immunologists photos on Flickr

92 15

Human tripod creds to Leo!

This is going to be a long one, just warning you.

About a month ago, one of my doctors called me and said he had gotten some blood work results back and he thinks I have a rare immune deficiency called CVID.

*BOOM*

Suddenly, my entire life makes sense. Every single thing that didn't add up before has clicked into place. Every single symptom has been explained with that one blood test.

It's been almost a month, and I'm still reeling. People have asked me how I am feeling and I don't know how to answer them. I am angry that it took nineteen years to get here. I'm happy that I am finally going to get the treatment I need. I am terrified that I may not be able to do everything I want to do. I'm learning to accept that I will be fighting this for the rest of my life, and that's a lot to take in. Most of all though, I'm just completely overwhelmed. I feel like I'm floating through this imaginary fog and I know I won't succumb to it but I am not quite ready to swim out yet.

I feel like people are constantly pressured to put on a smile and answer "good, how are you?" and post perfect selfies to Instagram. Everyone is terrified of admitting that they are having a hard time. It doesn't make you weak to take a break for yourself or admit that you need a hug. It makes you strong to fight your way through whatever life throws at you, and know when you need to pause. So I'm not going to sink OR swim, I just need to tread water for a while.

*Phew* Okay. Rant over. I wanted to wait to post this until I had seen the immunologist and confirmed the diagnosis without a doubt, but this is my crazy life and I feel like the photo fits. I'll keep you guys posted ;) <3

Peter Duesberg's place in history is safe! by bse303

6 6

Peter Duesberg is a "scientist" who is widely recognised as being one of the foremost idiots who thinks that HIV does not cause AIDS. He thinks that everyone gets it from taking ARVs and doing too much poppers and too many recreational drugs. Celia "Thats why they put blood on my face" Farber has spent an awful long time defending this lunatic "faith".

A new Harvard study has claimed that the deaths of around 330,000 South Africans occured as a direct result of Mbeki's HIV denial.

Peter Duesberg was on Mbeki's AIDS panel, so advised him in his murderous denial.

Of course I am not pointing the finger directly at Duesberg as the buck stopped with Mbeki and his health minister Dr Beetroot, and the policies they enacted.

However it would be wrong to completely ignore the role that Duesberg and others played in the deaths of all of these people.

Duesberg is currently employed by the University of California Berkeley. Maybe in light of this new evidence they should seriously consider his position within their (ANY!) teaching institution.

Mbeki Aids policy 'led to 330,000 deaths'

Sarah Boseley Thursday November 27 2008 00.01 GMT

The Aids policies of former president Thabo Mbeki's government were directly responsible for the avoidable deaths of a third of a million people in South Africa, according to research from Harvard University.

South Africa has one of the most severe HIV/Aids epidemics in the world. About 5.5 million people, or 18.8% of the adult population, have HIV, according to the UN. In 2005 there were 900 deaths a day.

But from the late 90s Mbeki turned his back on the scientific consensus that Aids was caused by a viral infection which could be combated, though not cured, by sophisticated and expensive drugs. He came under the influence of maverick scientists known as Aids-denialists, most prominent among whom was Peter Duesberg from Berkeley, California.

In 2000 Mbeki called a round-table of experts, including Duesberg and his supporters but also their opponents, to discuss the cause of Aids. Later that year, at the international Aids conference in Durban, he publicly rejected the accepted wisdom. Aids, he said, was indeed brought about by the collapse of the immune system - but not because of a virus. The cause, he said, was poverty, bad nourishment and general ill-health. The solution was not expensive western medicine but the alleviation of poverty in Africa.

In a new paper Harvard researchers have quantified the death toll resulting from Mbeki's stance, which caused him to reject offers of free drugs and grants and led to foot-dragging over a treatment programme, even after Mbeki had taken a vow of silence on the issue.

"We contend that the South African government acted as a major obstacle in the provision of medication to patients with Aids," write Pride Chigwedere and colleagues from the Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome.

They have made their calculations by comparing the scale-up of treatment programmes in neighbouring Botswana and Namibia with the limited availability of drugs in South Africa from 2000-2005.

