[photo of the evening sky, Moon and North Star]
Every day I ride through my neighborhood, often morning and eve.
Last night I rode by a house with an old man sitting out front. I pretty much wave and say hi to everyone. He had a Texas flag out front and waved heartily. So I stopped and said hi.
He said he was 65 and his wife was the same age. They are retired and want to travel but fear being around people. I felt sadness hearing that. I confirmed it meant what I thought it meant by inviting him to the BBQ and yeah it was about the cooties.
I asked if he had heard of ivermectin. He said, "Oh the horse medicine?" Oh man. Heh. I asked if he had heard it was used for Dengue Fever, West Nile Virus, etc. He said, "Yeah but it's dangerous and it is anti-bacterial not anti-viral." (WRONG). I told him it was anti-viral but he didn't believe. We didn't get into a heated argument, though. I backed off. We talked about mundane stuff a bit and then back to vaccines. He said he got the vax THEN got covid but didn't tell me that order until I asked. He just let on that he had gotten both. After I asked and he said the order, I was like, "OK so in spite of the vax you got the covid so I guess you would not support kids getting the vax?
"Oh we gotta end this thing so I support all ages getting it!" At that point I almost threw up my hands and rode away but I thought, "There is hope for everyone and I ride by here every day. I'll keep it friendly."
I asked if he had heard about the two big Israeli studies, one saying natural immunity is 13x more effective and the other saying 27x.
He replied that he had heard of them but said something that didn't really make sense like "Yeah those Israelis are advanced" kinda like dodging the acknowledgement of the point.
So I thought, "Oh he doesn't wanna face it and I won't force him to. I'll back off again and end this friendly and maybe next time I ride by I'll have new info or he will."
I tend to play the "long game" with many things.
Throughout the conversation, a couple times he said something like,"I am eager for things to get back to normal so my wife and I can interact with people again." Sadness. Wanted to tell him sorry I don't think things will "get back to normal" and in fact, I think things will get much worse before they get better. But I didn't see that as a wise thing to say at the time.
He shared a lot with me about his pretty deep studies of the Spanish Flu of 1918. He kept apologizing for government by bringing up "Government is just doing what they know how to do which is their response to the Spanish Flu.
Another thing he mentioned more than once: Having covid was a terrible experience I don't want anyone to have so to me, masks, vaccines, and anything we can do to prevent that is warranted.
My suspicion is that the amount of short term and long term pain/damage from covid may be directly proportionate to the health of the individual before they get Covid. I chose not to point out he was overweight, verging on obesity.
I've been thinking one thing I could do is drop some paper (ugh paper) at his door/mailbox that shows proof about ivermectin efficacy in humans. I may. Not sure if that will be welcomed or not. He seemed a pretty kind and open guy in many ways. Told me many times he appreciated the conversation.