Open to Hope

A year or so ago I took the 5 personality traits assessment—Dr. Jordan Peterson’s version, at UnderstandMyself.com, to learn about myself. Mr. Spherical Model took it too, so we could understand each other better. 

word cloud on openness, screen shot from here

I think I’m pretty self-aware, but there were some surprises. One was that I am moderately low in neuroticism. The words don’t mean exactly the everyday meanings. In this case, it doesn’t mean I’m free from anxiety and worry (people who know me well would say, “obviously”). But it does mean I tend to be positive and hopeful. And I measured nearly average in extroversion, rather than extremely low, which I would have expected. I’m a classic introvert, but I’m not shy, so I guess that’s how this comes out.

The other surprise, because I am clearly conservative in many senses of the word, is that I am extremely high in openness. Higher than all but a few in a hundred.

My assessment tells me: “The closest synonym for openness is creativity,” which I am in some limited ways, I think. But there’s also this that doesn’t seem to fit me: “High levels of openness are, furthermore, necessary for entrepreneurial success, and often prove useful at the top of hierarchies, even in very conservative occupations such as banking, accounting and law, which need creative people in leadership positions to provide new vision and direction.”

I don’t prefer to be at the top of a hierarchy; I don’t want to be low either. I prefer to be independent when possible. I guess a whole combination of other personality things come into play. I am willing to restructure when needed, and lead when I must.

But I do notice one thing about my openness: I don’t dismiss very many ideas out of hand. I explore ideas. I like working with the abstract. I like making connections that maybe aren’t obvious to others.

One of the places openness has shown up in my life is in healthcare. I’ve experienced a lot of, shall we say, disappointing healthcare during my lifetime. I’m, right now, in good health, but it’s a razor edge. If I eat a wrong thing; if I fail to get enough sleep; if I breathe in some pollen, mold, perfume, or whatever; if the weather suddenly changes—then I’m no longer fully functional. No little errors or vices allowed.

Moses raises the brass serpent
image found here

I’ve come to this relatively good health after a series of doctors have made pretty bad errors. That has left me less than trusting of standard medicine, and surprisingly open to trying things that are non-standard. I don’t want to talk about what those are; I don’t want the conversation to be about any of those particular things. The point is, because I’ve been open to some “weird” things, I’m pretty healthy—and mostly quite a lot healthier than people my age. Low blood pressure, not overweight, good skin, healthy heart, low cholesterol.

I think of it as something like the Bible story during Moses’s time, when there were poisonous snakes (fiery serpents, Numbers 21:6-9[i]). The people were told to look up at the staff prepared by Moses as God directed—a pole with a brass serpent on it, now a symbol for healing medicine. People who didn't look refused because of the simpleness; such a thing couldn’t possibly help. They didn’t want to be duped.

There’s another story in the Old Testament, 2 Kings 5. A Syrian called Naaman came to the prophet Elisha for healing. Elisha didn’t even come out to see him personally but sent a message telling him to bathe in the River Jordan seven times. He couldn’t understand how that could help, and he wasn’t going to do it. But his servant said, essentially, “If you’d been told to do something great, you’d have done it, right?” Yes. If he couldn't get a direct immediate healing, then he ought to have been asked to do something important, something of consequence. Anyway, Naaman was humble enough to be persuaded, did the simple thing that didn’t seem to make sense, and was healed.

Naaman washes in Jordan seven times
screenshot from video Naaman and Elisha, found here

I don’t want to miss out on something because of too much skepticism. I don’t want to say, “That would never work,” as though I already know everything, just because I can’t yet see how it could work.

Last week I had a brief interaction online with someone who I surmise was very low in openness. This happened when a friend read the story about a study that showed hydroxychloroquine was not working and could even be harming patients. As others have pointed out since, there were a lot of problems with that study, which I had questions about immediately based on what I’d read. But my friend had said, “So much for that idea,” giving up hope for that treatment possibility.

One of the obvious things about the study was that it didn’t combine hydroxychloroquine with both Zithromax and zinc. Zinc didn’t come into it at all. So I shared the video I mentioned April 6^th of a NY doctor who had treated around 700 patients, all successfully, using the three in combination.