Expensive antiretrovirals came down in price dramatically as a result of activists' campaigning and public pressure. In July 2000 the pharmaceutical company Boehringer Ingelheim offered to donate its drug nevirapine, which could prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child during labour. But South Africa restricted the availability of nevirapine to two pilot sites a province until December 2002.

Eventually, under international pressure, South Africa did launch a national programme for the prevention of mother to child transmission in August 2003 and a national adult treatment programme in 2004. But by 2005, the paper's authors estimate, there was still only 23% drug coverage and less than 30% prevention of mother to child transmission.

By comparison, Botswana achieved 85% treatment coverage and Namibia 71% by 2005, and both had 70% mother to child transmission programmes coverage.

The authors estimate that more than 330,000 people died unnecessarily in South Africa over the period and that 35,000 HIV-infected babies were born who could have been protected from the virus but would now probably have a limited life.

Their calculations will withstand scrutiny, they say. "The analysis is robust," said Dr Chigwedere. "We used a transparent and accessible calculation, publicly available data, and, where we made assumptions, we explained their basis. We purposely chose very conservative assumptions and performed sensitivity analyses to test whether the results would qualitatively change if a different assumption were used."

The authors conclude: "Access to appropriate public health practice is often determined by a small number of political leaders. In the case of South Africa, many lives were lost because of a failure to accept the use of available ARVs to prevent and treat HIV/Aids in a timely manner."

Since Mbeki's ousting from the leadership of the African National Congress in September South Africa has urgently pursued new policies to get treatment to as many people as possible under a new health minister, Barbara Hogan.

November 26, 2008

Study Cites Toll of AIDS Policy in South Africa

By CELIA W. DUGGER

www.nytimes.com/2008/11/26/world/africa/26aids.html?_r=1

JOHANNESBURG — A new study by Harvard researchers estimates that the South African government would have prevented the premature deaths of 365,000 people earlier this decade if it had provided antiretroviral drugs to AIDS patients and widely administered drugs to help prevent pregnant women from infecting their babies.

The Harvard study concluded that the policies grew out of President Thabo Mbeki’s denial of the well-established scientific consensus about the viral cause of AIDS and the essential role of antiretroviral drugs in treating it.

Coming in the wake of Mr. Mbeki’s ouster in September after a power struggle in his party, the African National Congress, the report has reignited questions about why Mr. Mbeki, a man of great acumen, was so influenced by AIDS denialists.

And it has again caused soul-searching about why his colleagues in the party did not act earlier to challenge his resistance to broadly accepted methods of treating and preventing AIDS.

Reckoning with a legacy of such policies, Mr. Mbeki’s’s successor, Kgalema Motlanthe, acted on the first day of his presidency two months ago to remove the health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, a polarizing figure who had proposed garlic, lemon juice and beetroot as AIDS remedies.

He replaced her with Barbara Hogan, who has brought South Africa — the most powerful country in a region at the epicenter of the world’s AIDS pandemic — back into the mainstream.

“I feel ashamed that we have to own up to what Harvard is saying,” Ms. Hogan, an A.N.C. stalwart who was imprisoned for a decade during the anti-apartheid struggle, said in a recent interview. “The era of denialism is over completely in South Africa.”

For years, the South African government did not provide antiretroviral medicines, even as Botswana and Namibia, neighboring countries with epidemics of similar scale, took action, the Harvard study reported.

The Harvard researchers quantified the human cost of that inaction by comparing the number of people who got antiretrovirals in South Africa from 2000 to 2005 with the number the government could have reached had it put in place a workable treatment and prevention program.

They estimated that by 2005, South Africa could have been helping half those in need but had reached only 23 percent. By comparison, Botswana was already providing treatment to 85 percent of those in need, and Namibia to 71 percent.

The 330,000 South Africans who died for lack of treatment and the 35,000 babies who perished because they were infected with H.I.V. together lost at least 3.8 million years of life, the study concluded.

Epidemiologists and biostatisticians who reviewed the study for The New York Times said the researchers had based their estimates on conservative assumptions and used a sound methodology.

“They have truly used conservative estimates for their calculations, and I would consider their numbers quite reasonable,” James Chin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California at Berkeley’s School of Public Health, said in an e-mail message.

