The Black Virus

As of this writing there are almost 21,000 deaths in the United States, but the focus is now on the number of African Americans who have been affected and died because of Covid-19. Needless to say there is probably a great discrepancy in the number of affected African Americans, being that our ancestors were kidnapped from Africa and and made to toil for hundreds of years and that their descendants still face severe overt and covert racism up to this day which includes access to healthcare. So yeah there is a discrepancy based on color in the United States, no surprise there. However if you are going to used a racial comparison for the sake of informing the public, than we would appreciate it if you would you would also mention that poor whites suffer from the same lack of healthcare as do African Americans. How many poor whites have succumbed to the Covid 19 virus? Oh right.. that data is not out there. It’s not out there because it doesn’t fit the agenda of divisive media manipulation for profit. Divisive media manipulation sounds funny coming from a pro black news blog huh? Okay.. yep I am guilty of writing about what divides us rather than what unites us. Well first of all I don’t have a problem with what unites us and second I’m not the only one that doesn’t have a problem with what unites us. Most media write about what doesn’t unite us. It is what it is. Black media “has” to play on the same field as white media. I was reading an article about the virus outbreak in Africa and a comment one of the readers said stuck out to me. He said something to the fact that the Chinese virus is slowly turning into the “Black” virus. Not his exact words, but the meaning is clear when you think about where some of the media outlets are going to take this. So you see it’s like the commercial says, either you run with the big dogs or you run from the big dogs…

Can I Get Some Mumbo Sauce Wid Dat Bat?

For my readers that don’t know what mumbo sauce is, it is a popular sauce that was developed in Washington DC. I like it on my chicken wing and fried rice, but you can put it on anything. Now, there is some controversy about where it was first developed. The name Mumbo was the name of a BBQ sauce used by Argia B. Collins, Sr for his restaurant in Chicago during the 1950’s. The name was also trademarked by his successor. In the 60’s a company called “Wings-n-Things” in DC began to introduce a condiment by the same name. So that’s where the controversy come in. One thing is for sure.. mumbo sauce is not a BBQ sauce. If you are ever in DC give it a try, it’s delicious! Anywho, I was just being sarcastic with my reference to mumbo sauce on my bats.. everyone knows you put ketchup on bats… ok I’ll stop… So while I was doing my research for this story, I came across the word “zoonotic.” Zoonotic means that a disease or illness can spread from animals to humans. Coronavirus is a zoonotic. Some scientist are focusing on bats as the primary carrier of Covid-19. It has been detected in horseshoe bats. Covid-19 is a type of coronavirus, SARS, MERS and even the common cold are also coronaviruses. In December 2019, the first cases of the Covid-19 illness began to filter out of a city called Wuhan in China, not Wuhan in America, not Wuhan in Africa or Wuhan in Mexico, but Wuhan in China. Although it is not a “Chinese virus,” it did originate in China. Bark, Bark!! Woof!! Snarl!!! So they have what are called wet markets over there, where live wild animals are butchered and sold on receipt of payment from the consumer. So for instance if you want monkey brain.. they will go in the back, get a live monkey, cut the monkey’s head off, scoop it out and sell it to you for 50 yaks a pound… The Chinese government recently began a crackdown on these markets and the types of animals they can sell. So I started talking about bats and I inferred that they were the source of the current viral pandemic and since some cultures have been known to dine on bat soup or dishes, it is common belief that because of that custom some of us have been forced to counting newspaper or leaves as an option.. I will let you figure that out… Anywho, that’s not entirely true. Bat meat is consumed in China, but it’s not very popular, thanks to the SARS coronavirus outbreak in 2003 which killed hundreds of people. Some scientist now think it is more likely that the Covid-19 virus was transmitted through bat number 1 and number 2… For those who are not familiar with number 1 or number 2, back in the day, you needed a way for your children to tell you why they needed to use the bathroom. You might be doing some yard work or in the kitchen cooking or any number of things when your child would run up and say “Mama I have to go to the bafroom.” Mama would say, “Is it 1 or 2? ” In my house if it was 1, then mama would go to the bathroom and help you take your pants down and you could relieve yourself, pull your own pants back up and leave or you could go over by the bushes and do the same thing. If it was number 2, then she would sit you on the stool and wait for you to finish so she could help you clean yourself. A lot of families back before they had or could afford potty training stools had such an arrangement. I mean it could be very awkward if you have guest and your two year old comes in and says, “Mama I got pee or dodo,” or something worse… Anywho, some scientist think it was the bat droppings into the food the animals ate that transmitted the virus to them. When the contaminated animals were consumed, the virus was transmitted to humans.

