A Story. . .

 . . . About Jenn's brother.  For purposes of this story, let's call him Rob.

Rob is 2 years younger than Jenn.  In recent years, his health hasn't been good.  It hurts him to walk, so he doesn't walk much.  He's overweight, and short of breath most of the time.

Rob's wife died in January of '20, and has lived by himself since then.  Understandably, he feels lonely a lot, and we do what we can to keep him in touch from 2 hours away.

Last Thanksgiving (2020), Rob called us a few days before the holiday, and told us that he wanted to join us for Thanksgiving dinner.  If you recall, last Thanksgiving virtually our entire family had COVID, and Thanksgiving dinner was basically part of our quarantine, since all of us were sick at the same time.  We told Rob that he shouldn't come, that we all had the dreaded virus, and we didn't want him to get sick, since he was kind-of a poster boy for the category 'HIGH RISK'.  Rob said no, he was going to come, and expected to join us for dinner.  We reiterated that we didn't want him to come, but we never could dissuade him.

Thanksgiving morning came, and, about an hour before dinnertime, sure enough, Rob's car pulled up in front of our house, and he hobbled up to our door, toting a bag full of pies.

"I brought five pies with me, and I'm not gonna eat 'em by myself!" he exclaimed.

We sighed and invited him in. If he was that determined to have dinner with us, what we we gonna do? So we gave him a spot at the table.

We had a good dinner, and a few hours later, he got in his car and went home.

Every day for the next couple weeks, we waited to hear from him, or another family member, informing us that he was down with COVID and would be dying soon.  We even speculated that, living alone after his wife's death, he was effectively killing himself, and wanted to spend time with loved ones at the end of his life.

But the call never came.

Finally, after a couple weeks (while she was still in the hospital), Jenn called to check up on him.

"How are you?"

"Great! I'm fine!"

"You were in our house when we all had COVID. . ."

"Nope!  I'm good!"

We checked back in with him a few more times, but he never did get sick.

The whole situation was perplexing to us, and we kept trying to figure out how it was possible that, high-risk as he was, he came into our house and sat at our table while we were all still sick, and never showed the slightest symptom.

Then it occurred to us. . . His wife had died in January of '20.  A couple months before the lockdown.  COVID wasn't front-page news yet.  We saw photos from China, and still hoped it might not come to us.  But if anything, Rob's wife was even higher-risk than he was.  She was only in her late 40s, but she had MS, and maybe a couple other things besides.  Her death was very sudden - one day, she had trouble breathing, and within a couple days, she was gone.  Suddenly, it became clear - Rob's wife had died of COVID, even before any of us was really aware of it.  And he had been exposed to her - hard.  I don't know what symptoms, if any, he experienced at the time, but it seemed clear that he had breathed plenty of mask-less, non-socially-distanced COVID-air while he took care of his wife in her final days.  And so, when he came to our house for Thanksgiving, he had a body full of COVID antibodies, even 10+ months after his wife's death, and whatever exposure he had at our house was quickly dispatched.

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And so, the punch line. . . Natural Immunity is real, and robust.  Instead of calling us un-vaccinated and part of the problem, we COVID survivors are a key component of the end of the pandemic. . .

Science Marches On. . .

 https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/08/having-sars-cov-2-once-confers-much-greater-immunity-vaccine-no-infection-parties

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Just for the sake of saying so, Science Magazine is not a lightweight journal, and it is very far from any kind of 'conservative' political bias. . .

To state things clearly - "people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection [are] much less likely than never-infected, vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19."  And, just to be clear, "they caution that intentional infection among unvaccinated people would be extremely risky."  So, no 'infection parties', please. . .

The article notes that a single-dose 'booster given to previously-infected persons reduces their risk even further, but, from the start, 'natural immunity' confers more robust resistance to future infection, and for a longer time, than does vaccination of never-infected persons.

Which is what I was saying a couple months ago.

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The thing I don't understand is that, judging from public rhetoric, 'natural immunity' either doesn't exist or isn't worth talking about.  There are only 'The Vaccinated' and 'The Unvaccinated'.  People like me are counted among The Unvaccinated, when we actually have superior immunity to that conferred by vaccination.  We 'Survivors' should be counted among 'The Immunized', whether that immunity came from the natural response of our bodies to infection, or from a vaccine.  But there seems to be a very stubborn resistance to that very basic scientific truth, and I have no idea why. . .

Be Safe

 

Follow the Science. . .

 A brief note for my well-intentioned friends who are ever-so-solicitous of my health and well-being (and who aren't, to my knowledge, among my regular readers). . .

The reason people get vaccinated is to induce their bodies to produce the antibodies which will fight off the disease, and (hopefully) prevent the disease from taking hold in the patient's body.  By whatever means, high-tech or otherwise, a replica of the actual virus is introduced into the patient's body, so the patient's immune system will respond, producing antibodies to fight off the replicated virus, which will (hopefully) be sufficient to fight off the actual virus, should it come to take up residence in the patient's body.  So - the vaccine is all about the antibodies.  Clear?

Now, if my body already has the requisite antibodies, I don't need a vaccine to induce my body to produce them.  And the antibodies which are circulating through my bloodstream were produced by contact with the actual virus, not a replica of it.  So, I maintain that my situation is no worse, and quite likely better, than if I'd been vaccinated.

In 'political' terms (and you all know just how very much I love talking about politics), when those in charge go about counting who is and who isn't immunized, I maintain that natural immunity should count at least as much as (and probably more than) immunity induced by a vaccine.