The report was posted online last month and will be published on Monday in the peer-reviewed Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

Max Essex, the virologist who has led the Harvard School of Public Health’s AIDS research program for the past 20 years and who oversaw the study, called South Africa’s response to AIDS under Mr. Mbeki “a case of bad, or even evil, public health.”

Mr. Mbeki has maintained a silence on his AIDS legacy since his forced resignation. His spokesman, Mukoni Ratshitanga, said Mr. Mbeki would not discuss his thinking on H.I.V. and AIDS, explaining that policy decisions were made collectively by the cabinet and so questions should be addressed to the government.

The new government is now trying to hasten the expansion of antiretroviral treatments. The task is urgent. South Africa today is home to 5.7 million people who are H.I.V.-positive — more than any other nation, almost one in five adults. More than 900 people a day die here as a result of AIDS, the United Nations estimates.

Since the party forced Mr. Mbeki from office and some of his loyalists split off to start a new party, rivalries have flared and stories about what happened inside the A.N.C. have begun to tumble out, offering unsettling glimpses of how South Africa’s AIDS policies went so wrong.

From the first year of his presidency in 1999, Mr. Mbeki became consumed with the thinking of a small group of dissident scientists who argued that H.I.V. was not the cause of AIDS, his biographers say.

As president he wielded enormous power, and those who disagreed with him said they feared they would be sidelined if they spoke out. Even Nelson Mandela, the revered former president, was not immune from opprobrium.

In a column in The Sunday Times of Johannesburg on Oct. 19, Ngoako Ramatlhodi, a senior party member now running the party’s 2009 election campaign, recounted how Mr. Mandela, known affectionately as Madiba, was humiliated during a 2002 A.N.C. meeting after he made a rare appearance to question the party’s stance on AIDS.

Mr. Ramatlhodi described speakers competing to show greater loyalty to Mr. Mbeki by verbally attacking Mr. Mandela as Mr. Mbeki looked on silently. “After his vicious mauling, Madiba looked twice his age, old and ashen,” Mr. Ramatlhodi wrote.

Mr. Ramatlhodi himself acknowledged in a recent interview that in 2001 he sent a 22-page letter, drafted by Mr. Mbeki’s office, to another of Mr. Mbeki’s most credible critics, Prof. Malegapuru Makgoba, an immunologist who was one of South Africa’s leading scientists. The letter accused Professor Makgoba of defending Western science and its racist ideas about Africans at the expense of Mr. Mbeki.

In 2000 Mr. Mbeki had provided Professor Makgoba with two bound volumes containing 1,500 pages of documents written by AIDS denialists. After reading them, Professor Makgoba said in an interview that he wrote back to warn Mr. Mbeki that if he adopted the denialists’ ideas, South Africa would “become the laughingstock, if not the pariah, of the world again.”

But Mr. Mbeki indicated last year to one of his biographers, Mark Gevisser, that his views on AIDS were essentially unchanged, pointing the writer to a document that, he said, was drafted by A.N.C. leaders and accurately reflected his position.

The document’s authors conceded that H.I.V. might be one cause of AIDS but contended that there were many others, like other diseases and malnutrition.

The document maintained that antiretrovirals were toxic. And it suggested that powerful vested interests — drug companies, governments, scientists — pushed the consensus view of AIDS in a quest for money and power, while peddling centuries-old white racist beliefs that depicted Africans as sexually rapacious.

“Yes, we are sex crazy!” the document’s authors bitterly exclaimed. “Yes, we are diseased! Yes, we spread the deadly H.I. virus through our uncontrolled heterosexual sex!”

In 2002, after a prolonged outcry over Mr. Mbeki’s comments about AIDS and the government’s policies, Mr. Mbeki agreed to requests from within his party to withdraw from the public debate. That same year, the Constitutional Court ruled that the government had to provide antiretroviral drugs to prevent the infection of newborns. And in 2003, the cabinet announced plans to go forward with an antiretroviral treatment program.

“We did an enormous amount of good in the early days in South Africa, not because of the Health Ministry, but in spite of the Health Ministry,” said Randall L. Tobias, who was appointed by President Bush in 2003 to lead the United States’ $15 billion global AIDS undertaking.

