A Nurse's Story

I am a 67-year-old wife and mother of five, a non-practicing nurse with a BSN from the Medical College of Virginia/VCU. And I am COVID-unvaccinated. This is written for my children as an historical record of my thoughts and observations about the 2019 SARS-CoV-2 contagion that led to a worldwide pandemic in the ensuing two years. I want my children and grandchildren to remember that the decision not to take the experimental mRNA shot was carefully considered. It is a timeline of the development of some important vaccines and drugs over my lifetime, as well as events of the last two years, and is presented in segments for you to ponder your own conclusions. If you are reading this, one of my children thought you might find it interesting or useful, though I am not so naive as to think my evaluations are unique or even uncommon. Circumstances in our lives inform our opinions and choices. This is a record of the effect of memorable experiences and diligent research on my determinations and resolve. It has been impressed on me that this was perhaps the most remarkable event of my lifetime and that of my children. We have thankfully not experienced a world war, though our country was attacked on September 11, 2001. This act of terror changed much about our surveillance and security policies, leading to the loss of precious American lives and financial investment on foreign soil. But never in my experience has the entire globe been ensconced in the specter of a communicable illness that many believed could result in devastating loss of life and created unforeseen division and controversy. I do not need your agreement, but I do hope to convey my interest in the pursuit of the truth and respectful dialogue from all sides of the issues. My motto over the last two years has been this (it may seem trite but were it considered by all, would lead to better consensus): I don’t know. But at least I know that I don’t know. There are many who think they know but they don’t know. And they don’t know that they don’t know.

In the early 1930’s, my father was growing up in Indianapolis and he developed tuberculosis. Though penicillin had been discovered in 1928, there was no antibiotic treatment for TB until streptomycin was discovered in the mid 1940’s. The only therapy available in 1933 was time in a sanatorium with rest and healthful nutrition. The doctor told my grandmother her only recourse was to allow my dad to get lots of sunshine on his bare skin, hopefully causing his body to synthesize Vitamin D to boost his immune system. He remembered sitting on the city curb one cold day, shirtless, when he was approached by a neighbor woman who asked him if he had any clothes or an attentive mother. He recovered from tuberculosis. Early in the pandemic a study was done in Spain on persons hospitalized with Covid. Eighty percent had insufficient levels of Vitamin D. Numerous other studies have confirmed the risk of severe COVID directly correlates with low serum levels of Vitamin D.

In 1954, the year I was born, clinical trials on an inactivated-virus injected vaccine for polio was conducted on one million participants. Dr. Jonas Salk, drawing on research conducted by himself and others over a period of 20 years, announced his cure for polio at a press conference on April 12, 1955, my husband’s first birthday. The trials were the first to use a double-blind, placebo-controlled model which, until two years ago, became the immutable standard for all vaccines brought to market in the U.S. By 1963, Dr. Albert Sabin had developed an oral weakened-virus polio vaccine that was less expensive and easier to administer. Though there was a statistically insignificant chance of developing polio from this vaccine, it was widely distributed. In 2000, because of this tiny risk of contracting polio from the vaccine, the killed-virus injected vaccine returned. One of my clearest childhood memories is the night our family piled into our 1956 Chevy sedan and headed to the community building in Berryville, Virginia. The year was likely 1963. In the large room there was a table with trays of sugar cubes each holding several drops of the new vaccine. We quickly filed past, and everyone ingested the new cure for polio.

Nearly everyone who was alive in 1967 has a smallpox scar on his or her left deltoid. The vaccine injected there caused an ulcerous reaction that left a permanent reminder. Thanks to the work of an English doctor, Edward Jenner, who had discovered one hundred seventy-one years earlier that milkmaids exposed to cowpox did not develop smallpox, the disease was eventually eradicated worldwide. Even though there had been no cases in the U.S. since 1952, our country and the entire world was vaccinated against smallpox. It is imperative that those among us with healthy skepticism about COVID protocols should study the long history of the smallpox vaccine. The mass protests against forced vaccination that occurred in the late 1800’s is eerily similar to today’s events.

