A Virus is Not Just a Virus, Part I:  The Real Deal

My personal journey through life has had the good fortune of including parents who were wise about caring for their two sons.  Both were WW II veterans.  Dad was in the Army and fought in the Pacific under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.  Mom was a Registered Nurse and was an Army surgical nurse stationed at the military hospital in Memphis, TN.  They specialized in trauma surgery for soldiers who had damaged or lost limbs from both theaters of war.  Mom and Dad met by happenstance in Winter Haven...after Dad was discharged and Mom was on leave.  Ultimately, Mom resigned her commission (as a Lieutenant), and they were married in 1947.  I came along in 1950, and my brother in 1954.  

The war cited above created the need for rapid medical advances.  Penicillin and other antibiotics were created to stop the rampant spread of pneumonia and bacterial infections that ravaged the troops on the battlefields.   At the same time, research produced the first vaccine to successfully prevent polio and then vaccines for a host of insidious viral infections.  Oddly enough, history had favored the treatment of smallpox much earlier.  

My brother and I grew up in a period where parents were concerned for the wellness of their children.  The post WW II baby boom produced a huge influx of children that created the need for larger schools and a number of new social activities that brought folks together in ways not experienced in our culture.  Advances in technology brought folks closer together...moving the United States into a more complex urban environment.   My graduating class at Winter Haven High School (Winter Haven, Florida) in 1968 numbered 483 students.   Winter Haven was not considered a large city, so one can imagine what the influx of the Boomer generation was like on a grander scale.

By the time I graduated from high school, I had been inoculated for all the major diseases then active in our culture:  smallpox, polio, typhoid, tetanus, diphtheria, and probably some I have long forgotten.  There was no question that we would get our annual physical and the appropriate levels of vaccinations. In fact, it was required in order to be registered in our schools.   Our parents were diligent in preparing us for future adulthood.

Anti-vaxer was an unheard term in our generation.  In our city, we knew of only one family who refused to get their first child vaccinated for polio.  He contracted polio at a very young age and nearly died.  He was born the same year as I was.  He was confined to a wheelchair.  Over the long haul (and a long story), he died shortly after graduating from college.

When I entered the U.S. Navy in the summer of 1972 (after graduating from college...another long story),  our training company went through three separate vaccination series to prepare us for future assignments.  At that time the main destination for most military branches was Viet Nam.  We were vaccinated to prepare for that potentiality.  

Viruses are strange.  Once one is successfully healed from chickenpox that  virus can still remain dormant in the human body for the balance of one's life.  Dormant chickenpox virus can reappear in later adult years as shingles.   Yes, after my retirement in 2011, my primary care physician advised me to have a Shingrix series of that vaccine.  Having seen shingles in several of my parishioners, I was very quick to agree.   

A virus is an infectious agent that can only replicate within a host organism. Viruses can infect a variety of living organisms, including bacteria, plants, and animals. Viruses are non-living organisms that do not have anything like a brain, they have the incredible capacity to seek survival.  Most viruses replicate on a set regularity, once they infect a host.  The faster they replicate the more contagious they are.  In most cases, should the potential host gain a resistance to said virus, it will shift its nucleic acid make-up with a resulting variant that can often be even more lethal in its infectious capacity.   While bacteria (a living organism) can be neutralized with an antibiotic, a virus has to be almost literally "blown apart" by a weaponized vaccine.   We can thank Edward Jenner, who developed a treatment for smallpox (1796); and thank Max Theiler, who developed the first vaccine to treat yellow fever in the 1930s.   The advances in medicine and treatment for diseases has been helped by tremendous advances in microbiology and disease research.  

I was raised in an era that truly respected to work of the scientific community.   While I had a wonderful liberal arts education, my focus was the scientific disciplines...most especially biological science.  I was invested in the study of medicine, when my vocation rather suddenly shifted (another long story).  Yet, i I remain conversant with what is happening in scientific research and the medical arts.  I understand and support the efficacy of research that is ongoing and producing better treatments for all sorts and conditions of human illness.   My wife and I raised our two daughters to be competent in caring for their health and, now the health of their children.  

I do not spend any time at all arguing with anti-vax folks.  While I generally abhor the casting of judgment on others, I cannot help but wonder how their education is so truncated as to not grasp the knowledge and capacity science has provided for the treatment of illness and disease.   I will not judge, but I will continue to speak what I have experienced and continue to learn.

Yes, I do indeed find that theology and science are quite compatible.   I am, at the heart of it, both a theologian and a scientist...and a psychologist within that scientific community.

Be well and be safe, my friends!

Fred+