In the same years, former President Clinton and his foundation were also deeply involved in helping South Africa get a treatment program going. Mr. Clinton attended Mr. Mandela’s 85th birthday celebration in Johannesburg in 2003. During the dinner, he and Mr. Mbeki slipped away to talk about AIDS, Mr. Clinton recalled in a recent interview.

Mr. Clinton said he told Mr. Mbeki how antiretroviral treatment had reduced the AIDS mortality rate in the United States and reminded him, “I’m your friend and I haven’t joined in the public condemnation.” That evening, when Mr. Clinton offered to send in a team of experts to help the country put together a national treatment plan, Mr. Mbeki took him up on it.

The Clinton Foundation helped devise a plan and mobilized 20 people to travel to South Africa in 2004 to help carry it out. But the South African government never invited them, Mr. Clinton said. So the foundation, which had projects all over Africa, was to have none in South Africa.

Changes since Mr. Mbeki’s fall from power have prompted many to hope for forceful South African political leadership on AIDS. Mr. Mbeki’s rival and successor as head of the party, Jacob Zuma, who is expected to become president after next year’s election, himself made a famously questionable remark about AIDS.

In his 2006 rape trial, in which he was acquitted of sexually assaulting a family friend, he testified that he sought to reduce his chances of being infected with H.I.V. by taking a shower after sex. Nonetheless, he seems to have more conventional views on the pandemic.

“Who would have thought Jacob Zuma would be better than Mbeki, but he is,” said Richard C. Holbrooke, the former ambassador to the United Nations in the Clinton administration who heads a coalition of businesses fighting AIDS. “The tragedy of Thabo Mbeki is that he’s a smart man who could have been an international statesman on this issue. To this day, you wonder what got into him.”

For South Africans who watched the dying and were powerless to stop it, the grief is still raw. Zackie Achmat, the country’s most prominent advocate for people with AIDS, became sick during the almost five years he refused to take antiretrovirals until they were made widely available. He cast Mr. Mbeki as the leading man in this African tragedy.

“He is like Macbeth,” Mr. Achmat said. “It’s easier to walk through the blood than to turn back and admit you made a mistake.”

Mbeki's opposition to ARVs cost 330,000 lives, shows study

Michael Carter, Thursday, November 27, 2008

www.aidsmap.com/en/news/97BFC49D-E43C-4028-8E4D-CACF15F82...

The refusal of the Mbeki government to roll-out antiretroviral therapy and treatment to prevent mother-to child transmission in South Africa resulted in 330,000 needlessly premature HIV-related deaths and 35,000 avoidable case of mother-to-child HIV transmission according to estimates published in the December 1st edition of the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes.

South Africa is one of the countries hardest hit by HIV. UNAIDS estimates that 19% of the adult population is HIV-positive, some 5.5 million individuals. In 2005, an estimated 320,000 individuals died because of HIV.

President Thabo Mbeki’s government consistently resisted the provision of antiretroviral therapy. The first important evidence of this was in 1999 when, under pressure to provide AZT monotherapy to prevent mother-to-child transmission of HIV, President Mbeki announced that the drug was dangerous and that it would therefore not be provided by his government. This was followed by Mbeki publicly questioning that HIV caused AIDS and the efficacy of antiretroviral therapy. The Mbeki administration then resisted the use of nevirapine to prevent mother-to-child transmission and obstructed the acquisition of grants from the Global Fund.

US investigators estimated the lost benefits resulting from the Mbeki government’s opposition to provision of antiretroviral therapy and treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission. To do this, they compared the actual number of people who received HIV treatment or therapy to prevent mother-to-child transmission between 2000 and 2005 and compared this to the number that could feasibly have been treated during this period. This difference was multiplied by the average efficacy of antiretroviral treatment and treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission to give the lost benefits consequent upon the South African government’s decision to prevent access to anti-HIV drugs.

“Our overriding values in choosing methods were transparency and minimization of assumptions and we were purposely conservative”, write the investigators.