Please don't misunderstand - I'm not telling anyone else what s/he should or shouldn't do with regard to being vaccinated, and I have no quarrel with anyone who has been vaccinated, especially if they haven't had the virus; I'm emphatically NOT anti-vax.  But if I've had the virus, I have the antibodies, and vaccination is superfluous.  It's like getting a flu shot after you've had the flu.

So, my very earnest friends, I'm touched by your very deep concern and solicitude for my health and well-being, I really am.  But honestly - I'm good.

Gratitude, Again (and Always)

I'm not saying anything non-obvious by telling you that I haven't posted much, of late; which. . . it is what it is. . .

For those of you wondering how we are - we are well.  Jenn is fully recovered from her erstwhile brush with mortality.  We are both fully retired now, which is nice.  We have added three new grandchildren in the last couple months, bringing the 'official' count to 12, and giving us some delightful ways to keep our retired selves engaged (and, at least in my case, out of trouble).

As life in OurTown begins to emerge from its viral cocoon, I am struck again by what has been a recurring theme in my life - Gratitude.  Gratitude for the goodness of life, gratitude for the web of family and friendship connections that make my life rich and meaningful (and which are, in their own ways, emerging from a year's disruption), gratitude for daily provision (retirement is kind of a hoot - at somewhat regular intervals, money magically appears in my bank account), and for a future full of hope.

In that vein, I'm re-posting a pair of my better old posts (at least, I think they're not too bad) (Beatle-lyrics-reference alert!) for your edification and enjoyment.

God Bless You All. . .

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Sometime around the year 1420, a monk named Thomas a Kempis wrote a book, The Imitation of Christ (in the original Latin, Imitatio Christi), which in the fullness of time would become the most widely-read Christian book besides the Bible. And, in its turn, it also became one of my own all-time favorite books.

The Imitation reads like a medieval Christian Book of Proverbs - wisdom for living the Christian life from a wise old monk. It is simply dense with rich and challenging quotes, several of which have made their way into my 'Book of Favorite Quotes' (not available in stores). One of my favorites, which I commend to the attention of all my blog-friends, is this, from chapter 6 of Book 3:

"A wise lover does not so much consider the gift of his lover as he does the love of the giver."

I first came across this many years ago, but it has become one of the favorite 'bywords' that Jenn and I will quote to each other. It bespeaks a kind of humble gratitude, which has served us really well in building our marriage over the years.

On the face of it, it's pretty simple, really - sort of like etiquette for opening presents on Christmas morning - be grateful for the gifts you get, even if they're not exactly the ones you were hoping for. But you know, Thomas doesn't present it as etiquette advice; he just says, "A wise lover. . ." More like, "this is wisdom beyond what meets the eye. . ." And it works, on multiple levels. . .

As most of you know, I'm adopted. At some point when I was in college, I connected the dots, and the realization dawned on me that I had been somebody's 'unwanted pregnancy', once upon a time. It occurred to me that my very existence was due to somebody I'd never met, taking the trouble to see me through nine months of pregnancy. Jenn and I got married and began having our own children (1F was actually the first person I ever knew who was genetically related to me), and all the while, the realization of what it had cost my birth-mother for me to be alive was growing stronger. Until finally, the sense of gratitude for my own existence became my strongest motivation to find and meet my birth-mother.

My birth-mother and I have always had a great relationship. Not so much because either of us are such wonderful people, but because at the bottom of it all, our relationship is one of mutual gratitude. I'm grateful to her for giving me life, and putting up with everything that went into that, including relinquishing me to be adopted by a family that could raise me. And she's grateful, even after all the years, to have a relationship with the son of her womb (and a fine son he is, if I may say so myself). We're both fairly quirky individuals (shocking as this may seem to you, I know), and there could be a lot to be annoyed with in each other, if we were so inclined. But from the beginning, our relationship has been founded on gratitude, so the quirks just seem really minor.

And likewise in my marriage. I'm so grateful to Jenn for throwing her life in with mine, for the love she gives me every day, and for the richness of the life we share together, that her quirks (and yes, alas, she has one or two) just aren't a very big deal by comparison. And I know it works the same way from her end. It's not just a matter of 'seeing the glass half-full' or 'looking on the bright side', although both of those are good advice. Temperamentally, I'm just not a 'glass-half-full' person. But being able to receive with joy 'the gift my lover brings' (Beatle-lyrics-reference alert!), just because I know how it's expressive of her love for me (quite a separate question from how good a gift it is) (but let me be clear - it is a most excellent gift), brings deep joy to my whole life. I'm certainly not meaning to hold myself up as a shining example of superior virtue, or anything like that. But I do believe we've learned something really good and valuable. . .

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The conviction has grown within me, over the years, that gratitude is, on a very fundamental level, the most appropriate response we can make for our lives. Gratitude to God, certainly, and most fundamentally. But even on a more mundane level, gratitude to our parents; to our teachers, coaches and mentors; to our brothers and sisters, and our friends.

Existence itself is a gratuitous gift, for which there is no appropriate response except gratitude. Loving relationships; food, clothing and shelter; all the mundane, daily circumstances that, individually and collectively, bring joy and meaning to our lives.

Every one of us has his/her own set of things to be thankful for, and people to be thankful to. Rather than riff off into my own 'list', I'll just encourage all my blog-friends, however briefly, to give some thought to what you're grateful for, and to whom. . .

Getting Down to Fundamentals. . .