Its been a month since my dad’s passing and as mom and I continue to reminisce about his life and reconcile with his loss, I am realizing that life has taught me an important lesson.
Both Dad and his younger brother were tall and heavy and both had acid reflux issues (thanks to their maternal genes). But how their health unraveled took two contrasting roads.
1. Extreme acid reflux can simulate cardiac issues and this happened for both. Cardiologists did angioplasty on uncle but treating arterial blocks do not stop acid reflux. Uncle lost faith in treatment. Bypass surgery was recommended for dad after 20 days so I figured if he can survive for 20 days, his health can be managed without surgery.
2. Both developed swelling on their hands and feet. Uncle’s condition was apparently not treated. Dad’s cardiologist kept asking about his bypass surgery and ignoring the swelling. So I googled to find out why the swelling was happening. Any issue that affects the working of the heart reduces blood flow to other parts of the body. When kidneys receive lesser amount of blood the body assumes there is not enough water so kidneys start accumulating water, first on the feet and then on the hands. The condition is called edema. Finally when water enters the lungs it becomes pulmonary edema. Then the only treatment left is bypass surgery. Dad’s cardiologist was trying to force bypass surgery on him by leaving the swelling untreated. I immediately changed the cardiologist and consulted a nephrologist who prescribed a diuretic which forces water in the swelled up areas to be released from the body through urination. Uncle refused bypass surgery, water had to be pulled out of his lungs, he developed paralytic stroke and eventually passed away.
3. Dad reduced salt intake drastically after misunderstanding cardiologist’s instruction. I was unfamiliar with the ensuing condition but realized something was wrong with him. Took him to hospital for checkup and found his sodium level freefalling. In another two days he would have had ended up in coma.
4. Dad’s new cardiologist advised me to treat acid reflux at home and not to take him to hospital as acid reflux bouts can seem like cardiac issue and he would end up in the hands of cardiologists.
For the past 10 years, I have been mostly at home and especially in the last 6 years, largely due to market conditions. This gave me the opportunity to try doing different things which led to starting a home based cloud kitchen and in a way fulfill dad’s lifelong ambition to start a restaurant. I forced dad to go to the gym which improved his health drastically. When he suffered stroke like symptoms I chose to take him to a physician nearby who checked him and told me his nerve functions were fine and he was suffering from weakness due to muscle loss caused by protein deficiency. Though he fell a couple of times nothing happened to him and mom and I ensured he never fell down again especially in the bathroom. Broken bones never heal completely in old age, restrict movements which reduces immunity and makes body vulnerable to other diseases. Dad had normal blood sugar and I ensured all his body organs were working well and his blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium and magnesium and vitamin levels were normal. Circumstances prevented me from pursuing a career in medicine but my fundamentals in biology and human anatomy are strong and I read a lot on both.
I did not earn a lot of money in the past 10 years but I was able to save a lot of money on dad’s treatment. If I hadn’t been at home. he may have underwent bypass surgery which could have ruined his health. Most importantly, he was able to live a disease free life, eat and do everything he wanted to and go peacefully. I could not have bought him this with all the money in the world. Is it possible to become successful without having a lot of money and everything that comes with it? I guess it is.
It has been a week since the sudden demise of my dad (at 72 years) and through our bereavement mom and I have had a lot to contemplate about his life. As a person, he was outright, outspoken and honest, a little too much for his own good. As a caring son and loving husband he was peerless and as a father he was borderline maniac. Nothing I did ever impressed him. He always believed I could do better. Grow more than his 6 foot 90 kg frame for starters. I have been literally hounded and abused for being a poor eater. Other than a chronic acid reflux issue and vitamin deficiencies, he was disease free. All organs, blood sugar, blood pressure, essential elements like sodium, potassium, magnesium were stable and in good condition. In 2021 he started going to the gym but loss of protein made him quit. This post is not to eulogize his life though.
Dad and his mom were endowed with extremely good genes. Grandma was also completely disease free. Both were addicted to sweets and drinking sugary water of Indian sweets and still their blood sugar never went up. Grandma went silently in her sleep in 2010. After a bout of acid reflux, dad developed slight respiratory problem and I took him to hospital. ECG, brain CT scan, chest x-ray all came out normal. He was given sedation to sleep and was sleeping soundly when silent cardiac arrest took him, just like his mom.
What I have learned from their lives is, as they grew older they found happiness in two things. They were able to eat and do mostly anything they wanted (dad had to take medication for acid reflux). Both dad and grandma loved animals and both kept in touch with the people they loved. Dad was a jovial man and loved cracking jokes all the time inside the house and with his friends, even the ones from his childhood days in Calcutta. Many of dad’s friends are far younger than him but all crazy like him.
People I talk to are surprised that disease free people can die. Prana or the life force that runs through our body is the cornerstone of all ancient healing methods like yoga and acupuncture. More prana means better health and less prana means weaker pulse and weaker immune system making us vulnerable to diseases. No matter how healthy we are when there is no more prana left in our body we die.
Many cultures believe in rebirth after death and rebirth depends on karma of our past lives and the state of our mind when we die. Dad had his share of regrets but I hope a good death in this life will give him a much better next life.
It all started post World War II when businesses slowly got back on their feet, from the manufacturing sector & into the government sector. Work hard on 8-10 hour shifts through the entire professional life, save as much money as possible & the dream was to own a house by retirement. Owning a car was status symbol. When banks made enough & more money they started giving out loans for houses & cars & flipped the dream. Now everyone is vying to own a house & a car before they are 30. A few underlying factors subtly changed:-
1) Saving money in banks changed to repaying loans to banks. It didn’t matter if people couldn’t save for a few months but if repayments on home & car loans get stuck for a few months, banks could simply take away both. Living with that thought in itself creates stress.
2) Saving money for 30 years is commitment without stress but repaying loans for 30 years is lugging stress for the best part of our lives. Now it is simple enslavement to the corporate sector, house, car & everything else bought on loans.