When estimating the number of people who could reasonably have been provided with antiretroviral therapy or treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission, the investigators noted that HIV treatment became significantly more accessible between 2000-2005. This was because:

* The price of anti-HIV drugs fell significantly in this period.

* More money was available for donor organisations, such as the Global Fund and PEPFAR, to purchase antiretroviral drugs.

Nevertheless, the South African government still maintained opposition to the provision of HIV drugs.

To estimate the number of people who should have been eligible to receive antiretroviral therapy, the investigators obtained from UNAIDS the number of HIV-related deaths in South Africa between 2000-2005. Patients who died of HIV without receiving anti-HIV drugs lost the entire potential benefits of antiretroviral therapy.

Next, the investigators obtained figures showing how many individuals received antiretroviral therapy in the same period. Their sources were UNAIDS and the World Health Organization’s (WHO’s) “3 x 5” antiretroviral treatment access programme. These figures showed that fewer than 3% of patients received antiretroviral treatment in 2000, increasing to approximately 10% in 2003 and 23% in 2005.

The researchers considered it reasonable that South Africa could have treated no more than 5% of eligible patients with HIV in 2000. However, because drugs became less expensive and more international funding became available, “ramping up” access to treatment was feasible, meaning that by 2005, 50% of HIV-positive patients in South Africa should have been receiving antiretroviral therapy. They note that the maximum of 50% treatment coverage is significantly lower than the 71% achieved by Namibia and the 85% achieved by Botswana.

Finally they estimated the number of life years that would be gained per patient due to antiretroviral therapy. They used the most conservative estimate of 6.7 years.

Their calculations showed that 330,000 lives and 2.2 million person years were lost because the Mbeki government resisted the implementation of a reasonable antiretroviral treatment programme.

They tested their model using a number of other assumptions. For example, if they reduced the number of patients who could reasonably be expected to receive antiretroviral therapy in 2005 to 40%, then the number of lives lost fell to 226,800 or 1.5 million person years.

Consequences of opposition to treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission

The researchers' model to test the impact of the Mbeki administration’s opposition to treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission also included a number of conservative assumptions.

First, they calculated the number of children infected with HIV vertically. They looked at a number of sources and selected the lowest estimate of 68,000 per year and revised this down to 60,000 to take into account the high adult HIV population and marginal increase in population growth in South Africa during this period.

A number of sources suggested that in 2005, coverage of treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission was 30%, having increased from below 3% before 2000.

To estimate the proportion of women who could have received treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission, they considered that treatment would have been free during this period, that it is easy to administer and that 84% of pregnant women in South Africa receive antenatal care.

Based on these assumptions, the investigators calculated that no more than 5% of women would have received treatment to prevent mother-to-child transmission in 2000, but that this could have increased to 55% by 2005.

Next the investigators estimated the efficacy of such therapy, taking as their benchmark the HIVNET 012 study which showed that single-dose nevirapine reduced the risk of transmission by 47% compared to short-course AZT amongst women who breastfeed.

Finally, they assumed an average life-expectancy at birth of 48 years, and subtracted from this the average three year life-expectancy of infants infected with HIV at birth.

The investigators therefore estimated that 35,000 cases of mother-to-child transmission (or 1.6 million life years) were the result of the Mbeki administration’s policies.

One again, the investigators tested their results using other assumptions. If they accepted 40% coverage of treatment as acceptable, then the excess number of babies infected because of government policies was 18,000, a loss of 800,00 life years. However, had there been 70% coverage (still below what was achieved in Namibia and Botswana), then HIV infections in 44,000 babies (or 2 million life years), would have been avoided.

When the investigators combined their two estimates – years of life lost because of opposition to antiretroviral treatment, and life years lost because of the failure to provide treatment to prevent vertical transmission – they found that some 3.8 million life years were lost because of the Mbeki administration’s policies.

They conclude, “in the case of South Africa, many lives were lost because of failure to accept the use of available antiretrovirals to prevent and treat HIV/AIDS in a timely manner.”

Reference

Chigwedere, P. et al. Estimating the lost benefits of antiretroviral drug use in South Africa. J Acquir Immune Defic Syndr 49: 410-15, 2008.