In the fall of 1974, I entered nursing school at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. The school had recently fallen under the auspices of Virginia Commonwealth University from which I have a diploma. But old-school pride dies hard. We were MCV grads. My hands-down favorite course in nursing school was biochemistry. I was one of those kids who asked for a microscope for Christmas. Watching yeast budding on a glass slide and examining things not visible to the naked eye was so very fascinating. Human biochemistry is beyond fascinating. The secretion of insulin in response to elevations of blood sugar, the Krebs cycle, transport of fluids through semi-permeable cell membranes, the effect of hormones on growth and fertility, the role of liver enzymes in the breakdown of protein, the antigen-antibody response…..well, I was mesmerized. But there is a standout memory from that class. During the virology segment, the professor announced with educated, experienced certainty that a virus cannot live longer than ten minutes on a surface.

I studied nursing in the shadow of the Thalidomide catastrophe. In the late 1950’s and early 60’s, a German drug manufacturer developed and released a sedative drug for morning sickness in pregnant women. Animal studies had been done but were later shown to be shoddy and incomplete. No pregnant animals were tested and the data was poorly reported. The drug was marketed in the UK as Distaval and by the late 50’s birth defects in correlation with use of the drug were obvious. Babies were born without arms or legs. I remember pictures of this tragedy in my OB/GYN rotation. It was horrifying. More disturbing is that before officials in the UK formally warned of the dangers in 1962, the drug had been given to doctors in the US as part of a clinical trial where they distributed it to patients and family members. The pharmaceutical company Richardson Merrell gave samples of the drug they called Thalidomide to these doctors and applied for approval from the FDA. By the time UK officials sounded the alarm and the FDA followed, an untold number of babies had been born with malformations. Where was the FDA during the interim several years when valid reports were available? How could pharmaceutical companies have so much discretionary power?

In August of 1976 I passed my state boards and became a licensed RN. Married and moving to Lancaster County, I accepted a job at Lancaster General Hospital. Because I had specialized in neuro-trauma in nursing school and had experience in critical care, I was asked to serve in Constant Care. I did not feel competent and learned much from my seasoned co-workers, whose patience was admirable. ICU work is stressful yet rewarding. Nurses are there when the doctors are not. They make immediate decisions based on knowledge and experience. They keep people alive. I worked a year of night shift and there was an occasion when one co-RN and myself were tasked alone with caring for ten critically ill patients. In the morning we were not particularly proud of our bedside care, but all ten patients were still alive. From that day until I left hospital work, I prayed every night on the drive into Lancaster that if I made a mistake, it would not kill someone. The role of medical personnel during the pandemic has been more than difficult. For those working in hospitals and nursing homes, it has been excruciatingly draining, even psychologically damaging. I am frustrated, even angry, by the hamstringing of doctors in their desire to provide flexible treatments and the blatantly criminal restrictions on the process by our government and corporate entities. I cannot but applaud those entrenched in that environment. Though working during a pandemic goes far beyond the highest level of medical care, I know that scene. I understand the human frailties involved. And yes, I know the definition of a “slow code.”

In 1976, the same year I started nursing practice, a young Army recruit at Fort Dix contracted a strange virus and after a rigorous training exercise, collapsed and died. More of his unit became ill and the virus was examined. Experts believed the genetic makeup of this new illness, the Swine Flu, closely resembled the virus that started the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and panic erupted. A vaccine was quickly developed, and President Ford promptly ordered all Americans to receive it. Twenty-two million people were inoculated until adverse reactions began to be observed. After 500 cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome and thirty-two deaths which were linked directly to the vaccine, the program was halted. At the end of 2021, there were over 21,000 deaths and over one million serious reactions to the Covid-19 vaccine as reported on the government Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). There is now a universal consensus that the Swine Flu vaccine was rushed to market. It is also known that the 1918 pandemic was caused by an H1N1 “with genes of Avian origin.” In 2009, the H1N1 virus claimed over 12,000 lives and was very similar to the ’76 virus but there was no panic. Incredibly, a February 2017 article in Smithsonian magazine entitled The Next Pandemic, lamented the fact that the Swine Flu debacle has served to foment vaccine hesitancy.

Early in 1979, after tiring of weekend and night work, I started a new position at the State Health Center in Lancaster as a public health nurse. We followed at-risk mothers and babies, operated vaccination and well-child clinics, tracked communicable diseases like TB and made extensive numbers of home visits. The work was interesting and eye-opening, and I became familiar with Lancaster city as well as the far reaches of rural Lancaster County. I witnessed inner city poverty and dysfunction and realized the limitations of my efforts to initiate change. In April of 1975 the Cambodian Civil War officially ended with the takeover by the Khmer Rouge. For several years afterward, refugees made their way to the US, and we served some of them at the State Health Center. To my shame, I remember interviewing a woman with a missing eye who was extremely thin. When I asked her if she had an illness causing her weight loss, she replied simply that “we had no food.”

