Tell Me About An Adventure You've Been On ...

One of my earliest childhood memories is of the first time I was ever sent away to summer camp. It was June 1970 and I was just ten years old and was driven to and then dropped off at the Chandler Baseball Camp in the budding metropolis of Chandler, Oklahoma … where about all you can do is play baseball. They had a camp there that apparently closed for good in 1995 after opening in 1958, but it had a glorious 37-year run of producing many outstanding baseball players including even a few major leaguers of which all of us dreamed of becoming. It was there that I hit my first true home run to left field on a screaming line drive that was lashed so hard it actually broke off the top of the picket fence as it left the yard. It was also the first time I had ever played baseball on fields that actually had an outfield wall. Prior to that I had always played on playgrounds with just a backstop, three bases and a home plate, and you either had to crush the ball so far that the outfielders had to run for days to retrieve it or be so blazingly fast running the bases that you could outrun the speed of the thrown baseball. Well, I was never a guy who could really do either of those things, so I mostly hit doubles and triples … a lot of doubles and a nice number of triples, but never really a true home run that did not feature a mixture of one or more errors on the defense. But not on this day … and I still remember what my coach Red Dog had written on my end of camp report card to my parents … “Steve hits with good power!” It felt so good to actually read that as a budding young baseball player with his whole future ahead of him … but I digress, because in reality, I did not actually sit down to write stories of my prowess on the baseball diamond. You can probably surmise that my future did not include stops at any of Major League Baseball’s Thirty Glorious Ball Parks as a big league player. No, just those as a fan with a Bucket List of dreams of visiting every big league park at least once in person during my life time. And sadly, so far they seem to be razing these stadiums faster than I can get out to visit them. No, this is a story much grander and much more terrifying than that of simply playing baseball every day, and one could never compare the glory of the Chandler Baseball Camp to the absolute majesty and splendor of the Cooperstown Dreams Park in Cooperstown, New York, a place my son Andrew and I got to call home for two glorious weeks split between July 2007 and July 2008. These two camps are as different as the night is from the day. And while the daytimes and even the evenings at the Cooperstown Dreams Park are magnificent in so many ways, not even considering the National Baseball Hall of Fame is just right up the road in Cooperstown proper, the nights actually belong to the Chandler Baseball Camp in unbelievably horrifying ways. This story goes that back to the summer of 1961 [or was it 1962? No one ever seems to know these things with certainty … and memories can most assuredly get a little foggy with the passing of fifty years] but there was a young boy named Johnny who was a twelve or thirteen year old camper at the park back then. He was a pitcher but they would use pitching machines to help with batting practice because we basically practiced baseball all day from 9 am to 12 noon and then again from 1 pm to 4:30 pm and had basically an hour to eat dinner in the chow hall and then get dressed out for that night’s game against some all-star team from some small or large town in either Kansas or Oklahoma that would roll in for the 7 pm first pitches. The night games were most certainly a spectacle as we would don those glorious pin-striped uniforms that looked all the world like the New York Yankees home uniforms except for interlocked NY being replaced with a capital C. Each Chandler team would charge on to the game fields simultaneously as thunder bomb fireworks both lit up the skies with fire and blasted them with sound, quickly followed by piped in Stars & Stripes Forever music playing on all the loudspeakers scattered throughout the park. This was the big time for a ten year old little boy, but was a pretty big deal even for junior high schoolers and high schoolers as well, as their stadiums were bigger, seated more people and of course the fields were much larger as well. This is where both Oklahoma’s and Kansas’ best baseball teams came to lose and lose they usually did, as those Chandler teams were both well-coached and hard to beat. And maybe the umpires helped us out a bit as well … who’s to say? But this is not a story about those nights either. No … this is a story of both mystery and mayhem that occurred during every camp, usually during it’s last week. As I recall our camp sessions lasted three weeks and this night was usually somewhere around either Wednesday or maybe Thursday of the last week, and occurred a few hours after last out was made in the last baseball game of the night. This is a story about Johnny. A funny yet terrible thing happened to Johnny during that Summer of 1961 [or was it 1962?]