1300 Years Ago by haidarism

55 43

An extremely important article in Newsweek (reference at the end of article)

CAN THE POWER OF PRAYER ALONE STOP A PANDEMIC LIKE THE CORONAVIRUS? EVEN THE PROPHET MUHAMMAD THOUGHT OTHERWISE | OPINION

By Craig Considine On 3/17/20 at 1:06 PM EDT

The COVID-19 pandemic is forcing governments and news sources to provide the most accurate and helpful advice to the world's population, as the disease is indeed global in reach. Health care professionals are in high demand, and so too are scientists who study the transmission and effect of pandemics.

Experts like immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci and medical reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta are saying that good hygiene and quarantining, or the practice of isolating from others in the hope of preventing the spread of contagious diseases, are the most effective tools to contain COVID-19.

Do you know who else suggested good hygiene and quarantining during a pandemic?

Muhammad, the prophet of Islam, over 1,300 years ago.

While he is by no means a "traditional" expert on matters of deadly diseases, Muhammad nonetheless had sound advice to prevent and combat a development like COVID-19.

Muhammad said: "If you hear of an outbreak of plague in a land, do not enter it; but if the plague outbreaks out in a place while you are in it, do not leave that place."

He also said: "Those with contagious diseases should be kept away from those who are healthy."

Muhammad also strongly encouraged human beings to adhere to hygienic practices that would keep people safe from infection. Consider the following hadiths, or sayings of Prophet Muhammad:

"Cleanliness is part of faith."

"Wash your hands after you wake up; you do not know where your hands have moved while you sleep."

"The blessings of food lie in washing hands before and after eating."

And what if someone does fall ill? What kind of advice would Muhammad provide to his fellow human beings who are suffering from pain?

He would encourage people to always seek medical treatment and medication: "Make use of medical treatment," he said, "for God has not made a disease without appointing a remedy for it, with the exception of one disease—old age."

I Am in Italy Amid the Coronavirus Crisis. America Must Act Now—And Act Big

Perhaps most importantly, he knew when to balance faith with reason. In recent weeks, some have gone so far as to suggest that prayer would be better at keeping you from the coronavirus than adhering to basic rules of social distancing and quarantine. How would Prophet Muhammad respond to the idea of prayer as the chief—or only—form of medicine?

Consider the following story, related to us by ninth-century Persian scholar Al-Tirmidhi: One day, Prophet Muhammad noticed a Bedouin man leaving his camel without tying it. He asked the Bedouin, "Why don't you tie down your camel?" The Bedouin answered, "I put my trust in God." The Prophet then said, "Tie your camel first, then put your trust in God."

Muhammad encouraged people to seek guidance in their religion, but he hoped they take basic precautionary measures for the stability, safety and well-being of all.

In other words, he hoped people would use their common sense.

Dr. Craig Considine is a scholar, professor, global speaker, and media contributor based at the Department of Sociology at Rice University. He is the author of The Humanity of Muhammad: A Christian View (Blue Dome Press, 2020), and Islam in America: Exploring the Issues (ABC-CLIO 2019), among others.

www-newsweek-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.newsweek.com/...

Anthony Fauci (March 29th) by Eclectic Jack

47 10

Anthony Fauci is an American physician and immunologist who has served as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) since 1984. Since January 2020, he has been one of the lead members of the White House Coronavirus Task Force addressing the 2019–20 coronavirus pandemic in the United States. (source: Wikipedia)

For Whom the Bell Tolls .... by Qi Bo (Ezio Famà)

54 8

'No Man is an Island'

No man is an island entire of itself; every man

is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;

if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe

is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as

well as any manner of thy friends or of thine

own were; any man's death diminishes me,

because I am involved in mankind.

And therefore never send to know for whom

the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

“Nessun Uomo è un'Isola”

Nessun uomo è un’isola, completo in se stesso; ogni uomo è un pezzo del continente, una parte del tutto. Se anche solo una zolla venisse lavata via dal mare, l’Europa ne sarebbe diminuita, come se le mancasse un promontorio, come se venisse a mancare una dimora di amici tuoi, o la tua stessa casa. La morte di qualsiasi uomo mi sminuisce, perché io sono parte dell’umanità. E dunque non chiedere mai per chi suona la campana: suona per te».

