Fear of viral infection and the development of physical resistance

In recent months we have been overloaded with figures and related objectives to justify the measures by which we will 'defeat the virus'. We have become acquainted with the Reproduction Number, or R number. The basic reproduction or infection rate of an infectious disease is the average number of secondary infections caused by a primary case in a population without immunity and in the absence of prophylactic measures, such as vaccination.

The initial objective set to justify the corona measures was to achieve an R number below 1.

The question is whether the objective was set correctly. Isn't it an irrational fear that drives it? Where human resistance is strengthened by practice in undergoing and overcoming viral infections, the corona measures taken and the fear of infection may put us at greater risk than we want. Watch video on YouTube

Here I am again trying to say something to the camera. Actually, from time to time you get the feeling: I'm speechless. Then I think of Toon Hermans who said "I would like to say something, but everything has already been said. I would like to think something, but everything has already been thought."

Ofcourse you can vary endlessly with thoughts and words, but it becomes difficult in this time of corona crisis to keep the courage and the thoughts together. And I remember a saying from the past, someone who said: 'People do not become demented, they are made demented'. And now it seems a little like you could say, the world's population does not become demented on its own, but we are made demented, so we are constantly being thrown from one corner into the other. And the human being is a reasonable being, gifted with reason. That is also the area where you have the feeling that freedom really lives, in the area of intelligent thinking. But when you read an article in the newspaper, like yesterday, in which it is said 'the government is not yet taking any further measures, but this week they may come up with very strict measures. ‘We don't want to do it yet, but we may have to do it' and then comes the reproduction number and then it is said that this is 0.8. No that is not certain, it could also be 1.16. But if it is 0.8, then the epidemic is actually over. All that is stated in a newspaper article and then you are, as it were, kicked from one corner of the room to the other, because then you really don't understand anything about it anymore, because you still remember that after the previous lockdown in the spring, it was the case that it was always a desire for that reproduction number that it would become 1 and less, because then the measures would be lifted. So now it is being said, 0.80, no, maybe not, maybe it is 1.16, but it may well be that it is around 1, in any case it is not a number for which you would like to paralyse the whole country. But the same article states that this is still on the agenda, if this happens, then it will be like that and so on. It is as irrational as anything. And then you get the feeling that you’d better not say anything and not think anything, because it won't take you any further, it will only make you deeply unhappy. But yes, of course we shouldn't achieve that, this point, so here I am again formulating a number of things.

And I had the memory over the last few days of how this all started last year, at the end of last year, at the beginning of this year, that we got the images from Wuhan with very worrying information. A viral epidemic had broken out there and it was an extremely dangerous disease, many people were dying and tough measures had to be taken and we could only hope that that virus would not spread further around the world. I have had my questions about this from the outset, about how far humanity has actually got, about the fact that we have to be so afraid of a virus, but I will perhaps talk about this again some other time, because this was clearly a threat, a life-threatening viral epidemic which could, of course, very well affect the whole world. And what we saw on those images, we saw people in moon suits, with masks on and gloves on, and they were treating the sick, but we also saw people on the streets wearing such suits and large tubes with which they were disinfecting the streets, and that gave an impression that something was happening there of which one had the feeling:  must this really be the case? Anyway, you can say to yourself that China is a country in which freedom is fairly rare, so all kinds of things are imposed there by the government, and this facts are in that area. Therapy and prevention are practised in this way. I remember when I was a little child, that when I heard something that the big people were saying among themselves, or when I heard it on the radio perhaps, at one point I became very afraid of volcanic eruptions and tidal waves and earthquakes and that kind of natural phenomena. And my mother who had a certain wisdom said: Mieke you don't have to be afraid of that when you live in the Netherlands. Because the Netherlands is a country, where those things don't happen. That is something that happens in very different areas of the earth, but not in the Netherlands. That was very reassuring and that reassuring thing that lives on and that's what I had in January when I saw those images from Wuhan. I didn't think about my mother, but I did think 'something like that can't happen in the Netherlands'. The Netherlands is too free a country for that, and something like that will not be given a chance here; reason, reasonableness and the urge for freedom are certainly too great for that here. 

