I believe that medicine’s potential is much more than the version we see in the world today. A doctor should be an educator with the goal of bringing patients to a place of deeper understanding of who they are in the world. To me, medicine is ultimately about self-empowerment through self-knowledge and growth.
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Welcome to the newly born edition of Berkshire Whole Health’s Weekly Bulletin!
— where fighting for a safe place for future generations is a passion.
Birth coaches know about mileposts.
Before a laboring mother delivers a baby, she enters an intense transition phase where the birth canal becomes maximally patent and the birth becomes imminent. This phase is marked by mileposts, and often includes a characteristic doubt in the laboring mother. She commonly says, “I don’t think I can do this.”
A seasoned midwife knows that when she sees the milepost of the transition phase, a baby is likely to arrive soon. A radically new dimension for the laboring, struggling mother is imminent.
MY FRIENDS, NOT ONLY ARE WE, AS A BLESSED COMMUNITY OF HUMAN BEINGS PREGNANT, WE ARE TRANSITIONING!
Many people are feeling they cannot go on any longer in the same way. It’s too much.
Hold on, I say! Please remember the darkest hour is right before the dawn. Please remember that intense overwhelm accompanies transitions. We are being born into a new time. We are being delivered! And the new time is right around the corner.
A novel virus Pandemic concludes when the novel virus no longer is able to be considered novel. Time and endurance bring the end. A novel virus is a virus no one has seen before, something immune systems are clueless about, something against which there is no strategy.
Ladies and gentleman, after Omicron, we don’t have a novel virus anymore. It seems most households have been paid a visit by SARS CoV-2. And remember we are seeing 40% asymptomatic cases!
And, no, new variants do not count as novel viruses. People don’t get as sick on the second go round nearly to the same extent as the first.
Many EU countries — England, Ireland, Norway, Wales and Denmark — are announcing the end of social restrictions as case loads fall. “Face masks will no longer be mandatory in public places and Covid-19 passports will be dropped for large events,” the AP reported, noting also that the governments in some of these countries are “no longer advising people to work from home, and compulsory face masks will be scrapped in secondary school classrooms.”
Starting February 5th in Denmark, COVID-19 will no longer be classified as a disease that is critically dangerous to the public. This government decision was made on the basis of the recommendations of a special epidemiological commission, it is being reported.
The SARS CoV-2 virus and the respiratory inflammation it triggered inherently contained the lion’s share of our recent pain. Our reaction to it has had its ups and downs. We are critical of each other that we might have caused more harm some way or another with our reaction, but it’s important to acknowledge that the virus itself came first and caused the majority of what we have been through.
However, this idea of lifting the restrictions at the right time and not a minute too late is an important one to study. Lifting the restrictions is not an easy task, due to the culture of fear that is the signature of our time. There is a lot of momentum, even if it seems radical or risky, to lift the restrictions as soon as the cases drop. The argument to do so states we simply have to move on.
Why?
Our mission as humans is tied to community! Our health is closely correlated with community. One friend refers to Connection as the other vitamin C.
See this from The Longevity Prescription by Dr. Robert Butler:
“One of the best strategies to a long and healthy life is connectivity. Numerous studies have led to wide-ranging conclusions about the importance of social relationships to individual good health. Having caring people around you… amounts to a special kind of health insurance. So, a surefire way to longevity is greater interactivity in a social sense. We humans are social creatures: interdependent, adaptable, and flexible. As a species, we have evolved in a world in which we must rely upon one another and, as individuals, the more we can contribute to bettering that world, the better it will be.”
We need to see each other’s faces, we need to talk and laugh and sing to each other, face to face. Not doing so is destructive. We have the tools, and have met the requirements to close the trauma from all that comes from the Pandemic. Anyone who takes care of kids has seen the heavy, heavy toll that has been taken on them. Not all kids, but don’t be fooled. It’s bad. Adverse childhood experiences, widening education gap, developmental delay are rampant across the spectrum. We need to be on the first bus back to normality. We can’t afford to wait and see.
We have the tickets. We have hard-earned natural immunity in large numbers. We also have protection from the shots, and the newly approved and available outpatient pills as well as monoclonal antibodies as well as outpatient remdesivir. We have proven early treatment strategies to protect us. What we don’t have at this point anymore is a novel virus, to the same degree.
We can’t let the fact that hospitals run at near-capacity census as part of how they operate deter us. We can’t let the epidemic of chronic illness and co-morbidity derail what must happen. Stifling our children’s development and social nourishment so they don’t suffer as many minor colds doesn’t fit us any more. It’s nearly time to let the theoretical protection for the older, more at risk community from social restriction be replaced by the other ways we have learned to protect ourselves and our vulnerable. We can’t sacrifice the health we get from a thriving community any longer. Neither can the fear addict in us nor the fear peddlers pandering to them be allowed to perpetuate yesterday’s approaches, when the time is right.
“Learning to live with…” is the future. And the future is now… or quite soon.
Now go get the diaper bag.
I want to make sure everything is in there in case our labor culminates. I think the time is at hand.