That doctor was interviewed by Rudy Giuliani. Someone responded to my comment that we couldn’t possibly believe that doctor, because Giuliani is a shrill for President Trump, totally partisan. Giuliani is the former Mayor of New York City. He has plenty of connections there. He has an online podcast on which he interviews people. He interviewed Dr. Vladimir Zelenko. I do not know the doctor’s political affiliation; since he is in NYC, I could guess with 80% accuracy that he votes Democrat. Who knows? It didn’t come up. It wasn’t relevant. They were talking about his data, how he got it, what he’d seen in his actual patients, how he came to combine the three things.

I was simply trying to engender hope. So I responded to the comment that there was other good news. I shared the story about Dr. Robin Armstrong, who had very good success treating residents of a nursing home in Galveston.

This commenter, whom I don’t know, came back and said we can't believe that, because Dr. Armstrong is a Republican activist. He is, in fact, a former state committeeman, which the Dallas news report mentioned, even though it wasn’t relevant to the story. He’s not a Republican doctor; he’s a doctor who happens to be a Republican. Did I find that the story was good news because he was a Republican?

I did happen to know who Dr. Armstrong was; I have heard him speak several times in person, and I find him calm, reasonable, and believable as a person. But I would have found the story to be good news even if he had been a doctor I’d never heard of before.

I don’t ask the political affiliation of my doctors before I decide whether to accept their advice.

Which is what I then told that commenter. He came back at me as the one who had made this political by only providing stories that were spewed by partisan hacks.

Really? I made it partisan? I’ve collected other good news stories. But I did not further comment. This person was not willing to allow me to be hopeful about a treatment unless he approved first. I don’t need to submit to that.

It happens that I had become aware of—and hopeful about—hydroxychloroquine prior to any mention of it by the president. I had been writing about it March 19th, the day the president first mentioned it in his daily press conference. There were stories out of France and South Korea about its use. What we’re getting since is additional trial and error. Clinical trials are underway. I’m still hopeful about the hydroxychloroquine used in combination with both zinc and Z-pac. And there are other promising treatments being developed as well.

Back in March I read a story about how, during the 1918 flu pandemic, patients were treated outside when possible, and these patients seemed to heal quicker. There’s speculation about why: cleaner air, sunshine, some combination. The story speculated that maybe there’s something useful here for this current pandemic. Some comments following the article called it quackery, and called the author’s credentials into question. Other comments were supportive. Several said when they shared it on Facebook, it was removed. There’s a notice above the article that the publisher doesn’t fact check, and sends me to cdc.gov for accurate coronavirus info. Nevertheless, I tucked that story away as something hopeful to wait and see if more information might come out.

Camp Brooks emergency open-air hospital in Boston, 1918 influenza.
National Archives photo, included in this story

Last week, there was an announcement of studies showing that sunlight killed the coronavirus. Exposure to sunlight for a minute or two was enough. 

It’s not like sunshine as a disinfectant is a new idea. It’s been around long enough to be a useful metaphor for curing corruption of all sorts.

April 23, 2020 daily briefing, announcement about
heat, humidity and sunlight affecting SARS-CoV-2
screenshot found here

Anyway, this good news came up in the daily press briefing. Following the doctors’ explanation about this study and other things (heat and humidity also help against the virus), the President follows up with encouraging words. And, because he is who he is and says unscripted things, he uses the word “disinfectant,” talking about the possibility of using UV rays (sunlight) to treat Covid-19 in the lungs. Result: internet and media explosion.

I heard the briefing live; I was very pleased to know that leaving something in the sun for a few minutes was enough to kill off the virus. Yay! And when the President spoke, about using UV light inside, my thought was, “That’s an out-of-the-box idea,” but not necessarily a loony one. I was open to wait and see.

Dr. Birx, the expert we’re listening to for all things Covid-19, seemed unaware, but a few days earlier Aytu BioScience issued a press release about its work on using UV light in the lungs to treat Covid-19.  It is my assumption that this press release info had made its way into the President’s consciousness, but not Dr. Birx’s. And not the media’s.

