Human beings, Americans in particular, are very short-sighted. We are quick to act, then pound our chests with pride and arrogance (as if we’re so smart), only to find out that despite our short-term success, we pay dearly for our decisions later. We are the only species that can’t figure out how to be happy, healthy, and live in balance.
The most obvious example is our failing medical system. It is built around a “rob Peter to pay Paul” philosophy. We treat one system in the body at the expense of another. Medications that are said to protect the heart can damage other muscles. Pills are given to reduce pain, while destroying the liver, stomach, and/or kidneys. I could go on and on.
Like tornadoes, droughts, and market crashes, pandemics are expected to occur from time to time. Like the calm before the storm, or bubbles before market crashes, a pandemic like this shouldn’t be such a surprise. Many health experts, myself included, had been warning of an impending health crisis of some kind. How did we know? Look around! Roughly 50% of our population is obese, 80% suffer from a chronic illness, our air is polluted, our drinking water is not pure, our foods are loaded with artificial chemicals, our stress levels are ridiculously high, most marriages are miserable, most kids are unhappy, depressed, or suffer with anxiety, and the civil unrest is rising daily. So, if you’re surprised that we are in a pandemic, you have been missing the signs that have been so obvious the preceding years.
What’s my point? Combine the fact that an impending health crisis was so obvious with our medical system’s notorious tendency to treat symptoms while neglecting the cause, and you can quickly see that no matter how fast we get out of this pandemic, another, much worse one, is right around the corner. So, we must be very careful on how much faith we put in short term band-aids. I’m not saying you shouldn’t put faith in things like lockdowns, masks, and vaccines, but I will warn you to be careful not put TOO MUCH faith in our current plan.
Before you start huffing and puffing, calling me names, and reporting me to be censored, hear me out. We know that, despite stories about healthy people dying from COVID, ALL experts will still agree that the MOST vulnerable to complications and death are the elderly, obese, immune-compromised, and those with secondary illnesses. Basically, the more unhealthy you are, the more likely you are to have complications. If social distancing, masks, and vaccines get us through this crisis, they do nothing to make you less obese, less immune-compromised, or less chronically ill.
What’s your doctor’s plan? Not just for now, but in the future? If it doesn’t involve encouraging and educating you to take healthy lifestyle actions to actually improve your health, then he or she is relying on medications and vaccines. The new COVID strains popping up are a perfect example. We were told that even if you had COVID, you should still get the vaccine because of the new variants. Well, in case you haven’t heard, the current vaccines aren’t looking so good for the variants. And both Pfizer and Moderna have already alluded to so-called booster shots being likely this fall. What? And what about the next variants after that? When does it stop? It doesn’t! And I said “so-called boosters” because infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm, who is a member of President Biden’s COVID task force, said that vaccines for the same strain are called boosters. He said if these are for a new strain, then they are, in fact, new vaccines.
I am not telling you what to do when it comes to medications, medical treatment, or vaccines. All I am saying is that sooner or later we have to get to the root cause of illness and vulnerability in this country. Dangerous medications, risky medical procedures, and vaccines, are at best tools to buy us time to get us through a crisis. And while these strategies make pharmaceutical companies billions of dollars, build big fancy hospitals, and employ lots of doctors and nurses… in case you haven’t noticed, they fail to create healthy people.
Do whatever you think is best right now, but do so looking forward, down the road, so you aren’t blindsided, and you aren’t as vulnerable or as scared as you are right now when the next pandemic hits. Making healthier lifestyle choices IS a long-term strategy to address… this pandemic, all future pandemics, and the overall level of sickness in this country.