Humans Are Dumb
Today I found, on my MSN news feed, a typical fearmongering headline in these days of continuous authoritarian propaganda: “Omicron Patients Becoming ‘Really Sick in a Different Way.’” The quotation in that headline, as I discovered, is from a “leading ER doctor,” specifically an associate professor from Columbia University Medical Center. The linked news item is a short video report, in which scare tactic depictions of the Omicron variant are accompanied by various clips of patients supposedly being treated for Covid-19. The reason I clicked on the item in the first place was due to the image presented with the headline, showing a man lying almost flat on his back in a hospital bed while nurses attend to him. The video report itself shows, by my quick count, five alleged Covid-19 patients, of various ages, in hospital beds. Every one of them is lying flat on his back, or nearly so. We are two years into this respiratory virus pandemic now, and it seems the default medical treatment, in the U.S. at least, still involves trapping people suffering with respiratory symptoms on their backs for prolonged periods of time.
I am not a doctor, just a human being who has had respiratory illnesses many times, including mild cases of viral pneumonia as a teenager, and who also has a heart condition that can cause chest congestion. The last place I ever want to be, while dealing with such symptoms, is on my back. And if I ever have to be hospitalized for Covid-19 or any other respiratory illness, I guarantee you that they will have to strap me down at their physical peril if they expect me to remain on my back for any length of time. It is common sense, in fact, since the primary objective for anyone in such a condition is to loosen and clear out the congestion as quickly as possible, which is best achieved by leaning forward or sideways, whereas congestion builds while lying on one’s back. I guess common sense is too high an aspiration for Columbia University emergency doctors and such. Not in the textbooks.
I wonder how many people have died of this virus simply because…well, let’s not go there, since as I said, I am not a doctor. In twenty or thirty years, however, if there is still a civilization in which such things may be done, there will be studies about these treatment methods, and my suspicion is that some things will be noticed by those future researchers that apparently continue to evade the attention of our experts, in spite of the incredibly obvious failure of all their current default methods and assumptions. In fact, a recently published largescale international study has demonstrated the benefits of awake prone positioning for oxygenation in acute cases. Apparently the Ivy League experts are a bit behind on their reading. Too busy doing soundbite fearmongering for the government, I suppose.
Discussion of study results: Humans are dumb.
