“My viral nightmare comes true”|
by Christian Marquez, Searchlight High Beam
July 12, 2022
Last week, my biggest fear from the past two and a half years came true. I tested positive for COVID-19.
Like many of you, and like many New Mexicans, my wife and I have spent the past two years prodigiously following the guidance of our doctors as well as leading health experts and scientists. We have diligently worn masks and been vaccinated. I took every precaution possible to reduce my risk.
I hoped that if I did get sick, I’d only have mild symptoms. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case.
My mother, who is vaccinated and has had two booster shots, contracted the virus on an airline, where the CDC says masks are no longer necessary. Within five days of her flight — before she exhibited symptoms or tested positive — the virus spread to my brother, my sister, my wife and me. That’s three households. This is not because of an ineffective vaccine, but rather because of a very effective virus.
We had a grab bag of symptoms, but I definitely got the worst. I didn’t leave bed for three days with a fever, chills, muscle cramps, headaches, stomach cramps and more. For a brief period, I had trouble breathing. It was the sickest I’ve been in recent memory, and it was certainly worse than the flu, the common cold or any other illness I’ve heard the latest COVID variants compared to. While the new variants are not the same devastating illness that we saw two years ago, succumbing to them is definitely a humbling experience. And we should be taking it seriously.
But this winter, seriousness seemed to vanish. The campaign to test, record and trace every case and exposure fell by the wayside. The CDC relaxed its rules on masks, a variety of cities dropped their indoor mask mandates and Americans everywhere seemed to be worrying less about the coronavirus, just as seemingly tamer variants became dominant.
In May, while the headlines moved on to other issues, the United States quietly surpassed 1 million deaths from COVID-19. New Mexico, meanwhile, has been on its typical roller coaster, from an average of 108 cases per day in April to nearly 9 times that amount in June. But there is a small asterisk next to those numbers, and that’s where my experience comes in.
After testing positive last week with an at-home test, I wanted to make sure that my case was recorded with the state and that any contacts I had would be notified. I also wanted to get an official PCR (polymerase chain reaction) test to verify my infection, which would make doubly sure that my results would be noted in the state’s case database. That’s where things went fuzzy.
What I discovered was that the state doesn’t make it easy to report positive home-test results. And it actively discourages you from seeking a PCR test. The New Mexico Department of Health website states emphatically: “You DO NOT need to get an additional PCR test if you have had a positive at-home rapid test.”
As a data journalist, I know that self-reported statistics, while valuable in their own right, are almost always considered partial representations and can be called into question. Self-reported data cannot be relied upon to provide the whole picture. This is especially true when there are misinformation campaigns, political influence and stigma at play.
Today, with masses of people now taking tests at home, that means the true measure of COVID-19 in the state cannot be gauged. And that’s a disaster for public health. Without data, no one can get an accurate picture of infection rates and illness. And without that picture, we are helpless to combat the spread of disease.
Thankfully, there is one other way to track the coronavirus without relying on testing individuals: Wastewater testing. This method emerged early in the pandemic as a reliable way to benchmark and measure the spread of the coronavirus by testing levels of COVID-19 markers in wastewater and sewage.
Unfortunately, New Mexicans no longer have that tool. The New Mexico Environment Department ended its limited wastewater tracing program in October 2021.
So how are we tracking the spread of this virus if people don’t report it – or if the state doesn’t follow up to verify the cases that are reported? That remains an open question.
I, for one, hope there will be more answers soon.
Christian Marquez is director of operations and data editor at Searchlight New Mexico, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization dedicated to investigative and public service journalism in the interest of the people of New Mexico. Marquez’s essay is from Searchlight’s High Beam newsletter for members. You can learn more about Searchlight New Mexico and how to become a supportive member at www.SearchlightNM.org.
My gosh this is awful and much like was predicted, unfortunately. I’m not sure what ‘leading experts’ you’re referring to but if you were paying attention to Geert Vanden Bossche this wouldn’t be a surprise. This is the result of using a non-sterilizing vaccine in the midst of a pandemic- according to Geert the vax is putting ‘selective pressure’ on the virus, forcing it to evolve to beat the limited antibody response present in the vaxxed population. His theory is actually quite terrifying but seems true.