Healight, explanation video on UVA treatment possibility.
screenshot from here

I haven’t seen whether President Trump has done a personality assessment. But I would guess that he is very high in openness. Reports from those who have talked with him personally are that he listens intently; he is curious and takes in as much information as he can get. After that, he confidently makes a decision about what actions to take.

There was nothing in what President Trump said that wasn’t related to UV rays as a disinfectant. Take a look at the transcript.[ii] If you heard “disinfectant” and thought only of Lysol and Clorox, and “inject” and thought only of a needle—not that light the dentist “injects” into your mouth to cure the material used in your filling, or not the scope the gastroenterologist “injects” to view your intestines during a colonoscopy—that is your failure to see things in more than one limited way.

Maybe the media tends to be low on the openness scale. That’s unfortunate, since curiosity and desire to learn ought to be hallmarks of that profession. Maybe it’s purposeful misunderstanding out of malice.

Nevertheless, I look forward to the possibility of learning whether researchers have success in treating this and other internal infections with UV light.

I am open to hope.

I’m hopeful that an effective treatment—or several—will be found sooner, rather than later.

I’m hopeful that we will accumulate even more mounting evidence that this virus is nowhere near as dangerous as originally thought, and it will eventually be seen as something on par with a bad flu year. That’s on top of the actual flu, so still a concern. But not a danger so ferocious that we must shut down the world and cower in our homes until we starve.

I’m hopeful that we will be able to open up again soon. Very soon. I think many places should have done so by now. We may need to take some precautions for a while, but I’m hopeful that we can find creative ways to do whatever hygiene is necessary while getting back to work.

If you’re not hopeful about these things, maybe that’s a difference in personality trait and you can’t help it. But I would ask, until you can replace one of my hopes with something equally useful, stop insisting that I shouldn’t have these hopes just because they haven’t come out of mouths that meet your approval.

I’m not very hopeful our media can meet this request. Oh, well. I can at least keep tuning them out while I go about looking elsewhere for good news.

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[i] This story is mentioned a couple of times in the Book of Mormon, 1 Nephi 17:21, and Alma 38:18-22, adding respectively that “because of the simpleness of the way, or the easiness of it, there were many who perished” and “the reason they would not look is because they did not believe that it would heal them.”

[ii] I transcribed it for you: “So, I’ll ask a question, which some of you are probably thinking of, if you’re totally into that world, which I find to be very interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous—whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And [turning to one of the doctors] I think you said, that hasn’t been checked, but you’re going to test it? And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do, either through the skin or in some other way. And [turning again] I think you said you’re going to test that too? Sounds interesting. Right, and then I see the disinfectant—where it [the UV light] knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection, inside, or almost a cleaning. ‘Cause you see it gets in the lungs and does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that. So, that, you’re going to have to use medical doctors. But it sounds, it sounds interesting to me. So we’ll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute—that’s pretty powerful.”

Encouraging Words

I don’t like hearing, “You’re not good enough; you need to do more,” especially when it’s a group project. Like the one we’re all involved in.

We’ve been confined to home, with a few times venturing out to forage for food, for about 3 ½ weeks now—coincidentally how long we in our household have been confined because of Mr. Spherical Model’s broken ankle, which makes it easy to keep track. And we haven’t, until now, gotten anything like, “What a good job you’re doing! It’s working.” In fact, this week there’s extra pressure to add face-mask-wearing to the going out routine.

Also, someone asked Dr. Anthony Fauci the other day the question that we should have had on the table before shutting down the world economy: what has to happen before we can let up? Fauci’s answer was zero new cases and zero deaths.

This is why you don’t have experts make policy. Fauci’s side is the scientist side; he’s required (and requires himself) to give the absolute, scientific answer—as part of the information a decision-maker needs.

We don’t shut down the world economy indefinitely until there is no new incidence nor a single death. We didn’t shut it down for the flu, which causes 40,000+ deaths a year. We didn’t shut it down in the past for polio, or small pox, or measles. We didn’t shut it down for the Spanish flu in 1918—although that pandemic affected the economy on its own, and some areas were shut down. We didn’t shut it down for Ebola a few years ago.