John Donne

……………………………………………..

Chronicles report that in Italy the epidemic caused by the "new flu" began on January 31, 2020, when two tourists from China tested positive for the new coronavirus, subsequently an infectious outbreak of covid-19 was confirmed on 21 February 2020 in Codogno in Lombardy with 16 cases, increased the day after to 60 cases, with the first deaths occurring in those days (but the presence of cases occurred elsewhere and on earlier dates is not excluded, due to the initial difficulty in recognizing a "virus new and unknown "). The infectious epicenter had been identified in the wet market of the city of Wuhan, located in the center of China: on December 31, 2019 the Whuan Health Commission reported to the WHO of cases of pneumonia of unknown etiology (city that was quarantined on 23 January 2020, which was followed shortly after the quarantine of the entire province of Hubei), on 9 January 2020 the Chinese scientific committee reported that a new coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) had been identified as the causative agent of the infectious pathology, then called Covid-19. In Italy, from the identification of "red areas" at high risk of contagion in Lombardy and Veneto, it wasn't long before Italy was declared a risk zone. The hospitals, with the doctors, nurses, health workers, were all busy dealing with the new emergency: first aid, infectious disease wards, resuscitations, supported by 118 service and law enforcement agencies; the fear on the part of those who were (and are) called to provide assistance, was that of becoming infected and becoming the "greasers" of the new virus towards others, towards their family members. Every day the media viewed the images of military vehicles with dismay, which lined up carrying numerous coffins of innocent victims who died of coronavirus from the hospital in Bergamo. On March 11, 2020, the WHO declared that there was talk of a pandemic now, the infection had now acquired a worldwide spread.

News not long appeared in the media, is the theory put forward by the immunologist Antonio Giordano, an Italian scientist transplanted to the USA, who says that southern Italy was less subject to epidemic violence than the north of Italy, because it, the south, it would be protected by a "genetic shield" for an interaction that took place during the evolution of DNA in relation to the external environment. Not wanting to bother the various theories that attempt to explain the epidemiological differences that have been found between northern and southern Italy, one thing is certain in Sicily: the various great terrible epidemics in Sicily have left indelible traces in the relationship of the Sicilians with the their Saints, entities invoked "as a shield" to protect from the worries of life.

San Sebastiano (together with San Rocco), is carried in procession in numerous Sicilian feasts; He was invoked to protect against the plague (and all contagious diseases) as early as 1575, the year in which the plague raged in Sicily.

Santa Rosalia on 9 June 1625 was carried in procession, her mortal remains accompanied by the song "Te Deum Laudamus", while they passed in the lazaretto quarters of Palermo, they operated the instantaneous healing of the sick poor under the eyes of those present, so that the infection stopped (since then she became the patron saint of Palermo).

In the Sicilian town of Castroreale, "u Signuri Longu" (the tall Christ), is a life-size wooden statue hoisted on a pole about 14 meters high, this Crucifix is carried in procession and is invoked because considered miraculous, having saved the Mrs. Giuseppina Vadalà of Castroreale from certain death: now dying, she was miraculously healed at the passage of the Sacred Crucifix (we are in the year 1854, the cholera epidemic in Messina killed about 30,000 people in the short two-month period).

This photo-story of mine was made in Sicily after the partial reopening of May 18: I dedicate it to the Chinese doctor Li Wenliang, who died on February 7, 2020 in Wuhan, for having tried to fight against the new coronavirus, and of which he was trying to throw a cry of alarm.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Le cronache riportano che in in Italia l’epidemia causata dalla “nuova influenza” ha avuto inizio il 31 gennaio 2020, quando due turisti provenienti dalla Cina sono risultati positivi al nuovo coronavirus, successivamente un focolaio infettivo di covid-19 è stato confermato il 21 febbraio 2020 a Codogno in Lombardia con 16 casi, aumentati il giorno dopo a 60 casi, coi primi decessi avvenuti in quei giorni (ma non è escludersi la presenza di casi avvenuti altrove ed in date antecedenti, causa la difficoltà iniziale a riconoscere un “virus nuovo e sconosciuto”). L’epicentro infettivo era stato individuato nel mercato umido della città di Wuhan, situata nel centro della Cina: il 31 dicembre 2019 la Commissione Sanitaria di Whuan segnalò all’OMS dei casi di polmonite ad eziologia ignota (città che fu messa in quarantena il 23 gennaio 2020, alla quale fece seguito poco dopo la quarantena dell’intera provincia di Hubei), il 9 gennaio 2020 il comitato scientifico Cinese riferì che era stato identificato un nuovo coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) quale agente causale della patologia infettiva, poi chiamata Covid-19. In Italia, dalla individuazione di “zone rosse” ad alto rischio di contagio in Lombardia ed in Veneto, non passò molto tempo che l’Italia tutta fu dichiarata zona a rischio. Gli ospedali, con i medici, gli infermieri, gli operatori sanitari, furono tutti impegnati a fronteggiare la nuova emergenza: in prima linea i pronto soccorso, i reparti di malattie infettive, le rianimazioni, supportati dal servizio 118 e dalla forze dell’ordine; il timore da parte di coloro che erano (e sono) chiamati a prestare assistenza, era quello di essere infettati e diventare gli “untori” del nuovo virus verso gli altri, verso i propri familiari. Sui media ogni giorno si osservavano con sgomento le immagini di mezzi militari che, in fila, trasportavano numerosi le bare di vittime innocenti decedute a cause del coronavirus, provenienti dall’ospedale di Bergamo. L’11 marzo 2020 l’OMS dichiarò che oramai si parlava di pandemia, l’infezione aveva acquistato oramai una diffusione a carattere mondiale.

Notizia non da molto apparsa sui media, è la teoria avanzata dall’immunologo Antonio Giordano, scienziato italiano trapiantato negli USA, che afferma che il meridione d’Italia è stato meno soggetto alla violenza epidemica rispetto al settentrione d’Italia, perché esso, il meridione, sarebbe come protetto da uno “scudo genetico” per una interazione avvenuta nel corso dell’evoluzione del DNA in rapporto con l’ambiente esterno. Non volendo scomodare le varie teorie che tentano di spiegare le differenza epidemiologiche che si sono riscontrate tra il nord ed il sud Italia, in Sicilia una cosa è certa: le varie grandi terribili epidemia avutesi in Sicilia, hanno lasciato tracce indelebili nel rapporto dei Siciliani coi loro Santi, entità queste invocate “come scudo” a protezione dagli affanni della vita.

San Sebastiano (insieme a San Rocco), viene portato in processione in numerose feste Siciliane; Egli venne invocato a protezione contro la peste (e di tutte le malattie contagiose) fin dall’anno 1575, anno in cui in Sicilia infuriò la peste.

Santa Rosalia il 9 giugno 1625 venne portata in processione, le sue spoglie mortali accompagnate dal canto “Te Deum Laudamus”, mentre passavano nei quartieri lazzaretto di Palermo, operavano la guarigione istantanea dei poveri malati sotto gli occhi dei presenti, cosicchè il contagio si arrestò (da allora divenne la Santa Patrona di Palermo).

Nella cittadina Siciliana di Castroreale, “u Signuri Longu” (il Cristo alto), è una statua lignea a grandezza naturale issata su di un palo alto circa 14 metri, tale Crocifisso viene portato in processione ed è invocato perché considerato miracoloso, avendo salvato la signora Giuseppina Vadalà di Castroreale da morte certa: oramai moribonda, fu miracolosamente guarita al passaggio del Sacro Crocifisso (siamo nell’anno 1854, l’epidemia di colera a Messina uccise circa 30.000 persone del breve periodo di due mesi).

Questo mio foto-racconto è stato realizzato in Sicilia dopo la parziale riapertura del 18 maggio: lo dedico al medico Cinese Li Wenliang, morto il 7 febbraio 2020 a Wuhan, per aver cercato di combattere contro il nuovo coronavirus, e del quale tentava di gettare un grido di allarme.

For Whom the Bell Tolls .... by Qi Bo (Ezio Famà)

58 8