. Did I mention that Johnny was a pitcher? Yes and a very, very good pitcher from the tales I was told, and his job that afternoon was to field his position as the pitcher and feed baseballs into the pitching machine while the rest of the campers played a game called “Work Up” where basically every camper took turns playing each defensive position on the field while he “worked his way up” to being the hitter. Every time a hitter made an out he had to go out to right field [position #9 in your scorebook] and then work his way back up to being the hitter again by getting each successive batter out. And every time an out was made the ball was slowly rolled back toward Johnny on the ground beside the pitching machine. This day, however, was not to be Johnny’s day. Sadly, Johnny both made a terrible mistake and he was the victim of awful timing as he reached down to pick up a baseball lying just in front of the pitching arm of the machine just as the arm came firing downwards with a fast ball. If you’ve ever seen these machines they have a vertical piece of metal shaped kind of like a rounded arrowhead protruding downwards from the metal cradle that the baseball rests on as it is pitched which is located at the business end of said pitching arm. And it just so happened that through either fate or the worst of timing that metal arm came crashing down just as Johnny’s right arm [his pitching arm no less] was outstretched reaching for said baseball. There was this awful sound of ripping human flesh and sinew, crushing bone and the ear-splitting shrieking of Johnny screaming in agony. Copious amounts of blood were now spurting from his shoulder both onto the pitcher’s mound and well as soaking his Chandler Baseball Camp t-shirt … and his now severed arm lay just beneath the pitching machine. And then the most awful thing happened … his teammates began to laugh at and mock Johnny … some even called him “Johnny The One Arm” … and no one rushed to his aid save for his coach who couldn’t make it out of the dugout quickly enough. For a moment in time that seemed like forever, Johnny stood there frozen in horror, fear and agony only to be humiliated by those he thought to be his friends. Some said Johnny was cocky, conceited, stuck on himself, not a team player, many a thing like that. Some even said that “he had it coming” that it was “karma,” or “schadenfreude,” etc. But there were things about Johnny that everyone did agree on … he was the best player at his age level and perhaps even in the entire camp, he was the fastest runner on his team and many thought he had major league potential. And in the blink of an eye, all that seemed gone forever with a single pitch. Then things got crazy in a hurry … just as time had seemingly come to a complete stand still for that ever-lingering moment, it then sped right back up and abruptly went into overdrive. Instead of Johnny waiting for his coach’s help, he took off like the wind into the woods behind that field … never to be seen again as the young boy he was at the time. And he left his severed arm right there on the pitcher’s mound for the staff and the emergency personnel to deal with. An ambulance and the police were called but no one could find Johnny. I am told that bloodhounds were even deployed and there was certainly a bloody trail to follow, but then … nothing! It was like he had completely vanished into the wind. They expected to find a young dead boy’s body in those woods in the coming days but no body was ever recovered. And then strange things started happening around the camp beginning the next summer and they became progressively more frequent and more disturbing with each passing year. A couple of years later the metal frame of an old barber’s chair mysteriously appeared right at the edge of those same woods that Johnny disappeared into two or three years before, and in the seat of that chair rested the skull of a cow. Camp officials began to worry that the camp had become haunted with the ghost of Johnny! Then different camp items began to mysteriously disappear from the camp at night only to sometimes be found out in those woods or, even creepier, on that same mysterious barber’s chair. Then people started seeing Johnny at the outfield walls during night games … he only came out at night … but he would always outrun the camp personnel back into the woods and could never be found. He never said anything either. Most people just chalked these tales up as ghost stories with no basis in truth, but over time, so many unexplained things kept occurring that people soon ran out of coincidences with which