Zero possible deaths is not a standard we typically base policy on. We don’t stop people from swimming, or boating, or hiking. We don’t stop people from driving. We don’t even stop people from driving over 25 mph, even though we can estimate how many more deaths will occur for each increment of higher speed. We set policy based on something more, which includes willingness of the people Because people need to make a living, go about our lives, and willingly face a certain level of risk.

So while Dr. Fauci is right about what he needs to say, policymakers also need a say. (We discussed this difference in thinking on March 30.)

For example, about hydroxychloroquine, Dr. Fauci points out that there have not been double-blind clinical studies to determine effectiveness, only anecdotal evidence. So he is not in a position to give the green light for that drug. But anecdotal evidence isn’t nothing.

Dr. Vladimir Zelenko,
interview with Rudy Giuliani March 26th,
screenshot from here

There’s a doctor, Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, a family practitioner in New York, interviewed by Rudy Giuliani on his show Common Sense, on March 26^th, with some significant anecdotal evidence. (Bill Whittle shares a 15-minute clip of this interview on his CoronaSphere Lounge , Episode11, March 30^th, which is where I saw it.)   

In New York, Dr. Zelenko has treated a plethora of coronavirus patients—699 by March 30^th. He had been using a combination of hydroxycholoquine with zinc supplements, plus azithromycin. The combination of the three had worked in 100% of sick patients. He only gave the drug to patients already struggling with the virus or who were at very high risk, not the ones who were clearly going to get over it on their own without drugs. Of these moderately severe patients, zero moved into the more serious illness of Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome, which requires intubation, and from which there’s only a 50% recovery rate. Zero of his patients have died. Three have needed hospitalization with pneumonia; zero needed intubation. The 3-drug protocol takes five days. It’s possible not all symptoms will be gone at that point, but the virus replication has been slowed to the point the body can fight it off without further complication.

Dr. Zelenko thinks that the hydroxycholoquine is not actually attacking the virus. Rather, the zinc is interfering with the virus’s replication process. But the zinc has trouble entering the cell without the hydroxycholoquine. Once the hydroxychloroquine creates a channel into the cell, the zinc enters and does its healing work against the virus. Meanwhile, the azithromycin, an antibiotic, is working on a secondary bacterial infection, which happens when the gunk builds up in the bronchial tubes and lungs.

All total, the treatment is about $20 per patient and can be done in an outpatient setting.

Dr. Zelenko’s results coincide with other doctors using the hydroxychloroquine. In France, hydroxychloroquine had been combined with azithromycin in the lab with 100% success. Doctors in France and South Korea, and also doctors in New York ICUs, were each using two of the three medicines, with moderate success. He used the combination of all three, with significant success.

Note that it was only March 19^th when President Trump suggested that the FDA allow hydroxychloroquine to be used in this off-label way, in clinical trials, to treat the virus. Dr. Zelenko offers his evidence on March 26^th, one week later. The speed with which we’re getting at ways to treat and test for this virus is remarkably swift.

So a policymaker can look at that, listen to Dr. Fauci, but then say, why not use this on people who need something and have nothing better to try? Would you take it, if it were you? Probably yes. And the more anecdotal evidence we get—despite the lack of a double-blind study—the more likely we are to say “definitely yes.”

[Speaking of “anecdotal" evidence, there’s this piece, possibly worth considering.] 

So, that’s how a policymaker thinks differently from a scientist. We need both. But the policymakers are the ones radically affecting our lives right now, while the scientists do their very important role in the background.

We were told to social distance at first. Then stay home, with nonessential businesses shut down, all of us hoping that doing this for a few weeks would make a big difference.

But it has been that long. And without testing of the whole population—and we need two kinds of tests: to find out who has the virus now, and to find out who has antibodies because they’ve already fought off the virus—we don’t know what’s working. In that black hole of missing data, we’re stuck at home with the economy crashing around us indefinitely.