Wait.. What? Black People Don’t Get The Rona?

Now you know me.. I’m all in wid dat Black Power @!!#. I’m like walking around..chest stuck out.. looking down on folks and stuff and saying stuff like.. “You better be careful you know you can catch the rona.. we don’t catch da rona…” Shid, if someone would have given me a cape I would have flew away!! Only one thing.. it ain’t so. As a percentage of the population, African Americans have been overwhelmingly the victims of this pandemic in the States. Although we represent around 13 percent of the population, estimates of as high as 40 percent of the deaths are African Americans. So a while back we were talking about bats and how they were probably the source of the illness. Bats are mammals. So all mammals are warm blooded, most bear their young alive, most have fur or hair, all females possess mammary glands which they are able to feed their young with and all have a neocortex, which is a part of the brain which governs higher functions such as speech in humans, spacial relations and hearing. Bats and rodents are the largest orders of mammals, followed by Primates.. that’s us, followed by Cetaceans (dolphins and or live bearing, air breathing sea creatures,) followed by Ungulates, which have two toes which bear most of their weight.. these would include animals like camels, deer, giraffe’s, pigs and such and finally followed by Carnivoria.. dog, cats lions and bears and such, but since our focus is on bats let talks about them.. I would like to say it to their face… but them some ugly things… so we will just talk about them behind their long narrow fingers which are joined together with skin and which they use to fly with.. yep bats have hands!! They are also the only mammal that that can fly! So I know I am getting ready to tell my age, but that also includes Rocky the flying squirrel of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. All so called flying squirrels don’t actually fly.. they jump and glide. So guess what? It’s the flying that makes bats so dangerous, and it’s not only because it easy for them to spread disease and can carry dangerous pathogens with them. You see for a bat to fly it takes a lot of energy. It also caused nature to equip them with very specialized immune systems. Basically a bat’s body temperature goes up twice daily. Now the problem comes when the viruses that inhabit bats evolve to withstand that higher temperature. In humans a fever is a defense mechanism designed to raise the body temperature to kill a virus. Since a virus that has evolved in a bat is use to higher temperatures, the defense fever mechanism in humans is not going to be that effective. So we talked about something called zoonotic, which means animal to human transference. When bats are stressed their actions are similar to humans when they get stressed. Their immune systems get compromised and viruses and pathogens that would have probably been killed by their body are excreted during stressful times. When a person is stressed their immune system may be compromised. A bug their body might normally shrug off, now becomes more dangerous. The immune system elevates the body temperature.. but it doesn’t kill the offenders, so it kicks into overdrive and starts expelling stuff… you have to take out the handkerchief and mucinex. So what causes bats to be stressed? Bat soup for one thing. Bats are not only consumed in China, they are considered a delicacy and staple in many parts of the world. In addition to bats being hunted for food, their habitats are also being destroyed by deforestation. So the bottom line is they are crapping and peeing and coughing deadly viruses all over the animals and grain in the animals food chain and in turn… our food chain.

Ain’t No Cure For Covid-19

Ain’t no cure at the present for viral infections, your body’s immune system has to fight them off. They can build up your immune system with vaccines, but that’s it. Like the First Lady of Soul, Aretha Franklin says, Ain’t no way for me to lovvveee you, if you won’t let meeee..” That’s right, although most viruses are known for their ability to cause suffering and illness, there are beneficial viruses. First let’s talk about what is a virus. Are viruses alive? Well sorta kinda. It depends on your definition of what alive means. One of the basic prerequisites to qualify as living is the ability to reproduce such as animals and plants. A cell is a living biological because it can reproduce itself. Through reproduction a cell divided itself and makes a copy of all of its chromosomes, the genetic material (DNA) that holds the instructions for all life and sends an identical copy to the new cell that is created. By contrast, viruses are just a free floating pieces of DNA or RNA. They lack the cellular mechanisms which allows cells to duplicate, so they can’t replicate on their own. A virus needs a host cell to replicate or make copies of itself. So like I asked earlier are viruses alive, it depends on your definition of life. No viruses can’t reproduce by themselves, but they hold their genetic information in DNA or RNA strands with make it possible for them to replicate under the right conditions. I like to think that a virus is like a unwanted house guest. He comes in and eats up all your food and drinks up all your liquor. You come home from work and he is sitting there with his friend eating up all your food and drinking up all your liquor. You go to the closet and get it, you come back and yell that #@@!$ gots to go!! You fire off one and his friend gets up and runs out the house to your neighbors house. A week later you hear someone firing one off and see a man running from your neighbors house to another neighbors house. A month later there are for sales signs all around you. You can’t decide if we’ve have been affected or infected. You figure it all depends on how you look at it… I use to think that viral infections could not be cured, only the symptoms dealt with, but that’s only partially true. I guess the main reason a lot of us believe that viruses are incurable is a fact that we have heard all our lives. The common cold is a virus and it cannot be cured. So the common cold is a rhinovirus. But unlike the flu which have a few manageable strain each year, there are over 160 strains of rhinovirus. You would need 160 different vaccines for one illness. It’s not an efficient or cost effective way to handle an such a minor illness. A short time ago, I talked about beneficial viruses. There are viruses that kill bacteria and viruses that kill other more dangerous viruses. One such virus is called Bacteriophages. This virus is present in the mucus lining our digestive, respiratory and reproductive tracts. They protect the body from invading bacteria. Did you know that every nook and cranny of your body is cover by microscopic creatures? There are some scientist that believe we are only 43% human. The rest of us is made up of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea (a type of protobacteria) with a great deal of them living in our bowels. Yuck!! You can’t clean dat!! All you can do is feed em!! Understanding this new field of our microbiome is changing the way we look at diseases and illness.