In the spring of 1979, we received word that an Old Order Mennonite man had contracted polio. Two others in plain communities in the state had also been diagnosed. Because vaccinations were generally rejected by these conservative religious groups, most had never received an inoculation against polio. Clinics were set up in the county, including one at Park City Center, where the public could receive an oral polio booster. But, as public health nurses, it was our job to reach the Amish and Mennonites. We quickly organized clinics in locations that would be easily accessible by horse and buggy, changed our working hours to evening shifts, and all helped ourselves to a polio booster dose. I gave OPV in schools, homes, once in a room above a hog facility, even in the back of a buggy. It was my job at these clinics to give a speech to the crowd, one that would reassure those reluctantly gathered that the polio vaccine was extremely safe, and they had a one-in-four million chance of getting polio from the vaccine. The polio outbreak, together with the Three Mile Island near-meltdown and the late 70’s gas crisis all combined to nearly kill tourism in Lancaster County in the summer of 1979. Whatever you think about the Amish, they seem to have triumphed during the COVID-19 pandemic. They refused to quarantine, wore masks only if it affected their livelihoods, and mostly eschewed the vaccine. They, like some of their “English” counterparts, threw caution into the face of the hurricane. It has been judged by local doctors that the Amish community reached “herd immunity” in March 2021.

In the fall of 1979, I became pregnant with my first child. Because of the danger Rubella poses to the fetus if contracted by the mother, my doctor asked if I had the illness during childhood. I had a memory of being in a darkened room with blankets covering the windows for a period of days, as my parents were aware that measles could cause blindness. This may have been for the “red measles,” not Rubella. I wasn’t sure. An antibody titer was drawn and revealed antibodies to Rubella. I likely would have recovered from the illness at least 19 years earlier. It is important to note here that the vaccines for smallpox, polio and rubella (among others) are “sterilizing,” meaning they do not cause actual illness and do not allow for “breakthrough” infections.

Early in 1981, a mysterious new syndrome began spreading in the gay community, one that caused immune system failure leading to cancers and infections from which many were dying. Known by doctors since 1977, it was given a name: Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome caused by the human immunodeficiency virus. Public health fears about the virus began to escalate but it soon became apparent that the virus was only communicable through the transfer of bodily fluids during intravenous transfusions of infected blood, sharing of hypodermic needles during IV drug use or risky sexual behavior. In the late 1970’s Dr. Joseph Sonnabend began treating young gay men for an AIDS-related pneumonia called PCP or pneumocystis pneumonia. I stumbled across this story recently in my search for safety information on the drug Bactrim which has been widely used for decades to treat, among other things, urinary tract infections. Dr. Sonnabend discovered that Bactrim successfully treated PCP and could be used as a prophylactic. He and one of his patients began advocating for the widespread use of Bactrim to treat PCP. The patient, Michael Callen, after nearly a decade of frustration over the slow progress of Bactrim approval, finally had a meeting with one Dr. Anthony Fauci. As head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease since 1984, approval by the CDC hinged on his recommendation. By this time 13,605 AIDS patients had died from PCP. His answer to the request was “there is not enough data.” By the time Bactrim was finally approved in 1989, another 16,929 people died of AIDS-related PCP. Early in 1990, someone close to me died from the lung complications of AIDS. He contracted HIV as an IV drug user in the late 1970’s. We now know that Dr. Fauci was fixated on the development of a vaccine for HIV. But he could have allowed the use of an antibiotic that would have saved lives and simultaneously worked toward a vaccine. HIV infection has become a treatable chronic disease. Magic Johnson is still alive and thriving. We do not have a vaccine against HIV and likely never will. Dr. Ronald C. Desrosiers, a pathology professor at Miami Miller School of Medicine explains: “The difficulty lies in the HIV virus itself. In particular, this includes the remarkable HIV strain diversity and the immune evasion strategies of the virus.” Dr. Anthony Fauci was wrong in 1987 and he is wrong in 2022.