to assign them. Could Johnny have really survived that trauma? Is he now a ghost doomed to haunt the camp forever? Would he become violent and hurt some camper like he had been hurt so many years before? No one knew anything with assurance anymore. Finally, probably in 1967 or 1968, the camp formed a posse to go out on the first of what would become these grand and glorious camp-ending missions searching for Johnny, or “Johnny the One Arm” as legend and folklore had began calling him. All the campers gathered together just outside the mess hall and nearly every one had his own flashlight and we then marched off together into the woods to find Johnny. Johnny was none too pleased with this development, but if he was actually threatened by our searches you could never really tell. No, Johnny knew the woods far better than anyone at the camp, and he knew the camp at least as well as anyone on staff and better than everyone else. No one had the upper hand on Johnny … and, if you recall, Johnny only had one hand. And did I mention that Johnny was blazing fast as a runner??? Well … he never lost a step with his arm injury, and what he lacked with that missing right arm he more than made up for with his swiftness of foot. And did I mention that Johnny also had an attitude? He was right to be aggrieved with how awfully he was treated that day way back in ‘61 or ‘62, but now he took offense to a new level. It was finally time for Johnny to get even. That barber’s chair just past the left field fence and at the edge of the woods would also have what appeared to be human bones show up on them from time to time. Some would say they were animal bones but none of us campers ever really knew for sure and none us dared to venture much past that barber’s chair deeper into Johnny’s woods and certainly never alone. Well, except on those nights when the posse would form and we would go on our great annual hunt for Johnny the One Arm. Like I wrote earlier just about every one of us would go on this hunt, but if the truth were told, there would be a lot us who would have just preferred to stay safely in our bunkhouse on those particular nights. After all, life has no shortage of mayhem involved in it … and who really needs to go looking for more?!? But most of us were afraid of our fear being exposed and “there was strength to be had in numbers,” right? After all, there were probably 300 of us campers plus the staff and coaches involved in these hunts. What really is the chance that Johnny would actually kidnap me or any other single camper? And that my bones would turn up on Johnny’s barber chair in a few weeks? There was no denying the risk … yet the risk seemed manageable enough. After all, Johnny only had one arm! So we grouped together and marched out towards Johnny’s chair and every camper had a buddy that he was watching over and who was watching over him. We were all excited, very nervous and quite worried all at the same time. Most of us thought it would all go for naught. Many campers didn’t even believe that any of what I’ve written before was true or could possibly even be true. Those that did believe never expected Johnny to let himself be found, let alone captured, but no one really had any idea of what would actually come next. Because as we all quickly learned … this was Johnny’s camp, this was Johnny’s show and this was Johnny’s night. Out of no where, he suddenly appeared, running like the wind … here, there, seemingly everywhere … all at the same time … it was like he was defying all the laws of physics and nature and all at the same time. In an instant no one was marching toward Johnny’s chair in the woods any longer … No! We were all now running for our very lives as quickly back toward our bunkhouses and just as fast as our feet could fly. I don’t know if I’ve ever run faster or been more terrified in my entire life. But my foot speed was no match for Johnny’s. No, Johnny quickly caught up to me in probably 300, maybe 400 yards and then I felt this incredibly strong push in my back and I went tumbling head over heels to the ground rolling several times before coming to a stop. And then just like that Johnny was gone … knocking over dozens of other campers and then seemingly disappearing into the shadows of the night. No one had seen that kind of foot speed ever in their lives before that night. And so many campers had stories like mine that we all shared together between ourselves the next morning. As best as I can recall, no camper turned up missing that night. Johnny had just been toying with us. But he did leave a note on his barber’s chair that if we came back out looking for him again … at that time he would be playing for keeps. And I literally took his words to heart … after all, Johnny never said much … he didn’t have to really. But I was safe for now … at least until baseball camp next summer.