3) More salary means more money goes on to taxes. Add inflation, repayment of loans, supporting aged parents, providing children with quality education & a host of other needs & salary hikes that are insignificant when compared to the ever growing financial needs means people are being forced to moonlight in a second job or run some gigs in parallel to their regular jobs. Add the stress of having to hide their other sources of revenue from their employer.
4) When this entire ecosystem of stress got built, people were sold another dream. Insurance. Keep paying insurance premium & it will take care of medical expenses when people get sick. So now there are hospitals & treatment & no one cares about not getting sick & having wellness centers. The best part of all this is, banks now sell insurance. The entity that is the major contributor to the stress in our lives is taking more money from us with the promise of taking care of us when we are sick. It is a different thing that insurance helps with cashless treatment only in cases of planned treatment. For urgent health issues, we have to pay first & then chase the insurance companies for months who in turn will keep finding ways to reduce insurance payment as much as they can.
Barter system between time & remuneration has existed from the beginning of human civilization. But now, we are having to trade both time & health for money. I see houses everywhere with only aged parents living in them. Their children have all gone to other places, bought houses and settled there. Then there is investment on real estate, taking loans & buying houses/apartments to save on taxes. On a planet with 10-12% of habitable land area we are building far more than we need. Human needs are already spiraling out of control, if we do not see what we are doing to ourselves all the talk of mental health is not going to make sense. Working in night shifts has completely disrupted our circadian clock and is making our body a haven for all kinds of diseases to thrive and spread. Our species is simply going to implode in the not too distant future.
More than a month back, as Dad was walking towards the gym for his cardiovascular workouts one morning, he suddenly became unsteady and ungainly. He had been complaining about general weakness and fatigue for some time. In a couple of days his left side became weak and was unable to move his left hand and walk properly. I took him to a physician nearby who is a M.D and is in his late 70s-early 80s. He did some basic checks on dad (he has all sensations intact on his arm and leg), checked his BP (perfectly fine at 110/80), Dad doesn’t have diabetes (his blood sugar is always less than normal though he can still eat voraciously and devour sweets), so the doctor told us to do some lab tests the report of which was all clear. Then the doctor, suspecting stroke because of possible blood clot in dad’s brain prescribed couple of tablets to make his blood thinner and dissolve the clots and another tablet to improve his nerve functions. Then he told me to improve dad’s diet and take him for physiotherapy sessions. A doctor I know who was the senior doctor at a government hospital and is pursuing P.G in general surgery now told me the weakness could be because of Vitamin D deficiency (Dad hates sun after he had a severe bout of migraine) and asked me to put dad immediately on high dose of Vitamin D tablets once a week and daily calcium tablet.
Dad slowly started feeling better but wasn’t confident about going for physiotherapy sessions so I looked up on YouTube and started basic exercises to strengthen his arm and leg. Then people who know us started getting to know about dad’s condition and were shocked that we did not consult a neurologist and did not do his brain scan. Couple of days back, he finally agreed to go for physiotherapy. The physiotherapist we went to was agitated and demanded us to meet a neurologist, do a scan and then meet him. So I went back to the first doctor and he laughed before prescribing for CT scan. Yesterday we did the scan and everything was fine in the report. The doctor told me dad may have had a Transient Ischemic Attack (TSA) which lasts for a very short period possibly because of minute old clots mentioned in the report. Dad is going to take a while to be back to normal but he has already started moving his hand and is walking better now. The weakness he was complaining about could have been because of Sarcopenia, a condition where people lose skeletal muscle mass and strength due to ageing.
Then the doctor told me something insane. People no longer believe in physicians and clinical diagnosis. They just run to specialists every time they assume something is wrong with them. On top of this they ask for scans and lab tests to be done. Headache for two days and people go on Google, start reading things with no understanding of human anatomy, diseases and their diagnosis and go to doctors suspecting brain tumor and asking for scans to be done. They no longer care or believe in physical examination and diagnostic abilities of doctors no matter how experienced they are. This is what is Googlopathy.
The other doctor whom I spoke to threw a different curve ball at me. A regular doctor or physician could go wrong with his/her diagnosis but it could quickly earn bad reputation for specialists that’s why they are left with no option but to recommend lab tests and scans for every medical issue. We are on herd mentality behavior now where we blindly believe we can be cured only by specialists who charge high fees, do frequent consultation and prescribe tons of tablets, scans and lab tests. Our mindset has changed into believing that when we spend more money on something we will be getting more in return. The specialists are essentially tricking us into exploiting this mindset we have.
Even the regular doctors and specialists are practising Googlopathy now. I had taken dad to a nephrologist in a private hospital a few years back for suspected kidney weakness because his feet were swelling intermittently. The nephrologist, probably in his late 30s-early 40s took his mobile tablet, searched on a website (probably webmd.com) and asked us to do 10 lab tests. I was horrified. With my extremely limited knowledge of medicine and treatment I could have done the same. He did not even bother to ask what dad was experiencing, if he had other health issues, etc. I did the tests and took dad to a nephrologist who was working in a government hospital and was much older (in his 60s). He glanced at the lab report, cast it aside and said older people will develop slight swelling on their feet because of ageing which can be safely ignored.
I told dad the doctor we consulted was experienced enough to send him to a neurologist if he suspected dad had suffered a stroke. The confidence with which he told dad to go home was extraordinary and it came from his wealth of experience which no technology can match. The so called alternate treatment methods such as ayurveda and homeopathy have treated people for hundreds and thousands of years only through diagnosis by understanding the symptoms. Sadly, even those doctors are gravitating towards scans and lab tests now because it makes diagnosis quicker and easier. Our abilities to create and use technological devices is killing our natural ability to do clinical diagnosis.
This degradation is not limited to the field of medicine. Technological devices are destroying all our natural instincts and abilities. Birders use binoculars to identify birds at long distances. Birds are found in specific habitat, the way they perch is different and the shape and size of their wings is different which we can see when they fly. Birders should train themselves to identify birds using these aspects. Doing something the easy way does not mean it is always the best way. Our preference is to eat tasty food but no food in nature is tasty and animals choose food for nutrients not for taste. Our craving for taste has allowed unhealthy food industries to thrive and destroy our health. If we are topping this up with Googlopathy and consuming medicines at will we wont be needing an asteroid strike or nuclear war for our extinction. A bed ridden relative who passed away last year was being fed 17 tablets in the morning (17 you read it right). The line between amusement and horror blurred momentarily for me when I saw it.