Over the years, as new vaccines have rolled out, we have taken most of them. We had shingles and it was awful. If the Shingrix vaccine would keep us from getting sick again, well that’s great. I even gave into the flu shot when my nurse practitioner admonished that “people your age are dying from the flu!” Four years ago, I took the shot and got the flu anyway. I was down on the sofa for three days and had an irregular heartbeat for 10 months. Obviously, the flu virus had mutated that season, or the powers-that-be just got the prediction wrong. Did taking the flu shot that year prime my immune system for an aggravated response to the virus? Did I have antibody dependent enhancement? Before 2020, I had no idea what that even means. I am highly reluctant to ever again take the flu shot. I may die from the flu but it is unlikely, at least not until I am very old or sick. I now have a new arsenal of therapeutics and knowledge about treating viruses. And I know where I’m going.

Early in March 2020, we hunkered down with the rest of the global population for “two weeks to slow the spread” of COVID-19. Detailed instructions for keeping oneself from being infected dominated the news. Ironically, the use of masks shared equal importance with the risks of transmission from surfaces. Dr. Birx authoritatively announced that the virus could live for seven days on a metal surface. I am embarrassed to say that for two weeks we left our groceries sitting in the driveway for as long as possible and kept a bottle of disinfectant next to the front door so our Amazon boxes could be sprayed. Then I had a moment of clarity and…well, slap this mama. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Two plus two equals four. My father, who died at the age of 92, survived tuberculosis in the middle of the Great Depression by running around in the cold sunshine without a shirt. And a virus cannot live longer than ten minutes on a surface. Immediately I began to lose trust in government information and directives. I began the consuming search for the truth.

In mid-March 2020, I came across a study conducted in Marseille, France on several thousand patients hospitalized with COVID who were treated with a combination of Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin. Early results were very promising. In a matter of days, President Trump held a press conference in which he boldly announced what could only seem like a miracle cure. The drug combo was displayed in bold letters on the bottom of the screen as he spoke. On March 28, HCQ was granted Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA. The President continued to tout its value well into the summer of 2020. But someone behind the curtain was determined to squelch any possible approval of widespread use of a drug that would be “repurposed” to fight COVID. Again, fixation with hopes for a vaccine combined with a visceral hatred for President Trump quickly hampered trials. The FDA, which initially gave approval on March 28, revoked the emergency use authorization on July 15, 2020. A “large randomized clinical trial in hospitalized patients…showed no benefit on mortality or in speeding recovery.” The study was published in The Lancet, perhaps the most respected independent medical journal in the world. On June 5, 2020, The Lancet quietly retracted its story, having discovered the results of the study were fraudulently manipulated. The lie had been proliferated and the die was cast.

In the summer of 2020, I began to read opinions written by Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology. A self-described “vaccinologist,” he was rapidly becoming an outspoken critic of the mRNA Covid vaccines. If the inventor of the technology opposed the application to Covid, how would that effect my decision? I began to closely follow his work. On October 4, 2020, three noted physicians from Oxford, Stanford and Harvard published the Great Barrington Declaration. The theory of “focused protection” of the vulnerable while allowing all others to live life normally was criticized by many but embraced by an increasingly large number of physicians, scientists and members of the public who signed the document. As of this writing there are 928,00 signatures from 44 countries. In an email on October 8, 2020, Francis Collins, head of the NIH wrote to Dr. Fauci that “there needs to be a quick and devastating take down” of these ideas. This is well documented. As a result, debate was quickly quashed. On March 7, 2022, at a round-table discussion in Florida, an ER physician from New Orleans sat on a panel with the three originators of the GBD. His humble admission of incorrect assumptions during the early containment measures was surprising and encouraging. Apologizing to these scientists, he frankly stated that “initially, I did think y’all were crazy, or dumb, or maybe you just didn’t understand what I was seeing. But now I realize…you were correct from the beginning and I wish that more people, including myself, had realized that sooner.” We need more people like Dr. Joseph Fraiman.