Again, another letter in this burgeoning newspaper about covid that doesn’t mention treatment. In Tennessee ivermectin recently became available over the counter, numerous states are pushing legislation and have passed various forms of legislation to protect doctors px’ing IVM, and in KS the Attorney General wrote a directive indicating that physicians who ‘fail to treat’ could be charged with neglect. (https://ag.ks.gov/docs/default-source/ag-opinions/2022/2022-004.pdf?sfvrsn=65a2a71a_6) – A neighbor recently had covid – she is 81- the Nurse Practitioner at SVH told her to go home and take ibuprofen. She is 81 with COPD. This is nearly criminal at this point. In the past two years we’ve learned more about treating coronavirus than we have in the past century. We had way to many deaths in our local nursing homes that likely could have been prevented with treatment!! Many states are taking the ball into their own court and addressing this in their own state legislatures, or through their own AG’s office. New Mexico is not one of those states. Unfortunately, because medicine somehow became a political subject (the two should be as far apart as possible)- people have equated ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine with trump. It’s been a nightmare. I am thankful that trump didn’t mention penicillin, I feel there would be a group of democrats who would never take anti-biotics again.
I implore this paper and the community to do the research on early treatment. The singular best way out of this is to promote early treatment. The longer people are sick, the more people they’re likely to infect.
This message is remarkably important. I’ve shared this message with republicans, most of whom will say something to the effect of “covid is just a cold”. Democrats will say “horse-paste!!” The truth is the casualty, as are the countless lives lost, the ones who died alone, without their families to advocate for them. I know people in town who were put on ventilators. They were denied meds- given only remdesivir and then given a coma inducing drug to ventilate- they were ventilated while still able to speak. Do you have any idea how violated they feel? And this paper so far has not once mentioned any form of treatment. There are decades of safety data on ivermectin- the drug the FDA approved for early treatment is paxlovid. It should be obvious why I’m not encouraging Pasxlovid, as Fauci just rebounded after taking it, as do many others. The safety profile for that drug is dismal from what I can so far tell.
This info needs to get out there. State after state is taking action. Both Canada and the UK just recognized the first vax-injured and this is going to open up very quickly. I’d suggest everyone take a look into the recent work of Geert Vanden Bossche to understand where this is going and why.
“Effect of Early Treatment with Ivermectin among Patients with Covid-19”
New England Journal of Medicine.org
March 30, 2022
In a “double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled, adaptive platform trial involving [3,515] symptomatic SARS-CoV-2-positive adults recruited from 12 public health clinics in Brazil” conducted by the article’s authors, “[t]reatment with invermectin did not result in a lower incidence of medical admission to a hospital due to progression of Covid-19 or of prolonged emergency department observation among outpatients with an early diagnosis of Covid-19.”
Click on link to read article.
Please do not ‘argue by google’. You posted the Together Trial- I am very familiar with it- I was one of the first to do a ‘debunking’ on it- many others have too. You must not have rfead the methods. I’l give you one clue- IVM is OTC in Brazil, where the trial was- therefore there was no true control over each of the arms in the trial. There was no promise that people weren’t self-treating. Additionally, the treatment for the IVM arm was only 3 days- no physician in their right mind is only doing a 3 day course- that’s absurd. Further, for about 10% of the IVM arm, they only got ONE day of treatment, and as the researchers note, due to pushback from advocates for IVM , they increaed it to 3 days, still laughable. There’s so much more wrong with this study but I’m not worried about it- there are RTC’s – plenty- that support IVM, and in the largest and most thorough metanalyses to date, done by Dr. Tess Lawrie, IVM is a clear winner. This is what you are obviously missing and it’s remarkably said. I don’t need to google any of this because I have been paying a ton of attention. Please do not simply ‘argue by google’ and think that you somehow fact checked anything- I’d appreciate if you entered this in good faith or not at all honestly. There’s plenty of good evidence IVM is about the best option, and so many thousands of doctors know it to be true, your opinion really doesn’t matter. The truth is going to out during this. How such fraudulent stuff got thru peer review is really going to be studied for quite awhile
Dear Diana and friends,
The study you quote was flawed, as Kyle points out. But how would you know? It breaks my heart that America’s leading medical journal has become corrupt. But the average person has no way to check. It is all so sad.
Diana, since we are friends on FB, you know that I have posted numerous better –honest– studies showing the efficacy of several old cheap safe drugs, including ivermectin. The courageous doctors who have dared to actually treat early Cv patients with these medications have beautiful clinical results to show as well.
Molnupiravir, Remdesivir, Paxlovid are dangerous and horribly expensive.
The vaccines do not work, which is why we are seeing so many cases in the vaxxed. In addition there is mounting evidence that the shots weaken peoples’ immune systems. There have been unprecedented numbers of side effects related to these MRNA shots, and there is a great possibility that these are only the tip of the iceberg. What the long term population effects will be is unknown.
The reason the state is no longer tracking cases:
1) They do not want to admit that the shots are abject failures;
2) The whole idea was to sell the shots and get them into people.
I am tired of arguing. I am just stating what I know.
Haruhuani Spruce