A renowned snake catcher in my home state in India is battling for his life after being bitten by a cobra. I have been coming across many discussions about snakes and snake rescue on social media so debunking some of the myths and stories surrounding snakes is essential.
Aren’t we all scared of snakes and especially the venomous ones? I read somewhere some time back that 80% of deaths happening due to snake bites is in reality due to cardiac arrests because we are terrified of snakes. The number could be an exaggeration but this is largely true. What most people do not know is, snakes stay away from us as much as they can because of very important reasons.
Snake venom is a lethal combination of proteins and enzymes. Proteins cause paralysis in their prey and immobilize them and ultimately killing them and enzymes help in the digestion of the prey. Snakes may not be able to chase all their prey so it is important for them to immobilize their prey first so that they can wait for the prey to die and then swallow it. Snakes hold their venom in glands on the sides of their head. They use their venom for two reasons : killing prey and countering any threats to them. Snakes do not eat us so we are not their prey. So the only reason they attack us is when they feel threatened by us. Once a snake uses all its venom it takes time for the glands to secrete venom again. During that time snakes are unable to catch prey or defend themselves. This is why once snakes consume a large prey they go hide themselves and rest till the prey is fully digested so that they get enough time to secrete their venom again. Snakes conserve their venom and use it only when it is absolutely required. This is why most venomous snakes warn us repeatedly before attacking us.
Why do we find snakes in our areas? First and the most important reason is we are encroaching more and more into forest land which is their natural habitat and we are destroying their natural food sources. But we are also inadvertantly providing them with alternate habitat and food sources. Rodents breed in large numbers where we store grains and other food items and we also have poultry farms. In nature a successful hunt can take anywhere from a day to a week which is why predators always look to catch the largest possible prey. So their natural instinct is to consume large quantities of food when they eat but they are adapting to us now because we are forcing them to. Now animals like snakes and jackals do not have to wait to catch a prey. They can easily come to human areas and consume the poultry we raise. In our granaries and other areas where we store our agricultural products and even in our houses we provide enough dark spaces for snakes to rest.
From snake rescue program Snake City shot in Durban, South Africa to Snakes SOS: Goa’s Wildest shot in Goa, India, rescuing snakes from urban areas have become popular TV shows. There are concerns about snake rescue though. Snake rescue depends entirely on people and situations. Many people may not bother to call for help to snake rescuers. They will just kill the snakes. Rescued snakes are taken to areas where there is enough green cover and let off. What eventually happens is, the population of snakes in those areas increases and with it the competition to find food. Then some or many of them will move away to areas where there are human settlements looking for food and the whole snake rescue process will repeat. When I was in Bangalore in 2016, I used to go for birding walks around a lake near a college campus. The entire area is covered with trees and there is ample green cover. Then one day I got to know that snakes rescued from anywhere in Bangalore was brought to this area and let off. That was quite scary because lots of people go for early morning walks in that area and around the lake. I even saw a cobra once in the area surrounding the lake.
To add to this, when snake venom enters our veins it goes straight into the heart causing immediate cardiac arrest. Neurotoxic venom destroys our nervous system making us paralyzed in no time. Snakes like spitting cobra can spit venom to considerable distances which can cause immediate blindness if it enters our eyes. I have read about the venom of sea snakes which can apparently melt our body cells and cause blood to ooze out of our skin pores. There is no treatment still available for venom of some of the sea snakes. Even a perfectly healthy immune system will not be able to protect us from such toxic venom. Prevention is better than cure fits nowhere better than with snake bites. Understanding snakes and their behavior will go a long way in helping us from getting bitten by them.
Snake rescue is not a glamorous act as some snake rescuers are portraying it to be. All of them may have gone through a snake bite induced near death experience at least once in their lives. We do not have any options though. With our exponentially increasing population and ever increasing encroachment into forest land, we are going to have to coexist with the animals that are adapting to the changes we are forcing on nature.
This is about my dad’s journey from an active to sedentary lifestyle which almost took his life, 8 years of wobbling health and how he is transforming himself now. He is 6 feet tall and had developed a hefty physique with heavy eating and an extremely active lifestyle from his younger years. He always believed that eating heavy is the key to staying healthy and did not reduce his food intake with advancing age. To add to this, we moved from our ancestral house where he was very active to a sedentary lifestyle in our new house. He developed Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) induced heartburns which culminated in a cardiac arrest in 2013. Though he recovered, his health didn’t go back to how it was before. To top it off, he developed additional ailments.
He was advised to follow a salt restricted diet but he misconstrued it as a ban on salt and I started observing radical changes in his behavior. Turned out his sodium level was fast decreasing and in another couple of days, he may have ended up in coma. He had also developed swelling on the back side of his palms and feet. Cardiac conditions could result in decreased flow of blood to the kidneys and the brain would signal the kidneys to start retaining water. Because of the false alarm, water starts getting accumulated first on the hands and feet resulting in the medical condition called edema. It was then that I checked dad’s medicines thoroughly and found out that the medicine for edema, called diuretics which forces the excess water out of the body through urine was never prescribed to him. If left untreated, water will start getting accumulated in the lungs leading to the condition known as pulmonary edema which would have forced dad to undergo bypass surgery. The cardiologist never even referred dad to a nephrologist to get his kidneys checked. To top this off, dad had to visit him once every fortnight and he kept asking me when we are doing dad’s bypass surgery. I understood that his sole objective was to make money by forcing the surgery on dad. I immediately consulted another cardiologist, he referred dad to a nephrologist, was immediately put on a course of diuretics and the swelling went off. Now this cardiologist, whose father is well known in the city as the poor man’s doctor removed some of the tablets prescribed by the previous cardiologist and told dad only to visit him if he develops any further issues. Patients are one source of income for every doctor so how many doctors would tell his patients not to visit him unless it is necessary? Though we didn’t know at that time, dad’s younger brother had similar gastric issues and he underwent angioplasty after he developed cardiac issues but it did not solve his gastric issues. He lost trust in the doctors, stopped taking medicines, eventually water entered his lungs, he refused to do bypass surgery, suffered a stroke and passed away at the relatively young age of 66 years.
