I haven’t had a cold since 2019

Herersquos an odd fact I havenrsquot had a cold since 2019In fact I havenrsquot had a cold since my birthday in May 2017 That time I had a raw throat which quickly evolved into fever and a runny nose laying me low for a few days We had not yet reached that era when those symptoms would make us run masked and breathless for an RTPCR testI could tell you that I fend off colds easily because of the 2000 mg of vitamin C I pop every morning but Irsquod be lying No evidence suggests that regular intake of vitamin C prevents anythingPerhaps I have a strong immune system as far as colds go But this does not explain why so many other people also did not catch a cold during the pandemic In fact they didnrsquot get the flu either The USA Centers for Disease Control and Prevention logged only 1316 flu cases between September 2020 and the end of January 2021 compared to nearly 130000 cases in the same period a year earlierYou might point out that most people stayed home during the pandemic anyway Nearly everyone wore masks and washed their hands obsessively All viruses not just COVID19 would have had a tougher time distributing themselvesAlso Read Betrayal by five eminent personalitiesYou would be right but you would be missing the point For the planet the pandemic years were a time of intense learning and lessons We learnt about ourselves our health our humanity our science about lies and liars and greed and politics and arrogance and sacrificeI want to put down just a few things that became clear to meHuman beings are very clever I find it entirely incredible that within months of the pandemicrsquos start we were racing towards not one but several vaccines True pharmaceutical greed and opportunism as well as political calculus might have powered those efforts but that doesnrsquot dilute the achievement We rose to the challenge Millions got vaccinated and improved their chances of staying alive Irsquom one of them having survived two mild bouts of COVID19Science is not the last word COVID19 improved my appreciation of science but also exposed its egoism and hypocrisy Far from being objective it is as manipulable as anything else humans touch Like everyone I was blitzed with misinformation unable to discern conspiracies from facts People wanted hard and fast answers not the fluid and evolving ones science offeredFinally I maxed out on science and gave up Too many ldquoevidencebasedrdquo studies contradicted each otherWHO isnrsquot God The worldrsquos premier health oversight body is arrogant its science driven by its ego Dozens of respected scientists repeatedly told WHO that their dissemination model was wrong that the virus spread through the air and aerosols WHO stuck on fomites or surfaces where the virus could lie in wait dismissed them and issued misleading guidelines It was months before they ate humble piePeople prefer a consistent lie to an everchanging truth Science sticks to provable facts Itrsquos a pity that those facts evolve with new data But when the dragon is in front of you breathing fire and snarling you want certainties not sketchy updates I have good perplexed friends who finally dismissed vaccines as diabolical promoted Ivermectin an antiparasitic drug used to treat horses and believed they could prevent infection with hydroxychloroquine a drug promoted by Americarsquos clown president Donald TrumpThe Lancet isnrsquot God I learnt that even a technicalsounding peerreviewed paper published in The Lancet could be a fraud In February 2020 a group of reputed scientists led by Peter Daszak chief of EcoHealth Alliance a USbased research organisation strongly condemned ldquoconspiracy theoriesrdquo and asserted that the dominant scientific opinion was that the virus had ldquooriginated in wildliferdquo Mr Daszak forgot to mention his conflict of interest he had been working closely with the Wuhan scientists to fasttrack SARSCoV2 to its deadliest form known as gainoffunction researchDonrsquot trust the media I have never thought very highly of the media and the pandemic cemented that view I learned that the media is where lies and bullshit go to flourish I also saw where the light of ethical investigative reporting still burned strong Think New York TimesPerception is reality No one wears masks in India anymore and hardly any do in Thailand where I live People are just not dropping dead in hundreds any longer Perhaps we have built up our immune defences maybe the virus has neutered itself but at the moment life seems livable and normalWhy then havenrsquot the media and the politicians stopped sounding their dire predictions and alarm bellsI understand that there are people and corporations that grow rich when the rest of us live in fear whether of people who worship in mosques or of viruses I remember when HIV was the monster but now I see they have a new one In future I will choose what to fear and whenIn the meantime I still havenrsquot caught a coldYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper