicate at great distances is almost perfect and immediate. Think about war time. How many soldiers arriving in France or Korea or Vietnam would have benefited from one last Video Chat with their loved ones before they were lost. All of them.

We have access to encyclopedic data at our fingertips at all times and a multi-use tool that makes a swiss army knife look like a club. We have a camera, music, bank, shopping mall, dating apps, medical history and so much more in our pockets on our smartphones. It’s amazing even though each dollar we spend profits big corporations and conglomerates like Google and Amazon.

And the Automobile industry obviously does harm. Cars pollute the very air we breathe more so if we live in a city. But the perks of owning a car as a primary means of transportation are great. They are personalized, can fit our families and keep us off public transportation during flu season and especially during pandemics. Cars are a beautiful luxury and the safety measures have changed immensely since the Model T. Doesn’t change the fact that in a two year period cities went from horses to cars. It was a huge change that came quick. 

We can see examples of this across the board in all industries where there is some bad to go along with the good. Big Pharma is a prime example. These are companies designed to make profit for their stakeholders. That is a fact. They will say the same thing to the faces of their customers. But if you know anything about business, you know that only companies that work well succeed. That’s the nature of a free market and business.

I think about my old neighborhood pre and post Covid. How many stores shuttered their doors. Gone for good and that’s what makes a few of the issues today so puzzling to me. I see that bad but I don’t see, in the case of vaccines, it outweighs the good. Yet, it does seem like there are many people who can only focus on the bad and arrive at their opinions based only on the bad. I try my best to avoid this. From my view, those who are vaccine hesitant come across that way because they are unwilling to see the whole picture.

Take away Big Pharma, Wall Street and profiteering and what is left is a bunch of well-educated PhDs in Virology whose primary purpose of their lives is to find solutions to viruses. They are the equivalent of the NBA or Marvel Universe or Tesla. These elite like Fauci spend their lives searching out potential viral threats and creating solutions for them. To think that they wait around for pandemics is naive.

Virologists are the heroes. They are the Black Panthers, the Ironmans and the Black Widows of the real world. But instead we choose not to see them as heroes but as part of the management or owner side of the equation. This is not true.

Big Pharma like Gilead and PFizer are the producers or owner class. They are not the players or the actors. Those at the top are the producers of Marvel and the owners of the NBA. They are not Robert Downey Jr. or LeBron James. They are the equivalent to virologists. They are those who play and produce for us, the consumer, products we want to buy.

But somewhere along the line we have the virologists because they are employed by Big Pharma. It is a leap and in doing so we have villainized vaccines, masks and the medical science that is purposely designed to help us. So here are a few facts to think about helping others rewire their thinking and separating Big Pharma from the Virologists:

• Dying of an infectious disease that causes respiratory and organ failure sucks
• Having medicines that prevent these deaths doesn’t
• Living in a time without Smallpox and Polio running rampant is a blessing
• Vaccines are useful tools
• Masks are useful tools
• Spreading infectious disease is illegal and in some parts of the world have harsh consequences
• Covid is not the first and will not be the last Viral Pandemic
• Pandemic are like wild fires – they happen from time to time and are part of nature
• If you think waiting for herd immunity is the path and you support putting out forest fires, you want to bake and eat the cake
• The Black Plague wiped out over 75 million people on a planet with less than a billion worldwide
• 1918 – the Flu wiped out 20 million plus
• Covid is only one virus that is currently in circulation
• Wearing a mask prevents the spread of the viruses not just Covid
• Masks are like condoms – the virus would have no hosts if we all wore masks and social distanced for a few weeks
• Medicines are not masks or condoms
• Medicines are weapons against viruses; they tell the virus where to go like an information board at an airport
• Covid is a respiratory virus – it will always board the lungs if not guided to the poop shoot
• The number billion is big
• We are made up of billions of cells
• We don’t have a doorman 
• The doorman does not call the Vaccine and says, “Covid is here to see you.”
• Viruses bum rush the body like looters
• Vaccines are like profilers, they need to check the evidence against viruses with priors
• Then the detectives either knows who they are looking for or has to start anew
• Old profiles lead to the suspect easily like the flu. Damage is controlled
• New profiles need to be uncovered and examined
• This is when the virus is free and contagious
• Then the vaccine goes to work and finds the perpetrator and kills it
• All of this takes time. We are billions of cells. Viruses are great at hide and seek
• During this time, the vaccinated are spreaders
• Think kissing. You kiss someone with Covid and they transfer 1000s of particles of the virus to you. Some you will breath back out to others
• At this time the virus is running amuck but cannot adapt and plan in the vaxxed. It is eventually corralled and detained
• In the unvaxxed, the virus is a looter who got away and now searches for accomplices to help it loot more
• It adapts and mutates
• Humanity is hoping it does not adapt and mutate to a more deadly form
• Vaccines stop the virus from mutating
• Unvaxxed hosts help the virus to mutate
• Think HIV – it enters the body and the host gets a cold
• Ten years later, the virus mutates to Aids and the host dies
• To prevent HIV/Aids, condoms are used
• Condoms don’t let the virus into the body like masks
• Prep is a pill that those take who are at high risk of contracting HIV
• Prep is similar to a Vaccine – it tells the body what to do with the virus
• Prep does not stop HIV entering the body, it just tells it where to go
• Antivirals are a treatment for those who are infected
• They too, tell the HIV virus what to do
• Antivirals stop the HIV virus from replicating
• Prep stops the HIV virus from replicating
• But again, we are each billions of cells
• It takes time
• So just like Covid, unless someone has a undetectable viral load, they are a spreader
• Rule #1 of being HIV positive is to take Antivirals to keep the viral load undetectable
• Rule #2 of being HIV positive is to not get reinfected or the virus may learn to jump over the Antivirals leading to a stronger and faster to kill form of HIV
• The moment the infected take Prep or Antivirals, the viral load starts to go down
• It takes time
• Those who are not on Prep or Antivirals have high viral loads and can spread HIV more just like with Covid
• Vaxxed without Covid do not spread
• Vaxxed with Covid spread until the Vaccine and the immune system kick in and stop the virus and lower the viral load
• Unvaxxed provide the virus a petri dish or home for the virus to learn to what it can from the host and then pass it along – hence mutations

I get being skeptical of anything connected to Wall Street including Big Pharma but when I deconstruct pandemics, modern medicine, knowledge of HIV, vaccines throughout history, socialized or tax paid medicine in the rest of the world and virologists, I arrive at a place of trust because I don’t want to live through a pandemic more deadly than this one. That is what will happen if the virus continues to mutate unchecked.

Humanity, all of us, are at a war with a virus. Seems like the easiest way to win is to use all the tools and weapons we have at our disposal, vaccines, medicines, masks and social distancing. We are in Wartime and I will treat it as such. I will listen to those heroes on the frontlines creating the tools and weapons to win the war. In America, Fauci is leading that charge.

• All works at Observations from the Spectrum written by Dylan Netter
• Observationsfromthespectrum.org
• OFTS.blog 
• On? a third point of view – book of Essays
• Marinehippie.com podcast w/ Docstodden.com – dialogue exploring politics and musings of life 
• Horizoncoaching.org – English Tutor and Guide
• beehiveplus1.org