And if you remember how at the time of the Carnival the cases suddenly started to appear in the Netherlands, the first in Brabant and gradually more and more scattered over the country, the far north was still rather spared, yes then you started to see that it went that way from Wuhan, that the fear of contamination is apparently so great that there is no other advice than to shut everything off, close nose and mouth, stop breathing, in fact, so that, above all, you don't spread any dirt in the area, avoid all people, because who knows, and so on and so forth, we have come to know it by now. And I also remember the first moment that there was an infection in Germany. I do not have the exact figures, but it was something like an initial infection, and the Chancellor thought it necessary to say in advance that this initial infection would lead to a tragedy in which 80% of the German population would fall ill, at 80 million it would be 64 million - and the WHO had now published a mortality rate among the sick of 3.5% approximately, so calculate from that approximately 2 million, something like that, deaths in Germany. Now, the other day, we saw in the newspaper, just over 10000 deaths in Germany. And that is where you get speechless. Then you do not understand that there is no looking back and admitting that it was an incredibly misplaced frightening remark that did not come true at all. So you wonder what is going on here, I don't want to fall into the conspiracy theories, although I would like to do so, because you see something recognisable in some theories, but I don't want to do that here, but you do wonder how it is possible for someone who has a leading position in a large country with so many civilised inhabitants to make such remarks, then of course as a population you get the feeling when I stick my nose out the door that I am perhaps one of those 80% and then 3.5% of that is still quite a lot. Why is there no one afterwards other than the people on the alternative channels who think back and bring this up, which is an incredibly serious mistake in making the future public? It shows that we are not able to foresay future at all. We cannot say at all how things will go. And yet, while the capacity of the IC is still far from being reached, people already seem to know that there will be a shortfall for which it is then deemed necessary to rush entire other sectors in the Netherlands into destruction. Well, you ask yourself: what they are based on, these predictions? Sometimes you hear what it is: these are the well-known statistical calculation models. When you see a certain trend in the number of positive PCR tests, in the number of admissions to hospital wards, in the number of admissions to the ICU, and you follow that trend, you give it in to a certain computer program that has been made for it, then that computer calculates for you what it is going to look like, what you are going to see, you see that every day in the newspaper, those diagrams in which you can see the progress from day to day, and in which you can imagine that a certain conclusion can be drawn for the future. However, we are dealing with human lives, and that is not so easy to illustrate in a diagram, because there are so many factors that have an influence on this, and when I read in the newspaper we have to beat the virus, I think, yes, what are you doing, do you really think you can beat a virus? Look, if you have an antibiotic, you can master a bacterium if it is not resistant. But as we know, viral infections cannot really be treated with antiviral therapy. There are various medicaments that have been shown to have an effect, but something as clearly effective as antibiotics still does not exist for the viruses, which is why vaccination is used. We used to learn the children’s illnesses in full bloom at university, the images that they show, and we have known these blooming illnesses as belonging in childhood, but now, let me say, they have been vaccinated away, and I do not want to say anything about that, of course, but you have to realise that it does not in fact make humanity any stronger. Of course it is true that as a human being you live in a certain environment of yourself and the environment in which you live, and when you see a certain trend in the number of positive PCR tests, in the number of admissions to hospital wards, in the number of admissions to the ICU, and you follow that trend, you give it in in a certain computer program what has been made for that purpose, then that computer calculates for you what it will look like, what you are going to see, you see that every day in the newspaper, from those diagrams in which you can see the progress from day to day, and in which you can imagine that a certain conclusion can be drawn for the future. However, we are dealing with human lives, and that is not so easy to illustrate in a diagram, because there are so many factors that have an influence on this, and when I read in the newspaper we have to beat the virus, I think, yes, what are you doing, do you really think you can beat a virus? Look, if you have an antibiotic, you can master a bacterium if it is not resistant. But as we know, viral infections cannot really be treated with antiviral therapy. There are various agents that have been shown to have an effect, but something as clearly effective as antibiotics still does not exist for the viruses, which is why vaccination is used. We used to learn the childrens diseases in full bloom at university, the images they show, and we have known these blooming diseases as belonging to childhood, but now, let me say, they have been vaccinated away, and I do not want to say anything about that, of course, but you have to realise that it does not in fact make humanity any stronger. Of course it is true that as a human being you live in a certain environment of yourself and the outside world, and when we forget that this whole environment is full of micro-organisms, and we want to defeat the one thing that we do not like, yes that is just nonsense, that is not possible at all. You have to wait until nature has conquered that virus. And ofcourse that will come, that moment, but you cannot say 'we have to beat it' by making people even weaker than they already are? If you lock everyone up then it might become less possible to infect each other, but I can assure you that at the same time it means that we as humans are getting weaker and weaker, at a certain moment you can't conquer an infection at all because you don't practise any more. And that is the characteristic of life, isn't it? That you have to practice constantly in order to maintain your qualities. Why do all people go to the fitness? Because they feel I want to be strong - and everyone knows that you can't be strong if you don't do anything. If you stay in your chair your muscles won't improve. Being exposed to viral infections is a kind of fitness for the body and why have we forgotten that? And the fact that people get very sick and die from it is a side effect of human life, because side effects of human life are sickness and ultimately death.

But mankind loses all contact with spirituality and has no idea anymore - yes I have to generalise, and of course I do because I see the consequences of generalising - the human being at a certain moment has no control at all over the processes that are the most important thing in human life and that also includes the fact that certain things are in your fate. If fairy tales would at least be read, people would still know that. There are so many examples from folk wisdom that show that you cannot avoid your fate. Someone who is told that he will die today and then stays in the house sitting on a chair because he thinks - yes he would die by accident - and if I stay here then nothing will happen, of course eventually something will happen so that he gets up anyway and then breaks his neck, something like that, so you can't escape your fate, that's not possible. So, if you have to die of a viral infection, you die of it. Maybe not now, because you are locked up, but then the next very simple viral infection will catch you because you no longer have any resistance and then you go.

So, it's a bit of an emotional talk this time, but it's the choice between either saying nothing or expressing what makes you so speechless. And that is that human reason is sent away by these interventions by the so-called experts and the leaders. And at a certain point we no longer have this human reason, then we are all demented. If we do not practise thinking, we become demented, if we do not practise having infections, we die of the first infection that befalls us. So, we need to practice in resistance building. And we have the opportunity now. It is clear that all those people who have a positive PCR test, as long as that positive result is based on truth, because of course there is an error rate - but of course not all of those people are sick. Why are they not ill, why do they not become ill, these people? Because they have resistance, that is why they do not become ill. And if you do get sick, then you build up that resistance. And a few don't manage to do that. But that should not be a reason to deprive the entire population of the opportunity to practice their resistance building.

That's what I wanted to say today and I will try to say something about the phenomenon of the contamination itself next time.