I have always loved Easter. Itβs a time between, between darkness and light. between the dark, cold, deathlike state of Winter and the riotous, burgeoning glories of Spring. Feeling the soft fresh air of Spring on your skin after being inside breathing stale, overheated air. Here it straddles Dry season, a time of warmth and unrelenting, merciless sunshine, and the wet, messy, muddy splendorΒ of Rainy season. A shifting moment of possibilities where we look forward to what is ahead of us,Β a time of great potentials, and limitless options.
One thing is for sure, in our world with this Coronavirus weβre again in that shifting place between two things, between the world as we knew it, and our new normal. Itβs not finished, the answers havenβt happened yet. Itβs a very scary place to inhabit right now, our culture does not do well with uncertainty and lack of concrete answers. You can see it online the strongest, where people are fighting over everything from putting cut up onions about to absorb the disease, to those that claim they are bleaching every surface in their homes every few hours. Itβs our nerves driving all the arguing.
But we are starting to see some newer ideas emerging and some stories from survivors of COVID 19. After seeing people arguing online that you should never allow them to put you on a ventilator because itβs a supposed death sentence, and others toutingΒ very hard Hydroxycloroquine there is news that we might just be seeing Cytokine Storms as the main driver of Coronavirus deaths.Β More on that from the Washington Post.
What is a Cytokine Storm? Your immune system starts to attack your own body during a respiratory crisis. I know weβve had people here questioning if it is really a thing, but it is. Itβs just a rare not well known thing.
If this is the main driving factor in deaths then there is hope, lots of hope. Why? Because we now have many different biologic medicines out there that could potentially turn off the reaction. All of us who have been on Xolair, or Otezla and any number of other ones can tell you that they work well. They are the reason we now have targeted biologic cancer treatments that target a specific thing. This is a class of drugs already being explored to possibly use in Coronavirus treatment.
Why have I been so interested in the possible Cytokine Storm aspect of this? Because when my asthma first went from regular to crazy I kept waking up entubated in the hospital with only the vaguest notion of how I ended up there. They found I had hyper IgE. Where someone usually have a 100 or below on the scale of IgE cells I had 27,000. It took eight years on a good biologic to turn that off. Now I read about immune system problems and keep up on the research. Knowledge of what plagues you is only a good thing.
On the other good news side, on Easter I finally got that phone call from the Health Dept letting me know that my test for COVID 19 was mercifully negative! I do not have it. Itβs another virus, asthma and my crappy damaged lungs playing up. But I am so happy I did not take the Hydroxycloroquine they issued me.
Look, Iβm not going to do like so many other Patheos authors have done, point to the cheap and easy outrage β those hate filled Christians bragging about attending church in the middle of this time of contagion. Itβs very easy to mine outrage these days and drive hit numbers. I am more interested in seeing whatβs going on in the scientific community right now.
But then there is Doug Wilson, trying to rile up his troops that this is manufactured outrage driven by the media, instead of a serious thing. Feeding his non critical thinking followers conspiracy theories in the midst of this.
βSo on the medical side for those affected, this whole thing has been awful, but it still has not been anything close what it was purported to be. Yes, there really has been a hard and objective problem in key locations with COVID-19. But the cure and response was misguided, misinformed, overblown, not necessary, and far more damaging to everyone than the virus would have been had we simply treated it for what it actually was β a really bad seasonal respiratory illness, and one that had all the cameras in the world pointed at it.β
This is a bit more than a really bad seasonal respiratory illness. Hot weather does not kill it. It will be interesting to see how many contract it through Wilsonβs over inflated ego and hubris.
But what can you expect from a guy that views women as objects, as candy, instead of fully functional human beings?
Disgusting.
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Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement by Kathryn Joyce
I Fired God by Jocelyn Zichtermann
13:24 A Dark Thriller by M Dolon Hickmon
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