Dad’s dream of setting up a restaurant never materialized but the emergence of online food delivery partners helped him set up a home based cloud kitchen in late 2019. Another cardiac arrest, though at a much smaller scale hit him again in 2020. Doctors kept advising him to walk on flat surfaces but where would he find flat surfaces other than at home? He couldn’t go out of the house anymore. I finally realized that medication and care alone was not going to help him. He had to become physically stronger again to handle the heartburns which in turn will make him mentally stronger. So I told him that if he wanted to be ambitious at this stage of life and run a business, he will have to put priority on his health first and persuaded him to join a gym for cardiovascular exercises. But making him invest himself in it was important so I made him buy walking shoes. He couldn’t even walk for a minute when he started on the treadmill but he slowly started picking up and started working out on the air glider.
When I dragged him and embarked on this journey 7 months back, little did I know it was going to become probably the most important project of my life. Dad didn’t have any hope of regaining his health so I gave him a milestone, kicking out the tablets he has been on for the past 8 years. He was taking 4 tablets, 2 for blood pressure, a blood thinner & one for cholesterol. I didn’t know how much time it could take, but I woke up at 4 in the morning 5 days a week, pushed him out of bed and into the gym. I also had to figure out the most effective workout schedule for him. Last week he started complaining of headache after taking tablets for blood pressure. I immediately got him checked without taking tablet and it was 110/80, the same as mine. Checked again the next day morning without tablet and it was 130/80. Then I took him to his cardiologist and it was 135/80. Blood pressure rises as the day goes on and falls as dusk approaches. One glance at his ECG report and a cursory check of his heart using the stethoscope was enough for the cardiologist to stop one tablet for blood pressure. The headache has vanished. One tablet down and it is a momentous achievement in such a short span of time. Another 6 months and all other tablets could be gone too. Doctor also said he need not worry about his kidneys as he is active now. He used to feel a bit shaky when walking and that has reduced after he stopped the tablet. He used to get heartburns while cooking when we open our cloud kitchen but not anymore. He was always fearful that reducing food will make him weak. I have put him on a diet of banana and papaya in the evening which has improved his digestion and decreased heartburns considerably. Now he knows that he has to eat healthy and keep working out to get rid of the tablets to become fit.
He is navigating through the treadmill and air glider easily now and I have put him on the machine fly to make his chest and back muscles stronger.
Now I am contemplating upgrading him to weight training exercises slowly. So how about a new milestone? Participating in a body building competition for 70+ guys? He is aghast at the thought. I asked him how many people can do what he is doing so why not be ambitious about it? Looks like my project may have just started after all.
I am writing this to let the world know about the importance of staying fit throughout our lives. My mom started going for morning walks after dad started going to the gym. She has lost weight, started feeling better and her thyroid condition has improved. It is also important to understand that the medical system we follow only treats us when we are sick. Hospitals are not wellness centers and very few doctors advise us to live healthy lives and prevent diseases. Ironically, cardiologists check the condition of the heart by making patients undergo treadmill test (TMT) but they do not advise patients to work out on treadmill every day. We have been living our lives as we used to, none of us have got infected with COVID or any other disease and we are yet to take our vaccine shots. Goes to show how important daily routine, exercises, healthy food and mental health are to maintaining a robust immune system which in turn will protect us from diseases.
We have all been conditioned to believe that our value is in the money we have, our jobs, size of our house, size and number of cars, quantity of gold we possess, etc. and our social status is measured by these parameters which forces us to chase them our entire lives. What we conveniently forget or ignore is, we are social animals and what is truly important for us are health and relationships. Only when we have these will all our accomplishments truly make sense in our lives. We don’t really have to take any extra effort to improve our lives, we just need to understand this one simple fact.
When established norms and widely accepted views are questioned and challenged, it has become normal to call them conspiracy theories. The term conspiracy theory has a predecessor. Heresy. Anyone opposing the views of the Church were branded as heretics and burned on stakes. Apparently more than 50,000 women who opposed the patriarchal rules of the Church were branded as witches and burned on stakes during the Dark Ages. One of the most famous ones is Nicolaus Copernicus who was admonished by the Church for his heliocentric theory which displaced Earth and put Sun at the center of the Universe. The most famous conspiracy theories that have been going around for the past several decades are about aliens and UFOs.
Two conspiracy theories have taken hold of the world from the time the COVID-19 pandemic broke out.
1) The COVID-19 virus was released from the virology lab at Wuhan in China and it did not jump from the bats to us as we have been repeatedly told 2) The objective of the COVID-19 virus and the vaccines for it is part of the depopulation agenda, to wipe out most of our population
I have been getting bombarded with messages on social media about these for quite some time now so I finally decided to take an objective look at them. We know Copernicus was ridiculed and his work was banned for a few centuries before sensibility dawned on the scientific community as knowledge about science progressed. So it doesn’t matter if what are called as conspiracy theories are true or not. Throughout our history, majoritarian views have always been opposed and we have fought relentlessly for dissenting voices to be heard. An opposing view to an established norm allows us to look at the other side and maybe change or improve the existing situation.
So, Was the COVID-19 virus released from a lab? I would rephrase the question and ask “has our medical and technological knowledge become sophisticated enough to create and release a new virus from a lab?” We do have enough knowledge now to splice up our genes in the lab, not all genes but we are on the way. We are working on repairing defective genes which means we can get rid of genetic diseases. This means we must have developed the capability to manipulate and alter the genetic structure of at least some of the organisms. Medical community would endorse the need to play around with microorganisms so that new medicines and vaccines can be developed to fight potentially new diseases. But there is a catch here. Medicine is a profit making industry. Creating new medicines and vaccines is innovation for pharmaceutical companies. There are two problems with it.
