[Health] Under our skin, or under their thumb?
Not long ago, I came across a Facebook community, called something like "Please Support Jenny McCarthy on The View".
Um - no. Not a snowball's chance in hell. I am fiercely pro-vaccination for infants, and I really think the anti-vac people (of whom McCarthy is a loud unpleasant example) should not be given broad national platforms from which to advocate sending other peoples' babies back to the seventeenth century by way of eliminating vaccines and reintroducing delightful little things like cowpox, smallpox, whooping cough, polio, measles. Really not so much, 'kay?
I've just become aware that there is just as much arrogance, blindness, ego, dogmatic cant, and raw stupidity on the other side of that divide. No, not vaccinations, specifically. Read it and weep.
I have a friend with Lyme Disease (and, according to her bloodwork and brain scan, several other incredibly nasty infections associated with what happens if you're bitten by a tick and infected with the borrelia spirochete). When I first met her - coming up on three years ago, I think - it was at a show, and she was on crutches. I asked what was wrong with her, and she explained that she'd suddenly started waking up with these huge swollen nodes on her knees and ankles; they'd disappear, then pop up again. She couldn't figure it out, her doctors couldn't figure it out, and in the meanwhile, she was having high fevers as well.
From the "official" guidelines at the IDSA website, on the subject of Lyme and tick-borne infections, in their Congressional hearings:
"Further, no reliable evidence exists that supports the designation of Lyme disease as a chronic, actively infectious disease requiring ongoing antibiotic therapy."
Really? Huh. Want to explain to me how patients deteriorating under your eyes don't qualify as "reliable evidence"?
Everything out there discussing Lyme, and the treatment thereof, relies on the premise that you got bitten, developed the telltale ring marks immediately, shrieked and ran weeping to your doctor, who then gave you two weeks worth of one of the cillins, and then wowie, disease gone now. And if you had "post-treatment" reactions (this all assumes that you've ever been treated, remember), then they might give you a couple of weeks of IV antibiotics. Hey presto! Cured!
Except that it doesn't go down that way, quite a lot of the time. Here's a scenario:
You get bitten on the scalp by a "nymph", which is tinier than a pinhead. You wouldn't see it while it clung to your head for four days. When it finally lets go, you might not know the ring was there. So it could be weeks after you showed the first symptoms, and you might not be connecting it to a tick bite, because why would you?
So you go to your doctor and neither of you mentions Lyme, because why would you? The test is expensive, and we all know just how fond insurance companies are of paying for "unnecessary" tests.
The months go by and you start getting sicker. Night fevers, cognitive issues, can't sleep anymore, joints swelling, memory going. You go back to your doctor. Still nothing in either forebrain about ticks, or about the fact that you were hiking on a trail that actually warned about ticks, not long before the first nodes appeared on your joints.
And then, something twigs it, and you look at the symptoms, and the dots suddenly connect. You go back to your doctor - it's now, what, a year later? - and he waves it away because hey, this is California, Lyme is back east, we don't get it here.
More tests, for RA, for other things. Hundreds of dollars, but no test ordered for Lyme. You go home. You get sicker.
You go back to his office and tell him you aren't leaving until he agrees to test you for Lyme with Public Health. He grudgingly agrees.
The test comes back positive.
And then you make this discovery: chronic infection with borrealis is not considered real. No such thing.
This morning, I was sent a link that, for a couple of very bad moments, left me rethinking my position on guns. This is a science and medical blogger out of Chicago. This represents rationalism, research, good hard science as opposed to all those "pseudoscience" types out there. The tone of the blog was as smug and as arrogant as anything I have come across in a good long while. People who are pointing out that they're dying of long-time Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections are "cranks". The doctors who want to try different ways of treating what the medical industry refuses to admit exists (and yes, some of them, no argument; I don't like doctors who prey on the desperate either) are without exception "quacks". Literally, trying to link anyone who even suggests that it might be a real problem (and looking to go pandemic if treatment isn't found soon, because it's not as if you're getting rid of the ticks) with the anti-vac crazies. And the commenters on this blog? Holy fuck. One small thermonuclear device gets them all. What a bunch of heartless pigs.
The Mayo Clinic - the goddamned MAYO CLINIC - offers precisely two treatments for Lyme: one is "catch it early" and the other is "also catch it early"
My friend has been to Mayo, twice. The second time, she had her positive diagnosis in hand.
They waved it off.
You know what? I've come to a really sad conclusion: my species are, by and large, arrogant soulless morons. Also heartless and detached. It's so much easier to live in some shiny metaverse, isn't it? Where nothing real ever has to be dealt with and it's all theoretical, where only good people have lethal weapons, where the people in charge of safeguarding the public's health actually give a rat's ass about the people in question?
They don't. They care about the almighty dollar and their own pride and egos. They SUCK.
We saw this with AIDS in the eighties. How many people were infected with AIDS by way of transfusions because "screening potential donors is too expensive"? How many millions, yes MILLIONS, of people died because it was a "gay disease"?
Does someone want to tell me how this denial of Lyme in the system three years after you get bitten is ethically any different? How the smug "all those cranks" is any different from Ronald Reagan and the Religious Wrong, designating AIDS a "gay" disease?
