It's time for a new COVID approach

I had another son come down with coronavirus. That makes two out of three. The first was back in March. He’s made a full recovery except for his sense of smell. It’s not completely back, but it’s getting there. The second son is almost over it and close to the end of his quarantine period.

I was thinking about the grandmothers on both sides of our family. These two boys of mine are the only ones actually safe enough to visit them. Then I started thinking what a great place to be that is. Can you imagine no longer being afraid of this virus? Can you imagine no longer needing to wear a mask?

Don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not suggesting everybody get this thing. It can be lethal for some people, but we pretty much know who. You

have an elevated risk of death if you have underlying health issues, if you’re elderly, or if you’re obese. What a fortunate thing to know. We’re not that lucky with most viruses. The Spanish Flu killed indiscriminately. The average age of death was 27. Even so they didn’t shut down the entire economy. Large gatherings were canceled, but they never shut down restaurants or retail stores. Historians point to three waves of the Spanish Flu, but it was primarily the so-called second wave that made it so deadly. World War I ended and troops carrying the virus returned to their homelands. American soldiers quickly spread the virus across our country and an estimate 675,000 people died. Most of that was over a three month period in the last quarter of 1918.

By the summer of 1919 the disease was pretty much gone. Despite everything we’ve tried to do we’re seeing the same trajectory for COVID. Only this time we’re prolonging the misery. This is the first time in history that we’ve quarantined healthy people. What is generally a three month ordeal has turned into six with no end in sight because we’ve put the virus into slow motion.
These viruses seem to have minds of their own. They reach a certain infection level and then they’re done. Herd immunity. With Spanish flu it was about a third of the world’s population. If COVID is similar then we have a ways to go. I don’t want to get coronavirus, and I’m not encouraging you to purposely get it either, but it appears the virus is going to infect a certain percentage of the population before it’s gone. By hiding otherwise healthy people from it we’re merely delaying the inevitable.

I know you’re hoping we get a vaccine before a third of the population is infected, but how is the vaccine any different from herd immunity? In other words, if the healthy among us already had it then a vaccine wouldn’t be necessary. And there could be negative health effects from a vaccine.

I’ve written here about all the studies that show Vitamin D deficiency being linked to bad cases of COVID. It’s almost criminal that our so-called health experts haven’t been telling everybody to get their Vitamin D levels checked. Low Vitamin D is the source of so many other illnesses it would not be bad advice even if we weren’t fighting COVID. Why they’re not mentioning it is beyond me. But we never stop hearing about the masks. It’s almost as if they’re wanting to see how pliable we are.

We want to survive it if we get it, but we can’t continue to run and hide. We have to stop allowing this virus to control our lives.

Phil Valentine is the host of the award-winning talk radio show, The Phil Valentine Show, on SuperTalk 99.7WTN in Nashville. He's also co-host of The PodGOATs podcast and I'm Calling Bovine Scatology.