Two COVIDS … Two Americas Surviving a Pandemic in a Post-Factual Age This is a column that I’ve wanted to write for at least a year now but it always has seemed to take a backseat to one or more pressing issues any given week. But I was re-emboldened to do so this week when I read an article in the New York Times by David Leonhardt that beautifully captured many of the thoughts I’ve had over the past year since vaccines became our reality and not some far off distant hope.

Before the advent of the mRNA vaccine COVID-19 was actually the LEADING CAUSE OF DEATH in the United States for the first twelve months of the pandemic … from March 2020 through February 2021 exceeding that of heart disease and cancer. I don’t know how many of you are actually aware of this … especially those of you who repeatedly refer to it as a “cold or flu.” It was so much more than that for the first year … and for the unvaccinated it remains to this day the leading cause of death in our country. However, given the prevalence of the vaccines [70% of the country vaccinated including 85-90% of the population at the highest risk] it’s place on the hierarchy of death has dropped to #3 for 2021 as a whole, back behind the usual suspects but still ahead of stroke.

Not surprisingly, COVID’s starkly different impact on the young and old has been one of the virus’ defining characteristics. It tends to be mild for children and younger adults but is often severe and dire for the elderly. More than three-quarters of all the COVID deaths in the U.S. have occurred in patients 65 years old and older. So you would think that older Americans would be more fearful of the virus than younger Americans. Yet they are not! That is one of the most striking misconceptions this virus has produced. In reality old and young people express similar levels of concern about their personal risk from COVID. And by some measures, young people are actually more worried. The most plausible explanation for this perplexing phenomenon is political ideology.

Older Americans, as a group, tend to lean to the right, while younger generations lean to the left. And no other factor influences COVID attitudes as strongly as political ideology as several polls have repeatedly shown. Across broad demographic groups, Americans have broadly similar attitudes toward COVID and this is not just true of the old and the young, but also of men and women, rich, middle class and poor. The partisan gap, however, is huge. Many Democrats say that they feel unsafe in their communities; are worried about getting sick from COVID; and believe the virus poses a significant risk to their children, parents and friends. Republicans are less worried about each of these issues. So who is right? Not surprisingly there is no single answer to that question as I alluded to in detail back in October [Facebook, 10/30/21] when I wrote the lengthy article on COVID becoming endemic. Different people have different attitudes regarding risk. Some find driving in a snowstorm to be an acceptable risk but others do not. Neither is necessarily wrong. But polling does show that many, if not most, Americans have adopted at least some irrational beliefs about COVID.

In our highly politicized country many people seem to be allowing partisanship to influence their beliefs and sometimes to overwhelm scientific evidence. Millions of Republican voters have decided that downplaying COVID is core to their identity as conservatives, even as their skepticism of vaccines means that the virus is killing many more Republicans than Democrats. Where on the other hand, millions of Democrats have decided that organizing their lives around COVID is core to their identity as progressives, even as ongoing or repeated pandemic isolation and disruption are fueling mental health problems, drug overdoses, violent crime, rising blood pressure and growing educational inequality. As one infamous gun-control advocate [David Hogg] tweeted last year, “The inconvenience of having to wear a mask is more than worth it to have people not think I’m a conservative.” No where is this dichotomy more clearly seen than around the vaccine. The COVID vaccines have been and remain remarkably effective at preventing serious illness. If one is vaccinated, one’s chances of getting severely ill are extremely low. Even among people 65 and older, the combination of the vaccines’ efficacy and the Omicron variant’s relative mildness means that COVID now appears to present no more danger than a normal or severe flu to them. For the unvaccinated, however, COVID is worse than ANY common virus. It has already killed 882,000 Americans, the overwhelming majority unvaccinated. But when you consider the level of worry about getting sick that Americans have when viewed by vaccination status you find that among the Unvaccinated only 14% are “very worried,” 25% are “somewhat worried,” 29% are “not too worried,” and a whopping 27% are “not at all worried!” Among the Vaccinated but no Booster 22% were “very worried,” 39% were “somewhat worried,” 26% were “not too worried,” and just 11% were “not at all worried.” Lastly, among the Vaccinated with a Booster: 22% were “very worried,” 46% were “somewhat worried,” 25% were “not too worried,” and 6% were “not at all worried.” This is a remarkable disconnection between perception and reality. While the majority of those vaccinated and boosted say they are worried about getting deathly sick from COVID, the truth is riding in their car presents a greater danger to them. On the other hand, the majority of the unvaccinated say they are not particularly worried. And the starkest, saddest way to understand the irrationality of this view is to actually listen to the regret of the unvaccinated people who are desperately sick from COVID or who have watched loved ones die from it. A California prosecutor famously said last month, “There’s nothing that matters more than our freedoms right now,” at an anti-vaccine rally. She died of COVID earlier this month.

