COPD, COVID, and CDC --

Yes, this blog is about COPD.   I've been a COPD patient for nigh on sixty years at this point.   COPD is not exactly the most fearsome diagnosis.  You can live, sometimes for a long time, with COPD; I have.

Those of you who have followed this blog for some of the past fifteen years know that I have been passionate about COPD issues.    COPD rose from America's eleventh leading killer in 1960, to third in 2004, but in recent years has ebbed slightly to sixth leading killer in the U.S., claiming roughly 140,000 per year.   Astonishingly, despite the AMA and CDC's best efforts to describe COPD for the past sixty years as almost entirely a 'smoker's disease', the data is clear--other causes contribute, a lot.   85-90% was always said to be from smoking, but now even the 'best sites' say, "Ummn, looks like up to 1 in 4 victims never smoked."   And the recent findings about lung cancer (up to 60% in Taiwain who never smoked) give further credence to the notion that maybe air pollution is also pretty deadly.

A point that I have insisted since my first major study in 1970.   Never mind CDC's recalcitrant stance.

You might ask, "So what?"   Well, "so what" means that if CDC and the AMA are not viewing COPD as a disease that people get whether or not they have smoked, they likely are not backing research into further cause and effect, or treatments.   Which explains perhaps why for the past 35 years, COPD has gotten between one-tenth and one one-hundredth the per capita victim amount of NIH research money for studying dementia and cancers and strokes.

So, a long-term rant about CDC.  But wow,  I just finished a draft of a book about COVID.   I call it a COVID Anthology, because it mostly traces the discovery and progression of the worst world pandemic in a century.  Already, a mere five years past its initial onslaught, I find that few people, even in the medical profession, share a very consistent understanding of 'what happened and why'.  

The first draft is available, labelled "Advance Copy", at https://www.lulu.com/shop/charles-h-house/a-covid-19-anthology/paperback/product-57e6rwr.html?page=1&pageSize=4

What happened to me as I composed the book, and then reflected on what I learned in the process, is that  numerous mistakes were made along the way by key medical organizations and institutions, which helped contribute to a confusion, and even public distrust of some of these sources (e.g. CDC, WHO).

Unfortunately, CDC showed on two major issues that they still had their head parked where the sun doesn't shine with respect to being awake, alive, and helpful.   I'm not here to plead support for the idiot with the brain worm running HHS--that is truly much worse, but I do argue that CDC didn't do itself or the nation very much good during the COVID years, which in part has contributed to today's mistrust.

First, they supported the thesis that COVID was transmitted by contact--"wash your hands for twenty seocnds, humming a song so you know it is 20 seconds"     They ignored the clear evidence that it was airborne droplets, so small that only N-95 masks were of value, for nearly a year.   They gave advice to the administration for when and where to control the borders, and missed the most leaky of borders for six weeks, long enough that America was totally infected before any decrees were issued.   And worst of all, they muffed the COVID test kits in four successive attempts--in fact, never solved it but finally allowed independent university testing to be used.

The National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), headed for many years by Dr. Anthony Fauci, was hardly blameless either.   Consider their strong support for the thesis that COVID emerged from the live animal market rather than an accident at the infectious lab in Wuhan; consider also that Fauci lobbied for years against the mRNA vaccine work, and only through DOD funding did that heroic work proceed.  Such stances alienated many who knew; more public knowledge would have been even more damaging.

These kinds of errors, mistakes, or biases don't require conspiracy theorists to cause public concern; more to the point, they help stimulate belief that maybe in fact there is something to this conspiracy stuff.

And historically, and even today, I have the highest regard for these institutions and their avowed purpose--we need them and their skill and dedication working on all of our behalf for public health. But it does pose questions--what went wrong, and why is this seemingly happening. 

I'll pose some thoughts in a subsequent post.