As human beings, we are experts at cognition. Basic cognitive processes include perception sensation, attention, and memory, whereas higher-level processes are intelligence, thought, and language.
Our understanding of the world and the entities within it basically depends on our ability to successfully categorize what we perceive. In fact, a basic survival skill, honed by evolution, is our ability to identify, recognize, and successfully evaluate different objects in our personal universe.
We store these evaluations in conceptual categories, which are the Tupperware containers of our mind. The more Tupperware we have and the more organized it is, the greater our intelligence.
Certain members of our species, however, only have a limited number of containers. Nevertheless, they have defied Darwinian natural selection and thus still walk among us today. Such people are easily recognizable because of their tendency to make binary judgments.
In their world, all objects are categorized as good or bad, truth or lie, brilliant or stupid, etc. Since they can only envisage two possibilities, they have no way of accurately classifying those hapless objects that fall through the cracks and are neither of the two extremes available in the binary universe. Binary vision can only see black or white without any shades of grey. All of us know at least a few people with this type of mindset. Arguing with them is as difficult as describing a rainbow to the colorblind.
A few days ago, I had a Skype conversation with a binary person. She had read my posts, and told me that in her opinion, I was unduly pessimistic about the pandemic. She confided to me that even though I seemed to be unaware of it, the coronavirus war was all but won…. and that I should not worry.
The US government, like the 7th Cavalry, had once again come to the rescue, though I had evidently not heard the bugle call sounding in the distance. Once again, the USA would save the world. (She is American, and you can guess whom she voted for in the previous election.)
According to her, the malaria drugs, chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine, are the magic bullet that would be used to ultimately vanquish the enemy. Over the computer screen, my facial expression must have mirrored a significant level of disbelief because she was quick to take offense.
Disagreeing with a binary person is a cardinal sin because in their binary universe, they are always right, and you are always wrong. She was upset that I did not share her perceptions, and our conversation did not end on a happy note.
Still, after the call had finished, I decided that maybe I should take a closer look and give her view a fair chance. I thus decided to ask my eldest son, who is currently working 24-hour shifts in intensive care in Madrid.
By now he has treated a lot of patients. Although many of them have recovered, he has also seen a lot of them die. So, I figured that he must have first-hand knowledge of which medications work and which do not.
I asked him whether, in his hospital, they were using malaria drugs as part of the coronavirus treatment protocol, and if so, whether these drugs were successful. His answer only confirmed my deep-seated belief in shades of grey.
In Spain, various drugs are currently being used to treat coronavirus patients. The medication administered depends on the stage of the disease, age, and health status of the patient, as well as on the availability of the drugs.
In the beginning, when the pandemic was on the upsurge and the country was taken by surprise, there was not sufficient medication available for everyone. In those dark days (i.e. a week ago), incoming patients had to wait in reclining chairs in the emergency room until someone died in order for them to be hospitalized.
The lack of medicine meant that doctors were obliged to choose who was “worthiest” In other words, they had to choose who had the best chance of benefiting from the drugs available. Now things have improved somewhat. My son told me that yesterday, there was one empty bed in intensive care, and that there was now sufficient medication for everyone who needed it
However, treating a coronavirus patient is not simple. One plus one does not always equal two. Quite often, one plus one equals three, five, or thirteen. In Spain, the coronavirus treatment protocol includes the use of malaria drugs, which sometimes (though not always) work, especially in the initial phases of the disease and when the patient is otherwise healthy without a medical history of other pathologies.
However caution is necessary because both chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine often cause very serious side effects such as abnormal heart rhythms. Since this type of heart problem can be fatal in certain patients, doctors have to be careful since the ‘magic bullet’ can kill the patient as well as the disease.
In those cases in which malaria drugs are not effective (and this is not a rare occurrence), doctors try antiretroviral drugs such as those administered for HIV or herpes, or antiviral drugs for the flu. There is also biological medication, which usually does not work at all. In the final phase, when patients start choking to death, corticoids and anti-coagulants are used.
It is a guessing game, which makes it extremely difficult to know what drug will be effective for whom and in which context.
As it turns out, there are no black and white or hard and fast rules to apply because each patient is a world unto himself. In the final analysis, everything mostly depends on the strength of the patient’s immune system. There are patients of 97 who recover and others of 44, who do not. In the great coronavirus lottery, even if you buy only one ticket instead of 164, your number could still come up.
My son told me that this situation reminded him of when he graduated from medical school 20 years ago. His first job was as a general practitioner at a large Spanish military base. Because of his lack of experience, he would sometimes incorrectly diagnose a patient and prescribe the wrong medicine.
Miraculously, there were never any negative consequences. Since the patients were all young, strong, and physically fit, they got well anyway, regardless of what was prescribed. With the coronavirus, the possibility of recovery also seems to depend more on the patient than on the medication received.
So, the magic coronavirus bullet, if indeed it exists, is still to be discovered. The categorization of coronavirus medicine is thus not a question of black and white. It can only be understood if one’s mind has various Tupperware containers, not only two. The position of malaria drugs appears to lie somewhere in-between the Tupperware container for totally effective medication (which is empty) and the container for totally useless medication (which is overflowing).
As mentioned in a previous post, useless medication not only includes volcanic ash, bleach-like solutions, and colloidal silver. It also includes antibiotics, which only work on bacteria, not on viruses. And one need not be Dr. House to know that the coronavirus, despite recent affirmations to the contrary, is a virus (as its name indicates) not a bacteria.
Malaria drugs as coronavirus medication thus belong in Tupperware that is neither black nor white. Let’s color it grey.
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