Early in February 2022, Johns Hopkins researchers concluded, after reviewing 34 studies already conducted, that lockdowns only prevented 0.2% of Covid-19 deaths. The recommendation was that lockdowns be “rejected out of hand as a pandemic policy instrument.” Criticism of the study followed immediately but logical thinkers can only conclude that the horrific effects of the lockdowns on our economy as well as physical, mental and emotional health was not worth the grand containment experiment. At this point in the discussion, I want to be clear that I never expected nor wanted the whole world to protect me from a virus because I was “elderly.” If you care to ask, you will discover that many in my age group, and even those much older, felt exactly the same way. Our lockdown story is unlike that of many who might eventually read this. We are accustomed to gathering as an extended family for dinner on Wednesday nights and we cancelled for several weeks. We all needed to sort out exactly what might be happening and how we would approach the whole ordeal, but we stayed in constant touch and saw each other individually. It was decided that we should not have our annual Easter dinner gathering on April 12, 2020. But it was a beautiful day, so the grandchildren were invited for an Easter egg hunt in the garden. This morphed into coming inside for homemade pie. We quickly threw in the towel and realized we were not going to participate in the quarantine requirements. Easter is my favorite celebration of our Christian faith, and I will never again give up gathering with my family for this occasion.

As members of the faith community, I believe we had a distinct advantage in our ability to navigate the pandemic with a measured, common-sense approach. When our church first opened its doors in June of 2020, I nearly wept with the joy of meeting together to worship. Largely unmasked, we hugged our friends and celebrated our community. Over the last two years we have had varied opinions about masks and vaccines, but we respected one another’s choices. I feel blessed to be a part of this body of believers. They helped to keep me sane. And we decided corporately to gather, “not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another…” After that first service, I spoke with a friend who calmly stated that she and her husband had just recovered from COVID. Even though she is in her early seventies and an insulin-dependent diabetic, she had mild symptoms with no complications. The benefit of that brief encounter cannot be overstated.

Early in the morning of October 2, 2020, President Trump announced that he and the First Lady had tested positive for COVID-19 the evening prior. Earlier in July, I had begun to read about synthetic antibodies against COVID being developed by the Regeneron company. The President was immediately taken to Walter Reed military hospital where he received an infusion of monoclonal antibodies made by Regeneron. In the several days following he was also given (among other therapeutics) Remdesivir, Dexamethasone, and Melatonin. On October 5, Mr. Trump returned to the White House and on October 7, seven days after diagnosis, his personal doctor stated that “he has been symptom free for 24 hours, with a physical examination and his vital signs showing his condition remains stable.” Eleven days after the diagnosis of COVID, President Trump held a huge, unmasked rally in the state of Florida. How could a 73-year-old overweight man with hypertension and elevated cholesterol contract COVID and appear to be completely well in such a short period of time? It was starkly obvious to me that we now had the protocol for a COVID cure. On November 21, 2020, the FDA gave monoclonal antibodies Emergency Use Authorization for the treatment of mild to moderate COVID. Those with chronic medical conditions or anyone over the age of 65 could receive the treatment. What happened afterward is a tragic mixture of unprepared medical systems, political interference, overworked health professionals and an ill-informed public. The push was on for a vaccine to save everyone. The monoclonals were gradually manufactured but largely sat unused. Between late December 2020 and January 26, 2021, there were more than 150,000 deaths from Covid-19. The vaccine rollout had just begun.

By February of 2021, after scouring for alternative information about COVID and the pandemic, the vaccine began to be broadly administered. A close friend and his wife developed a mild case of the virus and recovered well. Thinking it best to take the vaccine, they complied. After the second dose, the husband became ill, passing out on the third day. By the tenth day he was in the ICU seriously ill with dehydration and pneumonia. He recovered, but a general feeling of wariness began to creep into my observational experience about the vaccines. That, coupled with increasingly large amounts of information outside the mainstream media indicating the dangers of the vaccine, began to cement my opinion. Probably the single most influencing factor was the censorship of any information about alternative treatments and dissenting opinions. The wholesale effort by the technology sector to remove any real-world data and experience, as well as educated assessments, began to feel like a nefarious cabal. Why could we not know what nurses were observing in hospitals? Why were respected physicians and virologists sidelined as kooks and conspiracists? Why did I need to get reliable information and data from foreign sources in Israel, India and the UK? Why couldn’t we have a broad base of constructive evaluations and opinions upon which we could make our own decisions? Perhaps worst of all, why were the educated, critical thinkers in my life not intellectually curious about any alternative to the dictates of government entities? What in the world was going on? I began to dig in my heels. I would not be taking the mRNA shot. Worth noting here is the fact that my decision was not based on my politics. I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I am a Christian, pro-life, conservative independent.

