"I get annoyed with all of the "there wasn't even a virus" crowd. There was totally a virus."
I would encourage you to consider levels of abstraction in this sentence. What you KNOW is that there is a disease - you KNOW it to have (in your phrasing) "kicked butt" in people, including in your wife, who you personally know, and who you sat with through her sufferings.
So, yes, the suffering is real, and the disease is real.
But, is a virus real? How would you know? How would I know? Let's suppose viruses are real. They are still undetectable in any sense that you or I could muster or assemble from our own resources. If we are to stick to what we actually KNOW, and actually CAN KNOW, we can certainly attest to the suffering and disease experienced by ourselves and by those we know and love.
Getting down to causes is much more difficult and, in these highly polarised times, highly contentious. And skewed by ideology, by profit, by tribalism and by other human failings known to generate smoke and create mirrors that obscure rather than illuminate. But determining cause is also a full remove away from what the sick actually need, and perhaps we do not even need to go there.
Perhaps, sticking with our knowledge that someone IS suffering with a disease, we might start offering care and treatment, applying general guidelines gained from clinical and personal experience, and relying upon the person's own signs and symptoms, to best determine what is effective to activate the processes in that person that best leads to their healing.
Does it really help to insist that their disease is a virus? any more than it does to deny that their illness is a virus? None of us can KNOW anything much about viruses - their presence or their absence - with any certainty, whereas if we stick to the certainty we can agree on - that (say) here is a clinically detectable, and personally experienced, disease, then we can stay on common ground and keep sharing tips for healing that might be useful.
Re: A few wins this week, and hope for more
I would encourage you to consider levels of abstraction in this sentence. What you KNOW is that there is a disease - you KNOW it to have (in your phrasing) "kicked butt" in people, including in your wife, who you personally know, and who you sat with through her sufferings.
So, yes, the suffering is real, and the disease is real.
But, is a virus real? How would you know? How would I know? Let's suppose viruses are real. They are still undetectable in any sense that you or I could muster or assemble from our own resources. If we are to stick to what we actually KNOW, and actually CAN KNOW, we can certainly attest to the suffering and disease experienced by ourselves and by those we know and love.
Getting down to causes is much more difficult and, in these highly polarised times, highly contentious. And skewed by ideology, by profit, by tribalism and by other human failings known to generate smoke and create mirrors that obscure rather than illuminate. But determining cause is also a full remove away from what the sick actually need, and perhaps we do not even need to go there.
Perhaps, sticking with our knowledge that someone IS suffering with a disease, we might start offering care and treatment, applying general guidelines gained from clinical and personal experience, and relying upon the person's own signs and symptoms, to best determine what is effective to activate the processes in that person that best leads to their healing.
Does it really help to insist that their disease is a virus? any more than it does to deny that their illness is a virus? None of us can KNOW anything much about viruses - their presence or their absence - with any certainty, whereas if we stick to the certainty we can agree on - that (say) here is a clinically detectable, and personally experienced, disease, then we can stay on common ground and keep sharing tips for healing that might be useful.