Love to the CDC
Dear CDC:
Please allow me to apologize for all the times I have wished you ill and gone. Like everyone else, I was trained to pay attention to your guidelines, knowing that you represented the best wishes and sincere concerns of those who walk your august Atlanta corridors for all of our good, productive health (sorry they blew you up in Season 2 of “The Walking Dead, that was mean).
I’ll admit, I said a lot of unkind, if true things about you these past two years. Yes, I was pretty upset when you spent all of 2020 and most of 2021 using obviously phony numbers to give an inflated impression of COVID mortality, but hey, your heart was in the right place – like the guy who controls a lot of your funding rationalized, sometimes you have to indulge in noble lies. And yes, I think it was pretty awful that you joined in the call for forced (and let’s be honest, when you threaten someone’s livelihood, it is “force”) vaccinations of many who didn’t need and/or want it, and who may yet have some curious long-term adverse reactions. And honestly, I think giving even a semi-imprimatur to vaccinating children who are at basically zero risk from COVID is ghoulish, and I have on occasion wished for you to be defunded and shut down. And it was a real head-scratcher when you inserted yourself into rental policy and the national real estate market which, in addition to being plain weird, had so many precedent implications about legal limits on federal bureaucratic power under the guise of public health that it got me to thinking about the second half of “Dr. Zhivago” (and I don’t mean the awesome Julie Christie scenes, either). Admittedly, I think you were absolutely full of it supporting pointless virus-vapor-permeable face diapers on all public transportation, and basically everywhere other than in the bathroom and bed. I don’t remember if the CDC ever opposed the devastating lockdowns not shown to have saved a single soul, but I don’t remember you speaking out about them either (again, rental eviction moratoriums??).
As a matter of fact, Dear CDC, you and your earnestly non-substantive Director Wallensky have been at best pointless and a waste of tax billions, and worse, a helpful camouflage of pretend-doctors for authoritarian numbskulls to do what they do best.
But then I thought about that time that a Harvard study and the Annals of Internal Medicine recommended the most absurd non-contact sexual practices imaginable to Stop The Spread, and my heart softened. In fact, I was able to see you, Dear CDC, in a new light.
The guidance you just published on Monkey Pox safety was frankly, pure gold. I’m not going to accuse you of stealing your lines from Harvard, but compliment you on a new vein and mining hell out of it. Sores, scabs, and blisters on intimate mucosal zones, especially at a public “rave” (“where there is minimal clothing and where there is direct, personal, often skin-to-skin contact…”) might not seem a definite warning sign to more recent graduates of the U.S. educational system, so glad you are there to give us the word. And good to know that the banana cooties could be in various bodily fluids, since we have been inundated with such warnings about various other pathogens over the last 35+ years. But these guidelines finally clued me in:
- Have virtual sex with no in-person contact.
- Masturbate together at a distance of at least 6 feet, without touching each other and without touching any rash or sores.
- Consider having sex with your clothes on or covering areas where rash or sores are present, reducing as much skin-to-skin contact as possible.
- Avoid kissing.
- Remember to wash your hands, fetish gear, sex toys and any fabrics (bedding, towels, clothing) after having sex.
- Limit your number of partners to avoid opportunities for monkeypox to spread.
Was the 6-foot rule tested, was it as thoroughly researched, proven, and reproduced as the 6-foot Rule for COVID? Or was it 15 feet?
Dearest CDC, you are a corrupt, increasingly useless bunch of apparatchiks in place more to serve the larger cause of government power than airy, situational notions of public health. In fact, we should probably never, ever trust you again. But on the heels (heals?) of an unnecessarily amplified and prolonged pandemic, you saw how stressed out we all were, and how much we all needed to laugh, desperately. Your advice to hundreds of millions that will never be at any tangible risk for The Now Dreaded Monkey Pox is genius parody, hilarity in a lab coat, pure comic gold. So, from the bottom of our cynical hearts, thank you for lightening our burdens with our own laughter. We needed it, and we’ll keep those tax dollars coming. It’s not like we have a choice.
Love and kisses, virtually of course!
PS – tell Director Dr. Wallensky to stop looking so dang serious. Maybe a nice, colorful scarf?
Yeah, I’m retired primary care/F.P. but did mainly geriatrics. So I didn’t have as much experience over the years with kids. That’s just the way it happened. Old people liked me and that’s where my practice shifted and I cut out kids as old folks took more time than peds so I gave it up. From what I’ve seen in some of the peds posts is that kids don’t need a Covid-19 shot. If they get Covid-19, they recover with no issue. Yeah, if their stupidhead parents don’t get immunized, they deserve to get it if they bring it home. Kids? I’m told it’s not a big deal. Blasting babies with an unproven vaccine is idiocy. Yeah I got 3 Modernas but I’m 65 so don’t have to worry so much about side effects. Am retired, live in a rural area so I’m probably safe.
Monkeypox? What the hay is that? The CDC can go to where the Devil lives as far as I’m concerned. Inoculating the druge of us, is stupid. O.K. doing the Covid-19 thing reminded me of drinking the Sabin vaccine for polio of the 1960’s. Heck there were a few classmates in junior and high school when I was a kid in the late 60’s who recovered from polio and used assistive devices to get around.
O.K. I accept the risk of the side effects of the Moderna vaccine and I and mentally handicapped son have had three shots. He did fine but I was wiped out for a day after the third one. No issue as I am retired and laid on the couch for a day.
Doing mass immunizing of kids with an “unproven” vaccine is an absolute travesty. If they refine it and it’s proven “absolutely safe” for the vast majority like the usual immunizations, I’ll be for it. Kurt Savegnago, M.D. (retired)
Sex at six feet can be soooo satisfying!
I believe the six feet rule refers to the three pairs of feet of those participating in the Menage a trois circle jerk.
I find the contrast and politizicing of the two diseases AIDS and COVID to be the most telling. For health care workers in the 1980s and early 1990s we were not allowed to test AIDS patients before procedures, not allowed to ask, and not allowed to refuse elective procedures despite it being a fatal disease and at that time, with no treatment.
On the other hand COVID, for various other political reasons demands testing, refuses even boarding a plane and teachers were allowed to not work because they might in theory be exposed despite masks.
This was COMEDY GOLD!!! (MonkeePox)
And had me in tears remembering this past few years. The CDC has done irreparable damage to our country – especially infants and children. I’ll never look at this the same. They’re an agency that has become a laughing stock that no one takes seriously any more.