1) The medical system we follow now is treatment based and not wellness based. Prevention is better than cure no longer holds water now. We have become too busy to worry about our health. Health is wealth has become wealth is health. There are hospitals and we have insurance policies. So we live with the belief that when we fall sick we will be adequately protected. The reality is nowhere near to it. Our immune system is and has always been our first line of defense. The caveat with the immune system though is, it needs to be constantly engaged with the natural elements. That is the only way it can learn about new diseases and variants of existing ones and develop immunity against them. Medicines and vaccines are boosters for the immune system, a tiny external intervention for the immune system to learn about new diseases and protect us faster.
2) When we fiddle with microorganisms and alter their genes in labs, no amount of safeguards are enough. If the virus manages to escape in any way, it will mutate immediately when exposed to nature. A disaster in the form of an epidemic can start off any time. Because of our global proximity now, it can become a pandemic in no time like we have seen in the case of COVID-19.
So can we mutate and create a new virus in a lab? Yes. Will we release such a virus into nature? We could. After atomic and chemical warfare, biological and cyber space are the new means of waging wars. Was this done with COVID-19 virus? We may never know. If yes, would there be a possible intent? Read on.
Now, is there something called a depopulation agenda? Well, apparently there was. Noah’s story of the Ark is not just a Biblical story. We need to understand a bit of history here. The authors of the Bible have borrowed heavily from ancient Babylonian texts which in turn were written under the influence of even more ancient Sumerian tablets. This is recorded history. Our history goes back even further than this. It is called pre-history. How do we know this? Ancient texts all over the world are written in verses. Pre-history was information handed down to the next generations orally because writing wasn’t invented at that time. What is created as a verse can be recited and sung. Its far more easier to remember and reproduce a story as a song than a remember it as a story.
I guess most people know of Noah’s story. Noah is the Biblical name the name is different in different ancient texts.
So the story goes that the creator Gods of humans left Earth and sent angels (watchers) to watch over our activities and report back to them. Our lifestyle became wayward with time, we procreated randomly creating genetic diseases among us, our population increased manifold and we caused huge destruction to nature. To add to the woes, the angels became enamored with the beautiful women, procreated with them and the children born to them became giants. When the Gods finally got wind of what was happening on Earth, they were enraged. They banished the angels from heaven forever and decided to cleanse the planet of us. So Noah was chosen and tasked with building a boat to house a pair of every animal. Then the world was swept over by floods and everything was destroyed. The plan was to eventually kill Noah and his family , but one God took pity and gave us another chance.
The situation we are in now is eerily similar to Noah’s story. Massive population, random lifestyle, genetic diseases and wanton destruction of nature. We are 7 billion now and the way we are growing we will likely add 2 billion more in another 20-30 years. The planet cannot handle anymore of us. More depletion and destruction of nature will trigger a full scale mass extinction event. Natural disasters will wipe out every living being as nature seeks to restore her balance. It is imperative that our population on the planet decreases significantly. A war will be nuclear this time and will destroy the planet completely. The only way out is large scale mortality through diseases. Here’s a small story to illustrate how larger population is detrimental to our survival.
This is a cat that comes home for food but doesn’t stay and is not domesticated. He came home sick last week. He isolated himself from all other cats, refused to have food and slept for two days. He banked on his immune system to fight off what had afflicted him and used all the blood in his body to power his immune system. He started having food only when he felt better. If we were doing this we wouldn’t be needing lockdowns. But we can’t because we cannot isolate ourselves completely from others because of our huge population thereby making everyone vulnerable to contagious diseases. This, along with the fast depleting natural resources has made our ever burgeoning population the biggest risk for our own existence and is a significant reason for our increasing mortality rate.
Most people above 60 years have comorbidities and life threatening health issues. A large population of people between 18-45 years are leading sedentary lifestyles. Their lives revolve around A/c houses to A/c cars to A/c office buildings in cities every day. Add poor eating and sleeping habits to this with little to no physical activities. These two groups of people have very poor immunity and are vulnerable to any new disease.
So is there an overwhelming case to depopulate ourselves? Yes. Nature controls population of organisms primarily in two ways: 1) Predator-prey relationship 2) Diseases. Our population increase began when we exited nature’s predator-prey food chain which was accentuated after we found ways to treat diseases. Through population control nature imposes the “survival of the fittest” rule on all living beings. Only the healthiest animals procreate and take their species forward. The whole exercise of yearly migration of animals is not just a journey in search of food. Only the ones that survive all the odds during the journey will return home and reproduce. The survival of the species is always important than the survival of an individual and it applies to all organisms. If our massive population has become a threat to the survival of our own species and of the planet then the only option left is to downsize it. Was the COVID-19 virus released intentionally to depopulate us? We may never know.
But the increasing oddities on the ground are hard to ignore. Manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines are demanding indemnity from any adverse short term and long term outcomes of administering the vaccines. That in itself is a huge question on the credibility of the vaccines. Masking, sanitizing and social distancing have to continue even after taking the vaccines, the reason given being current vaccines may not protect us from new variants of COVID-19 virus. If this assumption is true, we are all vulnerable to new variants of small pox, TB, etc. All the vaccines we have taken from our childhood are useless. I asked this to a doctor and all he could do was to smile.
Moreover, this is a video of a new mask that is being developed to protect us from COVID-19 virus. Sneezing is our biological response to foreign substances in our respiratory system just like vomiting is for our digestive system. When we sneeze we instinctively cover our faces. So the first line of defense for contagious respiratory diseases is masks. Governments have imposed using of masks on all of us without specifying what type of masks will protect us from the virus. Use of random masks will not protect us from any diseases. The logic behind making a mask for protection from viruses like COVID-19 is very simple. Either destroy the viruses on the inside or outside of the masks. Why did no government take the initiative to build such masks? Why did they start vaccination drives with vaccines the efficacies of which are not yet clear? Finally, are we saying it took us two years to come up with a mask and less than a year to make vaccines?
Ironically, if some among us were to indeed execute a depopulation program, it wouldn’t be the healthiest and strongest among us. Rather, it would be the ones with money and power, the ones who have the means and the wherewithal. It is money and power that decides how strong we are in society now and not our immune system. If the healthiest among us become casualties of the depopulation program and only the wealthiest among us with lesser immunity survive, where will this lead the future of our species to? Looks like a high octane topic of debate.