In the spring of ’21, I began to follow a published protocol for prevention and early treatment of COVID. If we were not going to take the vaccine, we needed to have good alternatives. We began to follow the supplement and drug suggestions published by the Frontline Covid Critical Care Alliance. One of the keys was a repurposed drug, ivermectin, which was generally used as an anti-parasitic. Discovered in the late 1970’s by examining soil nematodes in Japan, the drug was quickly and widely applied to fatal diseases in livestock with amazing results. In the ensuing decades discoveries were made of ivermectin’s use in curing serious parasitic illnesses in humans. With its two researchers having received the Nobel Prize in 2015 for the drug’s remarkable success in the treatment of Onchocerciasis and Strongyloidiasis in Africa, it was obvious that ivermectin held promise on new frontiers. The FLCCC lists many research studies as well as meta-analyses of ivermectin’s use in the treatment of COVID. Along with scientific abstracts, I read many of these. Was the information in these analyses accurate? I don’t know. But knowing for certain that Pfizer’s own trials would not be completed until the end of 2022 and that many in the placebo group took the vaccine and damaged the true results, I knew I had to keep digging for reliable information. In March of 2020, a French LTCF (Long Term Care Facility) administered ivermectin to 69 residents for the treatment of scabies. The results were published by the NIH and resides in the US National Library of Medicine. The three physicians stated that “to control scabies, the entire LTCF-A population was given ivermectin, while at the same time a COVID-19 outbreak was declared. No ivermectin-exposed LTCF-A resident developed severe Covid-19 or died, while residents from control LCTFs showed higher COVID-19 rates.” And then there is India. In the spring of ’21, news about the success of ivermectin as a prophylaxis and treatment for COVID began to circulate. Predictably, our government authorities dismissed this outright. The FDA chastised proponents as advocates of “horse dewormer,” even saying “stop it y’all.” Having grown up in the south I found this condescending and offensive. But India appears to be a real-world petri dish. Provinces in the south chose to broadly vaccinate but Uttar Pradesh in the north decided to treat with ivermectin. All residents were given a kit containing the drug with (among other things) zinc, doxycycline and vitamin D. In very little time, COVID cases dropped nearly to zero. In the article about this occurrence, I noted that the statistics and the graphs were authored by Johns Hopkins University researchers. Since this institution was providing most of the world with COVID data and the CDC was relying on this information for all its dictates, I checked the Johns Hopkins data site. I also researched the populations of India and the U.S. I have just one question. As of this writing, India has slightly more than half the total COVID cases and deaths as the U.S. How can a third-world country with 1.4 billion people have half the number of COVID deaths compared to a first-world country with 332 million people and ostensibly the best healthcare system in the world? As this is being written in March of 2022, a large study of the use of ivermectin in hospitalized patients across the world has been completed by researchers at the University of Miami. The study, with a p-value of less than 0.05, concludes that “ivermectin use was associated with decreased mortality in patients with COVID-19 compared to remdesivir.” Ivermectin, as seen in practical experience in France and India, is probably best used as a prophylactic. But there is increasing evidence of its value for very ill patients. Please, could we just have a conversation?

After an early summer of few COVID cases in 2021, August brought the Delta variant. A close friend as well as a nephew, both vaccinated, contracted COVID and were moderately ill. And then we lost a dear family member. He had declined the vaccine and had serious underlying conditions. The speed with which the virus overtook his bodily systems was shocking and within two weeks he had gone “home to glory” (his own words). We still do not know if the vaccine would have helped him have a less severe case. Vaccinated people are getting sick, and some are dying. But at this point, I will concede the possibility that for high-risk individuals, the vaccine may have mitigated the symptoms. For those of us who are older but have no co-morbidities, the choice truly feels like a Faustian bargain. Regardless, the decision about the vaccine should be made by the individual without coercion, shaming or force. We now know clearly that vaccine effectiveness wanes quickly, is ineffective in preventing the latest variants and does not prevent transmission. These experimental injections should be stopped. We will know eventually, when the public demands full disclosure of the data, if these vaccines ever had any real value. We miss Donald Neidermyer. He was loved and needed. But the number of Don’s days were known before he was born. No amount of preventive medicine could change that. God knew exactly the decisions Don would make in his life and had prepared him well. We will see him in glory.