Close Your Eyes.. You Will Feel A Little Prick.

Man… I am doing everything in my power not to make a joke about that heading… The current medical remedy for some viruses is the vaccine. You go into the doctor’s office, they tell you to roll up your sleeves, close your eyes and you will feel a little prick. You open your eyes and there’s blood running down your arm. You think to yourself.. “You little prick… but you realized at least they warned you…” Okay, I couldn’t help myself… Like I said, vaccines are the weapon of choice in the fight against viruses. Ever since the advent of vaccines they have been mired in controversy, especially by black people since the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Experiments were exposed. Around 600 men participated in the experiment and I’m using the term experiment loosely because it was more of an atrocity… which lasted from 1932 until 1972. For forty years these men were told they were being given free healthcare and burial expenses by the US Government to treat what was then called “bad blood.” The government knew the men had syphilis but they were never told. The government was trying to determine the long term effects if the disease. Even after penicillin had been shown to be effective against the disease, the men were never told about the drug or given the drug. In addition, scientists prevented the men from accessing syphilis treatment programs available to other residents in the area. “The victims of the study, all African American, included numerous men who died of syphilis, 40 wives who contracted the disease and 19 children born with congenital syphilis.” By the time the atrocity had been recognized and President Clinton had issued a formal apology 65 years later, only 8 people of the 600 had survived. Five of them attended the ceremony:

What was done cannot be undone. But we can end the silence. We can stop turning our heads away. We can look at you in the eye and finally say on behalf of the American people, what the United States government did was shameful, and I am sorry… To our African American citizens, I am sorry that your federal government orchestrated a study so clearly racist. – President Bill Clinton, May 16, 1997

In 2019 the World Health Organization identified the Anti-Vax movement as one of the top ten greatest threats to global health. A lot of people who are hesitant to using vaccines often are distrustful of the government, their provider or concerns that it violates civil liberties. Vaccines provide immunity by building up the body’s immune system. So according to the medical reason of how this is accomplished they say, “certain molecules from the pathogen must be introduced into the body to trigger an immune response.” In layman’s terms they have to give you the disease so the cells in your body can recognize it as the enemy. That’s where the controversy lies. So some of the concerns that anti vaxers have are that the vaccines cause autism, some vaccines contain thimerosal’s, an antifungal that prevents contamination of the vaccines and which also has mercury in it, Vaccine overload, a non-medical term, meaning that giving many vaccines at once may overwhelm or weaken a child’s immature immune system and lead to adverse effects, prenatal infection, in which antivaxer say maternal immune response activated by virus antigens may trigger schizophrenia which may a result of women being exposed to  rubella or influenza, both of which there are vaccines for and Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), which little is known about and which anti vaxers say diphtheria-tetanus toxoid vaccines may be factors. I have only skimmed the surface when it comes to attitudes concerning vaccines. So where do I stand on this topic… I’d rather be dancing in gasoline drawers on a burning volcano… rather than get in the middle of that ish…

We Will Get Through This

You know I keep saying its how you look at things… It reminds me of a meme one of my friends put on my timeline in Facebook. It went something like “During this Covid Pandemic some of us may resent being stuck in the house..but you are not stuck in the house.. you are being protected in the house.” It’s just the way you look at things… Before I go, I would like to thank all of you who keep us safe by putting yourselves in harm’s way so that we don’t have to. God bless you. I also invite you to read the story behind the picture above… some people are just little pricks.

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