By the same token, I know that some Democrats believe that their approach — with their emphasis on minimizing any COVID risks — comes with little downside. But the polls also call into question much of their argument … especially when it comes to children. One of the few areas that the poll respondents, both Democrats and Republicans, agree on is a widespread concern that pandemic disruptions are harming their children. People are right to be worried, too. Three medical groups — representing pediatricians, child psychiatrists and children’s hospitals — recently declared “a national emergency in child and adolescent mental health.” And beyond that, the worst effects have been on black and Latino children, as well as children in high-poverty schools.

Many Democrats are effectively dismissing these costs and instead focusing on the minuscule risks of COVID hospitalization or long COVID among children. Most Democrats, for example, say they favor moving classes online in response to Omicron, despite widespread evidence that remote schooling has failed and little evidence that shutting down schools leads to fewer COVID cases. Closed schools certainly do more damage to children and vaccinated adults than Omicron does. Democrats like to think they are the party that respects science and evidence, and on several issues such as vaccines and perhaps even climate change they may be right. But just because something is usually true doesn’t mean it always is. On COVID, both political tribes really do seem to be struggling to read the evidence objectively. And as a result, the country is suffering thousands of preventable deaths every single week while also accepting a preventable crisis of isolation that’s falling particularly hard on our country’s children. So I hope this helps … regardless of exactly where you may fall on the political spectrum … at least I hope it makes you think and perhaps reconsider any deeply held beliefs about the virus that may not actually be based in reality. But more than anything else it is both my hope and my prayer that it can perhaps provide a patch of common ground that we all can find a way to move beyond our partisan differences and come together on.

So on to what’s new. Many of you have expressed your care and concern as well as sending your best wishes this past week as I finally have gotten to experience the virus from the patient’s perspective. Today as I write this it has been ten days since my symptoms began. I like so many others was the victim of a false negative rapid antigen test which delayed my diagnosis by a day and strangely by the time I found out I was actually positive I had already turned the corner. For me, Omicron was really not much different than the recent cold I had right after Christmas [I was positive for Rhinovirus by PCR] which actually lasted almost three weeks. Omicron only made me fairly sick for about 12 hours on the Friday afternoon/evening the week before last with fever, myalgia and malaise causing me to basically sleep for the next 14 hours. By Saturday when I went for PCR testing I had already turned the corner. I deferred ordering one of those precious and few boxes of Paxlovid that we have in our community preferring to save it for one more in need and instead quarantined with my wife at our new beach home on Ochlockonee Bay for a week [hey it’s tough but someone has to do it] and plan to re-enter life tomorrow providing I retest negative today [actually my swab was collected yesterday]. I have been blessed by God no question and am grateful for the magic immunity [although not perfect] provided by three doses of the mRNA vaccines and probably some immunity built up from well over one hundred exposures to the virus over the past two years. I guess it was bound to happen eventually and better to have faced the fury of Omicron rather than that of Delta.

So far as Omicron goes … it seems to be in recession over most of the country already [as forecast] as well as in our neck of the woods. Our phone calls started decreasing perhaps 10-14 days ago, though we still have patients testing positive every day [including four yesterday]. That, however, doesn’t mean the horror show has begun to recede yet … on the contrary, deaths have surged this past week reaching 3,895 on Wednesday surpassing the peak level of death that we saw in January 2021 [3,400 deaths/day at peak] as the mass vaccination campaign was beginning to roll out. By comparison, the Delta variant topped out at 2,000 deaths/day … a threshold that Omicron reached last week. So look for Omicron to be the most deadly strain of all as predicted just due to its supreme contagiousness. And now I hear there has been isolated in France a variant of Omicron that is almost twice as contagious [how is that even possible??? … since measles and Omicron share the title of most contagious viruses ever]. This virus is not going to be called Pi however, but Omicron BA.2 … go figure. If you insult it like that, it may just decide to kill us all. BA.2 … really! Maybe they really mean BE A OMICRON TOO!!! But I diverge … hopefully all this herd immunity that Omicron has built up in the population will hold BA.2 in check. It doesn’t seem to end though. And why would it? It has apparently already spread to forty countries [including the U.S. Britain, Denmark where it is now accounting for 40% of the cases, India, Sweden and Norway]. And before you get too comfortable … just know there is a BA.3 as well. Yes, Omicron is a triplet virus … all three are sub-variants of each other … each different in a few loci but all related to each other. BA.3 is seems to be the runt of the litter. I guess he gets what ever is left over. BA.2 apparently spreads faster but it would seem that BA.1 got the first plane out of South Africa and had a head start attacking the world. So while it may help to be uber contagious, sometimes you just need a break in life [even if you’re just a virus]. But don’t worry, the other two are coming!!! Seriously though, so long as vulnerable people remain out there we will be dealing with COVID in one form or another, perhaps for a very long time.

