Large Fierce Mammal

INTRODUCTION

“Cracks in the Foundation” refers to those parts of the societal fabric so rickety that they have widened to the point where most can no longer be plugged even by something as magnificently huge as the ass of the elephant in the room.

It is these that have attracted the investigative efforts of the LFM Home Office Of Pestilential and Legal Affairs (HOOPLA), and what you will read today is but a small result of the ongoing efforts of that august body.

Before we begin, I will put before you, Goode Reader, the following three axioms that I will posit as True:

1. In the course of a long life, the Wise Man will be prepared to abandon his luggage several times.
2. In pursuit of happiness, do not offer disrespect to anyone who will be cutting your hair or handling your food.
3. If your customers don’t complain about your prices now and then, you aren’t charging enough.

PREVIOUSLY ON “CRACKS IN THE FOUNDATION“

Cracks in the Foundation — The Matter of a “Living Wage”: Part the First

Cracks in the Foundation — The Matter of a “Living Wage”: Part the Second

Cracks in the Foundation — The Grand Beta Test: Part the First

PROLOGUE

be·ta test

noun

a trial of machinery, software, or other products, in the final stages of its development, carried out by a party unconnected with its development.

verb

subject (a product) to a beta test.
“the system was still being beta-tested for practical music applications”

Definition from Oxford Languages

The Grand Beta Test is yet another subset of our greater Cracks in the Foundation series. What you will read today is the second episode of that subset which deals with the development and deployment of vaccines for “immunization” against COVID-19, government involvement and salesmanship, spin doctors, and societal division.

TODAY’S BROADCAST

Source here.

“In addition to a pandemic of multimorbidity, what we might have on our hands is a pandemic of great expectations. Aldous Huxley said that, ‘Medical science has made such tremendous progress that there is hardly a healthy human left.’ I find that many of my patients have rather lofty and unrealistic expectations of how they should feel at all times. And if circumstances lead to their not feeling well, their doctors should certainly be able to ‘fix’ the problem. We likely have only ourselves to blame for raising peoples’ expectations beyond what we can deliver.” ~ Pandemic of great expectations, Laura Muldoon, MD CCFP

Immunology is a branch of biology that covers the study of immune systems in all organisms. In the medical context, this applies to how the human immune system operates in sickness and in health, how and what happens when it fails to operate properly, and means by which it may be lent a hand. In the “lent a hand” category, and of specific importance to the matter under consideration, this will  most prominently include devising methodologies and treatments, including vaccines, against contagious organisms known to cause chronic disease.

But first, indulge me in a brief diversion.

There is an unfortunate phenomenon that afflicts references to the form of dementia named after Dr. Alois Alzheimer, and arises from a combination of a failure to recognize Alzheimer as a surname, and validating the misinterpretation with the common knowledge that the condition normally afflicts seniors — those 65 and older. What this brings us is conversational exchanges like this:

“Did you hear about Margaret’s husband?”

“No, what happened to him?”

“He’s got the old-timers!”

While wrong, disappointingly persistent, and arguably inconsiderate to its namesake, this all too common error in language still clearly and consistently refers to the actual condition of Alzheimer’s Disease, and as such has no real effect for good or ill when used in daily nonclinical conversation between adults, even with people who know better. In this it differs sharply from other linguistic errors — errors of meaning — in which the actual word or term used is consistently spelled and spoken correctly, but its meaning varies depending on who utters it. This is far from harmless as it lends itself to laziness and other base manifestations of human conduct, whether self-absolved, happily received when excused by the words and examples of others, or both.

“Avoid using the word ‘very’ because it’s lazy. A man is not very tired, he is exhausted. Don’t use very sad, use morose. Language was invented for one reason boys – to woo women – and in that endeavour, laziness will not do.” ~ John Keating, Dead Poets Society

Consistency of meaning is one of the vital glues holding civil society together, and one I would posit needs must be robustly defended!

“One in pursuit of knowledge, and who finds a Teacher, has every reasonable grounds to expect that all messages conveyed therefrom will converge on sometimes dimly lit trails leading to a desired outcome.

“The point to grasp from this is that for Communication to be Real requires that the sender and recipient come to be in possession of the singular, accept no substitutes, INTENDED message, whether they like it or not.

“So, returning to politicians and bureaucrats, we find a culture that never stops messaging, but at the same time never actually Communicates, for to do so would necessitate commitment to a demonstrable Truth. Better to speak with faux conviction couched in terms that will leave an audience of a thousand people nodding their heads and stroking their chins, each believing they possess a total understanding of the message, but unknowing theirs is different from that taken away by each of the other 999.

“In this, we get something that’s more stage magic than Communication.

“This outcome requires a willingness on the part of the recipient to disregard all but the most superficial, feelings based, ‘evidence’ of how things ‘must’ be, and look no further ….” ~ The Bullshitter’s Grimoire

With this in mind, let us return to Immunology and look now at those most justifiably lauded of its children; vaccines.

Whatever the technology by which a vaccine is developed and the processes by which it acts upon the human immune system, all vaccines share a common purpose — to bolster its response when faced with a specific threat.

When one receives a vaccine by whatever means it is designed to be delivered, it is said that they have been “vaccinated”, or alternatively and still correctly, “inoculated”. However, to call them “immunized” as a generality is taking the accomplishment quite a bit too far.

While some vaccines do produce actual immunity to whatever undesirable condition is caused by their targeted contagion, and while their influence persists, those who have received them become truly immune, this may not be life-long. Vaccines with a limited period of efficacy commonly require a “booster” at intervals calculated to maintain the desired level of protection, and insofar as it can be said amid the certainty of uncertainties, those for whom it holds sway can legitimately be called “immunized”. In this, their effect is similar to, although often not quite as robust as, the naturally occurring “immunity” bestowed by the unassisted immune system of one who contracts and survives the condition absent inoculation for it.

Still other vaccines act to decrease the severity of debilitating or lethal outcomes, but for reasons relating to the known realities of the organism they are engineered to combat, do not guarantee defense against at least some level of symptomatic infection. At the present time, all vaccines on offer in Canada as defense against severe manifestation of COVID-19 fall into this group, and in this they are not unique. While it is caused by a different class of organism acting in different ways, the annually offered influenza vaccine comes with the same performance restrictions, and for the same reasons — recipients may or may not get flu, and of those that do, outcomes will be affected by a range of unpredicables including, but far from limited to, patient fragility, unique vulnerabilities, and the variant or strain of the organism by which they come to be infected.

EPILOGUE

None of this is new, and vaccines operating in both realms are commonplace. Yet somehow with this latest pestilence, a pall of forgetting has descended upon the land, and all is glimpsed as through a glass dumbly. Vaccination has become synonymous with immunity and thereby salvation, so that arising out of the middle of it all, born of great expectations, despair, misleading vividness, ideology, and messianic machinations, comes another societal class distinction to pry at the cracks in the foundation.

We’ll finish that thought next time Goode Reader.