I am hoping that the COVID-19 pandemic and the two conspiracy theories will start entrenching in all of us the need to improve and strengthen our immune system and the realization that only a strong immune system will make us healthy and protect us from diseases. About the rest, let the debates and flow of social media messages continue.
I had a very interesting conversation with a friend (who is going to read this) about whether COVID-19 virus is a zoonotic virus or a man made virus. There are many articles and videos that have been circulating on social media proposing to provide evidence that the virus was created in the virology lab at Wuhan, China. What my friend is worried about is, if these allegations turn out to be true, it means we have interfered in nature and tampered with the natural evolution of a microorganism. He wants strict regulations on biological testing similar to the ones imposed on nuclear and chemicals testing so that we do not end up engaging in a biological war with one another like the atom bombs in Japan and chemical warfare in Vietnam. My answer to him was in 2 parts.
1) Human interference in nature
We started interfering in nature when we started cutting down trees to build our houses. We did not pause to wonder why animals are not doing the same. Rather, in our arrogance of having superior intelligence we looked down upon the supposed lower intelligence of animals. We never wondered from where did we get this ability which no other living being on the planet has. Nature will never give the intelligence and ability to any living being to destroy nature’s ecosystem.
Nature is a closed ecosystem which means everything that is born or created within it will or has to return to it. Animals build nests using items available in nature which gets recycled by nature after use. When we die our bodies are recycled by nature. Fully knowing this, we created tar, concrete, plastic and a zillion other things nature cannot recycle and knowing that nature cannot recycle our waste, we keep forcing it on nature which nature has duly started returning to us during natural calamities. So we have come a long way to worry about human interference in nature now.
2) Tampering with the natural evolution of a microorganism
My friend believes biological testing in labs is essential to understand about microorganisms so that we can build medicines and vaccines to protect us from them. First of all, every organism in nature is in continuous evolution. So there is no end to biological testing. Why are animals not doing the same? This is not about higher or lower levels of intelligence. Nature has a sophisticated and effective way of handling this situation. Immune system. Diseases are simply conflicts between organisms of higher and lower orders. All living beings when exposed to nature will constantly be under the attack of microorganisms. Immune system keeps learning about more microorganisms and becomes more robust in protecting us. So we do not need to test microorganisms in labs for our protection from them. The bigger problem with this is, not everyone will have good intentions. These genetically modified microorganisms could be stolen and released into nature. We will have no control over them once they are in nature and consequences could be catastrophic. We have found ways to splice genes in lab and now we are working towards repairing genes in human genetic structure that cause diseases. I am all for it because it can cure genetic diseases like diabetes permanently. But any lab experiments that can potentially involve nature has to be strictly forbidden. Even if COVID-19 is a man made virus and we let it out into nature, did it affect nature? No animal died because of it. 3 million humans and counting have died. Every time we go against nature, the consequences will come back to bite only us.
Most importantly, it is inconsequential whether the virus is natural or man made because in either case it has broken the glass houses we have been living in for so long. This goes back to the conversation I had with another friend (who is also going to read this). Every aspect of human life has become untenable in nature. Our food habits have become extremely inorganic and unhealthy, our sleep cycle has vanished and our entire lifestyle is in disarray. We are no longer in communication with nature because of which our immune system gets to learn nothing and has literally become idle. One virus of moderate virulence has raised a question mark over the survival of our species itself.
Diseases are one of the ways in which nature controls population of every living being. So death is inevitable. Greater the size of population higher the mortality rate and more number of reasons to die. If diseases don’t kills us, accidents, murders and so many other reasons are lurking. We do not even know if we will wake up from our sleep the next day. Common reasons for death during sleep – silent cardiac arrest, brain hemorrhage.
But we are “existing” in a blissful fantasy world. We take housing loans and agree to pay EMIs every month for the next 20-30 years. In interviews, candidates are asked ” where do you find yourself in the next 5 years or what are your professional goals for the next 5 years”. Education is linked to profession which is linked to money which is linked to social status. Health has become irrelevant. We take insurance policies and swagger around in arrogance that when we fall sick, the policies will take care of us. Health is wealth has become wealth is health. We rush to hospitals where we get treated when we fall sick. Note : Hospitals are not places that ensure we do not fall sick. Doctors do not take us off tablets and tell us how to become healthy naturally. We no longer seem to remember that prevention is better than cure. Moreover what diseases are doctors and hospitals curing us from anyways? We are given medication that suppress diseases. There is still no cure available for even common cold. Google and see the classifications of headache. There is a type of headache called stress headache the cause of which medical community has no clue about. This is how little the medical community and doctors who treat us know about human anatomy. Medication for pain simply interrupt the signal to the brain that indicates pain so we stop feeling pain. This is called workaround in other professional jobs and cannot even be considered as treatment. Suppressing a disease and keeping it inside the body long enough can result in the genetic information of the disease getting encoded into our genetic structure. This is how genetic diseases are created and passed on to future generations, thereby making the entire species unhealthy. This is what has happened to us which animals with their lower intelligence avoids by identifying and abandoning/killing unhealthy offspring.
Even more ironical are the facts about medication and vaccination. Diabetes is a genetic disease and medicines only help to keep it under control. Can pharmaceutical companies manufacture medicines and vaccines to repair our genetic structure? Human body is tuned to absorb vitamins from nature and food on its own. I have read about people in western countries who live on diet of vitamin tablets completely ignorant of the fact that human body is incapable of absorbing vitamins from tablets properly. I have heard of people suffering from Vitamin D deficiency in India which is literally unbelievable. I can understand this in the colder western countries where there is less sunlight but in a tropical country all it takes is soaking our body in sunlight for a while. We are all made to believe that medication will cure us and vaccines will protect us from diseases. In reality, medication and vaccines are top ups for our immune system, a miniscule external intervention which provides more information for the immune system to fight diseases and protect us. If our immune system is already weak, medicines and vaccines can never protect us on their own.
