The Virus Is Waiting
Claudewell S. Thomas, MD, MPH, DLFAPA, is an established psychiatrist who is currently retired ,, He received his medical degree in 1956 at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine and specializes in social psychiatry, public health psychiatry, and forensic psychiatry. Dr. Thomas was board certified by the American Board of Psychiatry... more
There are two things that are understood about the SARS-CoV-2 infection. The first is that it is the source of the Covid-19 pandemic and the second is that it travels with or without an animal vector and may exist in humans without symptoms. This means that focusing on people who are symptomatic in some way is not enough but focusing on those who test positive for the virus may be too much, depending on what is desired.
Co-infection and enabling of the pre-existing disease are attributes of SARS-CoV-2, whether expressed as Covid-19 or not. The private practitioner can deal with the Covid-19 manifestation based on the symptoms shown, pulmonary, systemic, vascular, etc., successfully or not but cannot deal with the civic or community implications of his or her or their local system action. The presence of pathogens like SARS or Typhoid or Tuberculosis capable of exploding in epidemic form calls for a health care system that is capable of transforming rapidly (pre-existing and practiced) into a top-down across barriers, triage allocation and treatment, public health principled system. This requires the right and ability to identify toxic and dangerous human agents within the system and to purge the system of them. Can this coexist with our current private practice, regional, workplace, or right to work Obamacare or not, nonsystem?
George Floyd's memorial is taking place today. The criminal justice system whose local first line in Minneapolis in the form of local policemen, took his life, analogizes to toxic practitioners with malevolent intent. We have collectively failed to notice that we have not yet evolved from a slave republic; noting in passing the 1960s where the assault on voting rights discrimination followed by the assault on educational discrimination in the 1980s reminded us of work undone. (GI education in the 40s bypassed blacks, housing benefits bypassed visible minorities, etc.)
The people of America are in the streets without adequate protection against SARS, fighting against the toxin of authoritarian leadership finding divided police forces opposing civil unrest. Finding the screaming eagles of the eighty second and infantry and the national guard lined up threateningly and utilizing tear gas, low flying helicopters, etc., authorized by an administration that has withdrawn from the war against Covid-19, to advise ignoring it and to present itself as a war against disorder government. The objections thereto are sweeping the world meanwhile the virus is licking its chops.