I see stupid people. The horror is, they have the power to make all the decisions. And they're everywhere I want to be.
Um - no. Not a snowball's chance in hell. I am fiercely pro-vaccination for infants, and I really think the anti-vac people (of whom McCarthy is a loud unpleasant example) should not be given broad national platforms from which to advocate sending other peoples' babies back to the seventeenth century by way of eliminating vaccines and reintroducing delightful little things like cowpox, smallpox, whooping cough, polio, measles. Really not so much, 'kay?
I've just become aware that there is just as much arrogance, blindness, ego, dogmatic cant, and raw stupidity on the other side of that divide. No, not vaccinations, specifically. Read it and weep.
I have a friend with Lyme Disease (and, according to her bloodwork and brain scan, several other incredibly nasty infections associated with what happens if you're bitten by a tick and infected with the borrelia spirochete). When I first met her - coming up on three years ago, I think - it was at a show, and she was on crutches. I asked what was wrong with her, and she explained that she'd suddenly started waking up with these huge swollen nodes on her knees and ankles; they'd disappear, then pop up again. She couldn't figure it out, her doctors couldn't figure it out, and in the meanwhile, she was having high fevers as well.
From the "official" guidelines at the IDSA website, on the subject of Lyme and tick-borne infections, in their Congressional hearings:
"Further, no reliable evidence exists that supports the designation of Lyme disease as a chronic, actively infectious disease requiring ongoing antibiotic therapy."
Really? Huh. Want to explain to me how patients deteriorating under your eyes don't qualify as "reliable evidence"?
Everything out there discussing Lyme, and the treatment thereof, relies on the premise that you got bitten, developed the telltale ring marks immediately, shrieked and ran weeping to your doctor, who then gave you two weeks worth of one of the cillins, and then wowie, disease gone now. And if you had "post-treatment" reactions (this all assumes that you've ever been treated, remember), then they might give you a couple of weeks of IV antibiotics. Hey presto! Cured!
Except that it doesn't go down that way, quite a lot of the time. Here's a scenario:
You get bitten on the scalp by a "nymph", which is tinier than a pinhead. You wouldn't see it while it clung to your head for four days. When it finally lets go, you might not know the ring was there. So it could be weeks after you showed the first symptoms, and you might not be connecting it to a tick bite, because why would you?
So you go to your doctor and neither of you mentions Lyme, because why would you? The test is expensive, and we all know just how fond insurance companies are of paying for "unnecessary" tests.
The months go by and you start getting sicker. Night fevers, cognitive issues, can't sleep anymore, joints swelling, memory going. You go back to your doctor. Still nothing in either forebrain about ticks, or about the fact that you were hiking on a trail that actually warned about ticks, not long before the first nodes appeared on your joints.
And then, something twigs it, and you look at the symptoms, and the dots suddenly connect. You go back to your doctor - it's now, what, a year later? - and he waves it away because hey, this is California, Lyme is back east, we don't get it here.
More tests, for RA, for other things. Hundreds of dollars, but no test ordered for Lyme. You go home. You get sicker.
You go back to his office and tell him you aren't leaving until he agrees to test you for Lyme with Public Health. He grudgingly agrees.
The test comes back positive.
And then you make this discovery: chronic infection with borrealis is not considered real. No such thing.
This morning, I was sent a link that, for a couple of very bad moments, left me rethinking my position on guns. This is a science and medical blogger out of Chicago. This represents rationalism, research, good hard science as opposed to all those "pseudoscience" types out there. The tone of the blog was as smug and as arrogant as anything I have come across in a good long while. People who are pointing out that they're dying of long-time Lyme disease and other tick-borne infections are "cranks". The doctors who want to try different ways of treating what the medical industry refuses to admit exists (and yes, some of them, no argument; I don't like doctors who prey on the desperate either) are without exception "quacks". Literally, trying to link anyone who even suggests that it might be a real problem (and looking to go pandemic if treatment isn't found soon, because it's not as if you're getting rid of the ticks) with the anti-vac crazies. And the commenters on this blog? Holy fuck. One small thermonuclear device gets them all. What a bunch of heartless pigs.
The Mayo Clinic - the goddamned MAYO CLINIC - offers precisely two treatments for Lyme: one is "catch it early" and the other is "also catch it early"
My friend has been to Mayo, twice. The second time, she had her positive diagnosis in hand.
They waved it off.
You know what? I've come to a really sad conclusion: my species are, by and large, arrogant soulless morons. Also heartless and detached. It's so much easier to live in some shiny metaverse, isn't it? Where nothing real ever has to be dealt with and it's all theoretical, where only good people have lethal weapons, where the people in charge of safeguarding the public's health actually give a rat's ass about the people in question?
They don't. They care about the almighty dollar and their own pride and egos. They SUCK.
We saw this with AIDS in the eighties. How many people were infected with AIDS by way of transfusions because "screening potential donors is too expensive"? How many millions, yes MILLIONS, of people died because it was a "gay disease"?
Does someone want to tell me how this denial of Lyme in the system three years after you get bitten is ethically any different? How the smug "all those cranks" is any different from Ronald Reagan and the Religious Wrong, designating AIDS a "gay" disease?
I see stupid people. The horror is, they have the power to make all the decisions. And they're everywhere I want to be.