These are the reasons why keeping ourselves healthy is so important for the survival of our species. We have no control over diseases and death. The healthcare system we have does nothing to protect us from diseases. All we can do is to stay healthy, maintain a good immune system and hope that it will protect us from diseases. We cannot run away from nature, live inside concrete buildings and hope to have a good immune system. People are being kept under lockdown now and are being told that staying at home will keep them safe from COVID-19 virus when the reality is governments are completely unprepared to handle a health crisis. Staying at home without enough physical activity and away from nature can drastically affect our immune system and make us vulnerable to other diseases. It is mind boggling that almost the entire human race has become so ignorant about themselves, about nature and have become so gullible to live in such an artificial world.
There is a business evaluation model called PESTEL which evaluates uncertainties in the business environment such as political situations, economic conditions, etc to find the associated risks that can impact business prospects. The 2nd E in the model is for evaluating environmental factors which includes natural disasters and diseases. Very less importance is given to this as I came to understand from the experience of a local businessman. Even though some corporate companies do give importance to natural disasters, diseases are largely ignored. We saw how much companies have struggled after the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and it has taken a year for employees to get used to working from home.
Just like fever is our immune system’s indicator that a foreign organism has entered our body, nature sends out signals when there are changes in its environment. Animals understand signs of natural disasters in advance and are able to protect themselves. We have lost that ability somewhere along our evolution. I do not know how useful is our higher intelligence if it does not even help us to survive in nature. I do not know if we are too late to break out of the glass houses we are living in and return to nature, but it is never too late to try.
Dr. Shankara Chetty, a doctor of Indian origin living in South Africa has done what should have been done at the onset of COVID-19 pandemic. He has conducted clinical diagnosis to understand the different stages a COVID-19 patient goes through & has treated more than 4000 patients without hospitalization & oxygen requirement.
What has helped him conduct the study are two reasons.
1. He lives in a community which has no access to hospitals nearby & had to place their trust in him.
2. He has limited access to medicines so he had to find out the best treatment method based on the medicines he has access to.
He instructed everyone to approach him as soon as they got symptoms of cold & fever. When he started treatment, he observed that health of patients improved by the 3rd/4th day & for some, fever reappeared on the 6th/7th day. They started experiencing dyspnea (breathlessness) in the next 1/2 days. As soon as patients started reporting reappearance of fever, he put them on steroids to prevent dyspnea. He is attributing dyspnea to allergy in the lungs (caused by the creation of large amounts of cytokines). Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has adopted a similar strategy & has revised its guidelines for COVID treatment. Patients no longer need to panic, they just have to observe themselves & report any changes in their condition to doctors immediately. Starting to lose smell which was identified by the Delhi government last year as the marker to test for COVID infection could be the indicator leading to dyspnea.
A contagious virus having high virulence and also having a high rate of recovery is an anomaly. High rate of infection of a virus like small pox always leads to high rate of mortality. All the panic and fear was created because no proper clinical diagnosis of COVID-19 virus was conducted because of which people could not be educated and made aware of the symptoms and the need to observe themselves. People need to be quickly made aware of this so that they do not delay in consulting doctors as soon as they have symptoms of cold and fever and starting medication.
The takeaway from the doctor’s diagnosis is not about the medicines he used. Medicines and their dosage could vary depending on demography, people’s immunity, etc. That is for the doctors everywhere else to figure out. What he wants everyone to look at is his treatment timeline. Steroids have been in use for COVID treatment but when it should be administered for best effect is what he has addressed. Reporting recurrence of fever in the first 7 days is crucial for further treatment. His diagnosis is a blueprint for doctors all over the world to use to treat COVID in the best possible ways.
Its been a year and a half since the pandemic began and ironically, information about the COVID-19 virus, the tests done to identify infected people and the vaccines is becoming more hazy and confusing with time.
First, about the virus. There is a whole lot of noise and fear being driven into people through the media about the virus mutating and taking more deadlier forms. As a contagious virus spreads it does mutate and this is not new to the COVID-19 virus. The fear is being amplified with the information that the vaccine currently rolled out will not be effective against the new mutated forms of the virus and more doses of vaccine will be required. A virus, no matter how many times it mutates will have a specific genetic marker. Coronavirus is a family of viruses that includes the COVID-19 virus. They all have the same genetic marker which is why they are grouped under the coronavirus family. All of them cause respiratory diseases starting from common cold. If the genetic marker also changes during mutation then it will become an entirely new virus. Vaccines are developed specifically using these markers so logically it makes no sense in the claim that currently vaccinated people are vulnerable to mutated versions of the virus.
Before getting into the testing part, it is important to understand some basics of nature and human anatomy. Our body is not built in a way to prevent microorganisms from entering it. Rather, it allows entry so that the immune system can keep getting more information, evolve and become more robust in protecting us. This is evolutionary and is the same in all animals. The analogy to this can be seen in the antivirus systems we have created to protect our computers. Even computer viruses have specific markers like the genetic markers viruses in nature have. The first antivirus software was created by collecting all the prevalent computer viruses and finding out their markers. Antivirus software have to be updated daily with the information of existing viruses and markers of new viruses. What we do not have in nature is the concept of firewall which prevents all information from entering and exiting a computer and can be fine tuned to allow only certain information to pass through.
So when a microorganism enters our body, the immune system immediately goes into alert mode. Depending on how adversely the organism can affect us which we call virulence in the case of viruses, the body signals in the form of fever to indicate that the immune system is at work. There is no need to take tablets for fever. We take paracetamol tablets so that we can move around. When the same happens to animals, they immediately isolate themselves because it is considered by default in nature that any disease could potentially become contagious. The immune system works entirely using blood and the body directs a major part of blood in fighting the organism. So it is important to not burden our body with digestion of food which also requires a large quantity of blood. This is why animals stop eating when they are sick. It is also important to keep ourselves protected but at the same time we get enough sunlight and air. We are being told to do all these now if we are infected with the COVID-19 virus when we should have been doing these every time we fall sick.