So, is there another way to tell whether what we’re doing is working? It turns out there is.

I got this chart from Bill Whittle, who has been giving encouraging words lately. He got the info from Kinsa’s Healthweather.us.  

data on fevers, from Healthweather.us

This chart does not show Covid-19. It shows body temperatures. There are companies, such as Kinsa, that make “smart” thermometers. People take their temperature, and their information gets uploaded for mass data purposes. The data has been gathering for enough years that there’s a normal expected range for the months of the year. In our country, body temperatures rise during winter, coinciding with cold and flu season, and then go down to a summer low, and rise back up in the fall. So that’s the blue range on the chart.

If you look at the orange line, and the red dots, you can see the actual data compared to the expected data (the blue). Then look at the dates. When we started radically modifying our behavior, there’s a sharp decrease in body temperature—fewer fevers. That line pretty quickly drops below the expected level. Well below. Not only is the social distancing cutting down new fevers from coronavirus; it’s cutting down fevers from all sources to well below expected levels. In other words, what works to keep from transmitting coronavirus also works to keep from transmitting flu and colds, the typical causes of fever.

Then there’s another chart, showing places, with dates and events added—from the same source at Healthweather.us. This one compares Santa Clara, California, to Miami-Dade, Florida.

fever level comparisons of counties and California and Florida
screenshot from here

They have many of the same events happen, but with Florida most happen somewhat later. What you can see is that the drop off becomes significant after the community makes significant changes, with steepest drops after schools are closed, restaurants are closed, and stay-at-home orders are put in place.

Did something else happen, coinciding with those dates, following a similar pattern in different places, other than the social distancing we’ve been doing in reaction to the coronavirus? I don’t think so.

The evidence is strong that staying at home is having an effect.

Yay, us! We deserve a pat on the back. From ourselves, of course, since we don’t want anyone else getting close to us.

Keep up the good work! But not indefinitely. It’s not time to quit doing what we’re doing yet. But we need to be having a serious talk about when we can go back out—without causing a sudden resurgence, which would be a terrible outcome.

We could use a few miracles—pick any you like:

·       The virus miraculously disappears.

·       The virus greatly decreases in the summer months, affording us time to prepare for a second season of it in the fall—with all the testing and treatments we’ll need.

·       The virus is greatly weakened as it changes—a not uncommon mutation in viruses, which die off quickly when they kill their hosts, so they need to weaken in order to perpetuate.

·       A cure is developed, tested, and made standard for care.

·       Testing procedures—for both presence of virus and presence of antibodies—are quick, cheap, and widely available within the near future and for any future outbreak.

·       We’re so good at staying home and social distancing that the virus stops having hosts to spread to and dies a natural death.

This coming Friday, Good Friday, our Church invites everyone to join us in a worldwide fast. That means, typically, skipping two meals over twenty-four hours. (For example, you eat dinner Thursday evening, and then fast until dinner time Friday evening, when you can eat again.) Prayer during a fast can be more intentional, because you feel your weakness and thus your reliance on God. We hold a monthly fast, and donate the cost of the two meals to help the poor; feel free to do that. This is a special additional one. Note that, if your health doesn’t permit you to go that long without food, you can adjust your sacrifice to whatever you can do; your efforts and prayers will be acceptable to the Lord.

Illustration cred: Josh Asuncion
found on Facebook

In our modern world, there are so many ways we have managed to control the elements, we can sometimes forget our reliance on God. But I’ve had friends point out to me a couple of things. If the Lord wanted to use a calamity for good, how about having more time at home with families? And more, how about having people home together on Passover (Wednesday evening to Thursday evening), and even all Holy Week, including Easter Sunday?

We’ll miss getting together with our kids and grandkids for these days. But we’ve enjoyed some very sacred Sundays, meeting together as just the two of us. And we enjoyed a broadcast of a worldwide conference this past weekend. Spiritually, we’re doing better (dare I say it?)—because of the crisis.

Encouraging words are intended to instill courage. I’m glad we’re getting some of that. I pray it’s enough to fend off any more discouragement.