On October 2, 2021, COVID-19 arrived at our house. We were as ready as we could be. We had a plan. My husband began with fever and fatigue on Saturday night. We both took a PCR test the next morning and he began treatment with Ivermectin and Doxycycline. I was asymptomatic but took a dose of Ivermectin on the third and seventh days of his illness (I did not contract COVID, and an antibody test four weeks later was negative). The initial tests were both negative, so on Monday we both took a saliva test at our local independent pharmacy which had been filling prescriptions for Ivermectin when the chain pharmacies had refused to do so. On Tuesday night we received an email which stated my husband’s COVID antigen was “detected.” On Wednesday morning we immediately began searching for the monoclonal antibodies. We were told they were not available in our large local health system from which we had received care for four decades. Very early in the morning on Friday, the seventh day of illness, my husband received the Regeneron infusion of two monoclonal antibodies in the emergency room of a small local hospital. The details of that journey are personal and involve at least two miracles. The story will be shared with family and close friends who wish to know. Twenty-four hours after the treatment, the fever broke and we knew my husband was on the road to recovery. By day twelve, he stepped out of the house and drove to the office for a meeting. It would not be possible to describe our thankfulness for the recovery. The chest X-ray done in the ER had shown “diffuse COVID inflammation.” My husband had been on the cusp of developing COVID pneumonia.

Over the next three months I had the privilege of helping friends during their experience with a COVID infection. Several times I experienced the intervention of God in those lives, and I cannot tell you what a blessing that has been for my faith. If we are prepared and willing, He will use us in surprising and humbling ways. There is a God of the universe and He has set eternity in our hearts. Shortly before Christmas I had a sinus cold with a sore throat. Because I had no other symptoms, I did not test for the virus. Four weeks later, an antibody test was positive for COVID.

I’m not sure why, but I felt compelled to write this. Many times over the last two years I was reminded not to depend on my own wisdom. I did not wish to simply hear “trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” I wanted to be a doer. The speed with which the forces of earthly wisdom and power completely threatened our freedoms was breathtaking and astonishing. But this earth is not my home. The pandemic has blessed me with new evidence that the God of the universe is alive and well. Ultimately, I will not be saved by my government or the pharmaceutical “there’s a pill for that” industry. I am saved by my faith in a Creator God who provided a way for me, through the death and resurrection of His Son Jesus Christ, to stand in His presence despite all my failings.

The truth about the Great Pandemic of the 2020’s is flooding out. We can be excused for being afraid. But there is no longer an excuse for a lack of discernment. The bear has been poked. We are awake now, squinting into the sunshine, just a bit grumpy. We would have preferred to continue hibernating, but we realize we can no longer just keep sleeping our lives away. And we have questions too numerous to list. It may take many years for the whole truth to finally shake out. In the process of trying to discern this truth, we have all had a degree of apprehension ranging from mild concern to abject terror. Fear has been the great equalizer. It threatened to rob us of our joy and paralyze us. It hampered our objectivity and clouded our rational thinking. Over the course of history, governing powers have used fear as a cudgel to control citizens and commit unspeakable horrors. We must determine we will never allow this to happen. Fear must be rebuked. I want you to understand that I know something about fear. When my mother was dying of cancer at age 62, I was traumatized by the reality that I could die much sooner than I imagined. To counter this fear, I threw myself into methods of preventing cancer. I disposed of any food in my cupboard with additives and preservatives. I began to frequent the natural food store. I became an organic gardener. We stopped drinking city water. I wouldn’t allow X-rays of my teeth. I refused fluoride treatments for my children. Sadly, this is just a sampling of my efforts. And I really have no proof that any of these changes has made a difference in our health. But there is one thing of which I am certain. There is an unexpected blessing waiting to be discovered in the midst of fear and trauma. When we are forced to contemplate our own physical death, our priorities sharpen into focus. We become determined to make the most of every day, to not waste any time. Though I occasionally lose sight of this truth, it has underpinned many of my life’s decisions. It was truly God’s gift of His Word made alive. In 1989, four years after my mother died, looking into the faces of my five young children, I wrote these simple lines:

What if I should leave you? What if I could stay?

How can I be ready, if it were today?

I would give you just me every single day.

Less then it would matter, if I could not stay.

Nancy R. Benedict

Readers please note: this essay has been well documented with footnotes. This documentation can be found in the PDF in my previous post.