Editorial from Jimmy Hoppers MD, Physicians Quality Care
We are several years into this pandemic and have done everything the politicians asked us (or forced) us to do. President Biden said he would “beat Covid-19.”
Everyone knew this was merely a political talking-point, no matter how well-intended he may have been at the time. If ending viral contagion could be done by political fiat we wouldn’t continue to have 100,000 deaths every year from influenza.
I remember early on in medical school that we were told, “One-half of everything you are being taught will be proven wrong in 10 years. The problem is, we don’t know which half.”
While I have not shied away from confronting our local leaders when I felt they were wrong – a right enshrined in our Bill of Rights – even now the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners is threatening to withdraw a physician’s license for spreading “misinformation” about Covid; that is, information the 9-physician political appointees disagree with.
Freedom of speech is worth protecting so let’s press on.
Local officials fell in lockstep with unelected health department employees and did what they were told. I’m not against this in principle; I would hope that politicians would listen to people with some degree of medical training.
The problem was, as I see it, when something was proven not to work, instead of trying to figure out “which half of what they had been taught was wrong,” politicians doubled down and continued the same failed tactics.
When indoor masking in the city didn’t reduce the incident rate, they proposed that everybody mask outdoors as well.
When that went nowhere, instead of looking at the data and adjusting their strategy – as every first-year medical student knows is the way to work a problem – surrounding counties were scapegoated for “bringing the virus into Madison County.”
We put up plexiglass dividers everywhere, closed businesses, closed schools, cancelled sporting events, cut restaurants to 50% capacity in a vain effort to somehow stop this virus in its tracks.
We were told that the vaunted “Covid-19 Task Force” had our backs, in spite of the fact that not a single physician served on this committee. The “task force” never came up with any original strategies by the way; they only parroted the very fluid CDC guidelines.
You’ve heard it before but it bears repeating. “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” If all the draconian measures mandated by our local and national authorities had produced results, instead of being the loyal opposition, I would have become their biggest supporter.
I repeatedly asked Mayor Conger to meet and at the very least consider another viewpoint; he never responded.
In my over 40 years of practicing medicine, I have never had a patient come in and say, “I feel great but I was around somebody who was around somebody who had the flu, so I need to be tested so I can be sure I’m not sick and don’t know it.”
And even when someone does test positive for flu, we treat the individual patient and don’t attempt “one size fits all” therapy.
The Omicron variant is a highly contagious virus. It can be transmitted by asymptomatic people, even those vaccinated, and quite frankly, unless you literally do not leave your house, you have undoubtedly been exposed.
By their own calculation, the CDC estimates the prevalence of Covid-19 in the general population to be as high as 74%.
That means that 3 out of 4 people you casually pass in Walmart are capable of giving you the virus. And probably have.
Is Covid-19 serious? Of course, it is.
Has anything we’ve done so far made a dent? You be the judge. It’s political (and apparently according to the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners) medical heresy if we all admit, just like we have come to live with the flu, we are going to have no choice but to live with Covid.
It will become endemic like so many other diseases we deal with (if we aren’t there already) and maybe eventually the hysteria will stop.
If government still contends however that complete eradication of Covid-19 is even possible and is a requirement before they take their thumb off the scales and we return to normalcy, it’s going to be a very bleak decade indeed.
(PHOTO: Jimmy Hoppers MD, Physicians Quality Care)
