Alfred Dawes | Argument done fi real

“We have been handed a deus ex machina in the form of the omicron strain and the available tools to successfully treat those with mild disease and decrease the progression to severe disease. I am willing to bet my career that this is the ‘hand of God’.”

Those words from an article I penned a few weeks ago seemed like a catchy ending to me at the time. Little did I know that my stance would impact my credibility and hence career as a doctor. Immediately the comments on social media from the armchair experts started stinging. Words like “quack”, “idiot” and “dangerous” were thrown around. As the journalists began to call, I either had to backtrack quickly or dig into what was becoming an increasingly alienated position.

It is not that yours truly was alone in thinking that the omicron strain was a blessing in disguise due to its mostly mild symptoms and high transmission rate, but many were just too tired to continue to challenge the official narrative. To come out and say that this wave should not be treated with further lockdowns and heightened measures was heresy, especially from a medical doctor. While it was easy to ignore the noise on social media from the Google-search-doctors, it was the counterarguments from the experts that had me doubting my own research at some point. For them, the future was doom and gloom.

As omicron was so contagious, the mathematical models predicted that even with a low death rate, it would lead to a run on the hospitals that would collapse the healthcare system within days. At the predicted peak, which I suspect we have already passed, we would have been seeing 10 to 15 deaths per day. While every death is regrettable, in a pandemic we must celebrate less people dying than what was expected. And we have done extremely well over the past few weeks. Our severely ill and death tallies are far better than the experts predicted.

ATTACKING RELENTLESSLY

Of note, we did this without any tightening of the existing measures, a call made by Prime Minister Andrew Holness that resulted in the trained and uninitiated experts attacking him relentlessly. I imagine the doubt that must have crept into his mind that the argument was not in fact done, when the hospitalisation rates started to go up and hospitals went into emergency mode. Holness must have had decent advisers who sifted through the data and recommended he stay the course. The hospitalisation rate was increasing not because there was a rush of sick patients requiring hospital care as with the previous spikes. There was a significant number of patients who had sought care for other conditions and were found to be COVID-19-positive. They were then pushed into packed COVID wards with their broken bones, gunshot wounds and a host of other maladies and counted as hospitalised COVID-19 patients. There was no category called “buck up” in the information released describing hospitalised patients.

This was not surprising, as with a positivity rate as high as 70 per cent in the general population, the patients drawn from that population must have a high positivity rate as well when they are tested in hospitals. So, the distressed cries of packed COVID wards never reflected the expected reality on the ground. Oxygen usage never correlated with admissions the way they did in previous waves. Intensive Care Unit admissions and deaths never followed in the predictable lag time. The deaths that were promised if we did not cancel face-to-face classes and go back to lockdowns never materialised.

In one interview my co-panellist implied that it was naïve of me to equate the relatively benign surges in countries with higher vaccination rates with what would happen locally with our 21 per cent vaccination rate. After all, the vaccines do protect from severe disease and death. I, however, had at my disposal adequate information as to the similarly milder symptoms in the unvaccinated patients in countries with surges. That argument is also done. The unfortunate thing is that those who were scaremongering and lambasting the prime minister’s “inaction” are now laying low as their false prophecies are laid bare, waiting for the time when memory lapses will once more render them experts and seers.

ADJUST TO A NEW LIFE

What we are witnessing is the end of two years of fears, divisions and hardship. There are brighter days ahead and we need to adjust to a new life with COVID-19 not being as disruptive as it was previously. Schools will need to catch up on the missed semesters and businesses will bounce back if they were resilient enough to survive. We are stronger now. We have learned valuable lessons. Time with loved ones is more precious than anything money can buy. Adaptation is the key to survival in business. Opportunities present themselves in any crisis and information is the key that opens these doors when opportunity knocks.

We must never forget these lessons and must live our lives guided by them. If we can now put aside the divisions created and unite to destroy the common intestine enemy, violent crime, then we can truly achieve our dreams of having a great country in which we are comfortable living.

It is not completely over, but I’m seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. This dangerous quack is once again betting his career that it is the light of hope, and better days.

- Dr Alfred Dawes is a fellow of the American College of Surgeons, CEO of Windsor Wellness Centre, and medical spokesman for Lifespan Spring Water. Follow him on Twitter @dr_aldawes. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and adawes@ilapmedical.com.