So on to where exactly we stand as of today. The rapid spread of Omicron BA.1 has clearly peaked in the United States and did so on January 18 with a startling 1,178,403 new cases in a single day [and please recall as I’ve stated weekly now for over a month that these numbers above and to follow are serious undercounts as they do not include people testing at home and the high false negative rate for rapid antigen tests vs. this variant]. We are now seeing nationally on average 484,497 new cases per day … so well below 50% of just where we were 10 days ago. The case positivity rate nationally is down to 25.0%. In Florida the numbers look similar where we are now down to 30,606 new cases yesterday from a peak of 66,669 nineteen days ago. That, too, is less than half of where we just were just 2.5 weeks ago. The statewide positivity rate also fell [for the first time since Omicron arrived] last week to 29.3%. Locally in Leon County we are down to an average of 600 new cases per day over the past week from a peak of 889 new cases per day last week … a 32% drop. However, our case positivity rate remains very high at 28%. For my recently adopted other home county of Wakulla, they averaged 73 new cases per day over the past week, down from 94 last week, a 22% decrease. And finally, the case positivity rate in Wakulla County also remains very high at 32% and still climbing. We have lagged behind the rest of the state by about 7-10 days throughout, since Omicron started in South Florida when it arrived in the state.

It is when we get to discussing the “lagging” indicators that the story starts to get especially grim. The hospitalization rate in the US seems to have just crested at 146,069 patients with 25,624 in the ICU [on January 22, there were 151,070 inpatients nationally with 26,110 in the ICU]. Locally we are running a hospital census of roughly 200 inpatients over the past week with some daily fluctuations. This amounts to a 33% increase from last week and a 144% increase over the past two weeks. It is the burgeoning death totals that are most staggering for Omicron as feared … and this is not primarily because it is so virulent [it is not … perhaps 30% less so that Delta] but because it is so very contagious. You can just tell by the raw numbers of people infected by this strain that this was bound to happen even if it was thankfully less virulent than its predecessors. This past Wednesday we recorded 3,895 deaths in a single day. This breaks the record we set this time last year by almost 800 patients. In fact, we have just about averaged the peak daily death total for the original coronavirus when it was at it’s absolute worst for this entire week. Those numbers are still climbing so it is quite sobering. And again, the vast majority of these patients are unvaccinated. So far as the state of Florida goes we are losing on average now 320 patients per day and our cumulative death toll stands at 64,955 as of today. Locally in Leon County, we have lost at least 10 patients [including one of my most favorite patients] to Omicron [cumulative death count is 540] and Wakulla County has lost 3 [cumulative total is 109 patients]. I do expect these numbers to continue to rise for the next 3-4 weeks or so.

On the brighter side, I do think Omicron provides those of us “fortunate” enough to be afflicted with an excellent form of “natural immunity.” I think coupled with the mRNA vaccination immunity for the original coronavirus it only pads our defenses against what is still to come. You may have heard that Moderna began testing a booster vaccine against specifically the Omicron variant this past week and Pfizer has a similar vaccine in development. So for those of you who are able to dodge Omicron [and my hat is off to you if you can] it won’t be too much longer before you can join us with this new form of “hybrid” immunity. That is it for this week. I do hope you will carefully consider what I discussed in the first portion of this update and reconsider some convictions that you may have regarding COVID that are just factually incorrect and let’s all see if we can find a meeting place in the middle that will better help us to get through all of this together rather than on opposite sides screaming at each other.