The straw which broke the camels back

 

Subject: The straw which broke the camels back.



With a great deal of consternation a new name has appeared in the lexicon  of  the Covid virus.  Named Omicron it appears to carry the hallmark of a highly evolved virus with many features which could make it more dangerous and certainly more infectious.

It all comes amid a row which is going along in the general public as to whether we are being conned into giving up their personal freedoms for the acceptance of a system of top down government diktat. It's an argument zealously held by the younger end of the population who see themselves on the one hand more effected since the young are more likely to want to go out to party whilst also they seem largely able to contain the effects if they are infected.

When Covid kicked off a couple of years ago, the sight of desperation in the hospital wards as patients were put on ventilators, made us all afraid. It was not a peaceful death but a tormented one as patients struggled for breath. What was not clearly  distinguishable was the age of the patient and only later the distressing fact that many of the patients were old people lying in hospital who, for political reasons were shipped out of hospital into ill equipped old age homes where the virus incubated like wild fire.

Whether this was a wilful act of euthanasia, a sort of pact with the devil to evict the weak and vulnerable we will never know but with terror firmly in place, draconian measures were soon made possible.

Two years on and another lock-down is very feasible and the conspiracy theorists are in full swing citing the infringement of human rights on the one hand and a plot to dictate the electorates freedom by a powerful behind the scenes cabal and there are of course the anti vaccination people who feel that vaccinations are harmful and must be resisted at all costs.

The immune system, probably the most important function we have for fighting off millions of invasive bugs and viruses is still not fully understood and the injection of vaccines a bit like homeopathy thrives on the belief that by micro stimulating the immune system with low level chemistry, ailments can be countered not by invasive drugs but by the bodies own healing mechanism. Vaccinations are the heavy duty version of homeopathy and parents are now a days encouraged to immunise their children against a range of debilitating childhood diseases. From the age of four, (in my childhood), there were vaccines for tetanus, diphtheria, small pox and polio, were each administered with a single jab but 70 years on kids are given cocktail of vaccinations.

There's a 6 in 1, given to a baby at 4, 12 and 16 weeks and  a pneumonia injection at 12 weeks, MenB to protect against meningitis and sepsis at 8 and 16 weeks, Rotavirus to protect against diarrhoea and vomiting, Hib/menC at one year, MMR at one year to protect against measles, mumps and rubella.  This gives us an insight into the range of interventions used these days to prime our immune system and protect us from illnesses  which can prove fatal but unfortunately the vaccines do often come with side effects and it’s these side effects that worry some parents and there are some in the anti vaccination lobby who feel this is overkill and suspect Big Pharma of putting profit before medical ethics. Never the less there are far fewer babies succumbing to what in my childhood were killer diseases.

The internet, always a hotbed of conspiracy, for political, scientific or medical quackery finds ample space to confuse the already information-overloaded public.  Groups who believe that Covid is more political than medical are difficult to dislodge because of the general  obfuscation practiced by virtually all politicians. This generates a lack of trust which is pervasive and could be the straw which breaks the camels back.