Most of the time, we fall sick because of seasonal changes. As our body adapts to changes in our environment we become more prone to be attacked by microorganisms. This is why there is autumn between the transition from summer to winter and spring between the transition from winter to summer. But in tropical regions, there is no winter season instead those regions have rainy season. There is no autumn and spring seasons either. Rains continue for 6 months and as rain decreases, summer slowly starts. These climatic differences in different parts of the world has tremendous impact on people’s health. Most of north India has entered into summer season which will peak in June whereas summer peaks in April-May in south India and starts moving towards monsoon by June. Entire country is transitioning with climate changes now and there will obviously be spike in diseases.
I have been wondering what the COVID-19 lab tests are all about and what exactly are they checking for to identify if someone is COVID +ve. Turns out the symptoms are fever, headache and sore throat. These are the symptoms of common cold and flu which affects large number of people during periods of above mentioned climate changes. There are no COVID specific symptoms and hence no COVID specific tests.
I was initially under the impression that the differentiator for COVID-19 virus would be respiratory issues when hospitals in Delhi got inundated with people for testing last year and Delhi government had to ask people to isolate themselves for flu like symptoms and only get themselves tested if they lose their sense of smell. But it seems that all viruses in the coronavirus family can potentially cause respiratory issues. The virus passes through our nostrils and gets lodged in the wind pipe. If a weak immune system is not able to eliminate the virus it will eventually travel into the lungs. Any microorganism that enters an internal organ can cause serious and life threatening situations. In my neighborhood a family had common flu and cold. They isolated themselves and informed the government health center. People came from hospital, tested them and marked them as COVID +ve. They recovered within a week’s time. Everyone who has cold and flu symptoms are probably getting marked as COVID +ve which is why we are seeing huge spike in the number of infected people and high recovery rate. The numbers will reduce considerably if only people with cold and flu symptoms and respiratory issues are tagged as COVID +ve.
Even more bizarre is the case with asymptomatic cases. Just because one person came into contact with another who was identified as COVID +ve, that person need not be asked to isolate without showing any COVID specific symptoms. Even if the virus has entered that person’s body, there is no way to check if the person’s immune system has developed antibodies for the virus. Antibody testing cannot be completely relied upon. Showing symptoms of fever and cold after a few days could also be because of a common cold infection or another health issue and not necessarily because of COVID infection. Because people have different immunity levels, the effect of a virus could be vastly different between people.
Now to the COVID vaccines. First question is, if pharma companies could take so much effort and come up with vaccines in a year’s time, why not use technology to create masks which will prevent the virus from passing from one person to another? Simply because there is way too much money to be made with vaccines. None of the vaccines for any diseases does anything spectacular. Vaccines are now made by stripping out the genetic markers of the viruses from their DNA. Injecting the genetic marker into the body will apparently help the immune system in understanding the genetic code of the virus and build immunity for it without having to dissect the entire virus to understand its genetic code.
What is weird though is the instruction to continue staying at home, using hand sanitizers and maintaining social distancing even after COVID vaccination. We have taken vaccinations in the past and used to have body pain and fever for a day or two after which we used to resume our normal lives. Scientists don’t yet know if we can still transmit the virus to others after we have been vaccinated. Scientists cannot simply ask people to do things when they themselves are not sure about what they are asking for. Yes, this is a contagious virus but with more than 99% recovery rate. What they are asking for would have been understandable if it was similar to small pox virus.
So if vaccination is just a training program for our immune system to understand and fight a new microorganism why are we being given two vaccination shots and possibly more in the future? From the recovery rate it is obvious that COVID-19 is a very mild virus when compared to the small pox virus, yet we have all had only one vaccination dose for small pox. It is a well known fact that the current vaccines are not adequately tested. Phase-3 trials have not been satisfactorily completed. We are a population of over 7 billion and sampling size for testing the vaccines was in 100s or a few 1000s. Strength of immune system and their response to diseases varies widely from person to person. A 2nd and 3rd dose will reinforce immune response is what they are claiming based on testing the vaccine on a very minor part of the population. This is very abstract and there is no way to confirm their observation after rolling out the vaccines for large scale vaccination. There is no clarity on the time duration between 2 doses of the vaccines and it is being changed randomly now.
Moreover, increasing cases of mortality after the first and both shots of the COVID vaccines are getting reported which included a well known south Indian film actor. There are more such deaths reported by individuals on Twitter which won’t appear on mainstream media. There are also several reports of serious side effects of vaccines getting reported from European countries. Did those people die purely because of COVID virus or did they have comorbidities? Did they get infected by the virus externally after vaccination? This means the vaccine is playing a part in reducing our immune prowess. Or did the genetic marker introduced into their body through the vaccine grow into a full virus and overwhelm their immune system? Both scenarios are equally terrifying. Even more scary is the fact that vaccine manufacturers are not able to say if there will be long term adverse effects of the vaccines on us.
In the light of so much information, it is my responsibility to ask questions about the virus and the efficacy of the vaccines. My purpose of writing this is to stop all the panic that is going on now and make people understand to go to hospitals only when the viral infection persists for some days and they start developing respiratory issues. We are being told to vaccinate in a way that our immune system is incapable of eliminating the COVID virus on its own. As the recovery rate shows, that is clearly not the case.
I believe current COVID vaccines are less effective and more detrimental to our health now. I am not against vaccination but my question is why vaccine for a viral infection with more than 99% recovery rate? Isn’t a medicine enough? We treat common cold mostly naturally and with tablets then why vaccine for COVID-19 when both viruses are from the same family of virus with very similar virulence? If vaccines are required for every disease then why haven’t vaccines been developed for common cold and flu yet?
It is important for us to avoid forming large crowds, maintain hygiene and social distancing at all times. During yearly migration of birds, they flock together in large numbers and that is when their mortality rate increases due to contagious diseases. We celebrate festivals with massive congregations like Kumbh Mela in India every year in complete ignorance that an epidemic can break out any time in nature without any warnings. The most important issue is with our population size which continues to grow unabated. As population size of any species increases its mortality rate also increases. Humans are the only species that pass on diseases genetically which adds to the possibility of more diseases arising among us. Staying healthy is the key to having a strong immune system. It is the only way to survive in nature that is extremely hostile to all living beings, something we are blissfully ignorant about.
Ranjeet Menon's Blog 