Covid-19: An America Changed

By Janice M. Barlow

COVID-19: An America Changed looks back at the virus that transformed the world.

Janice M. Barlow zeroes in on the day-to-day impact the virus has had on society, including debates about our response to the pandemic.

She argues that some of the sticking points are old issues with new names, while others are new—especially for most of us who have never lived through a pandemic.

Drawing on interviews of ill individuals, as well as data from news reports, the author paints a detailed picture of how mandates were enforced, testing was conducted, and information (and misinformation) was circulated.

She also shares her own experience of getting sick in early 2020 and not being sure of its cause. For weeks, she was exhausted and miserable.

While God is not the focus of this monograph, it poses an important question that should be top of mind: Where will your heart be when you meet God on the other side?

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 21, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664236561

Janice M. Barlow

Janice M. Barlow is a retired financial advisor who has authored seven books including two true crime books, a short fiction work about one of her greyhounds, and The Last Bloodline, the prequel to this book. Janice writes and performs Christian music at her church. She lives in coastal North Carolina with her husband, Bob, and their greyhound, Longo.

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Copyright © 2021 Janice M. Barlow.

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All Scripture quotations are taken from the King James Version.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-3655-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-3654-7 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-3656-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021911358

WestBow Press rev. date: 06/11/2021

To my son, Evan, who had to fight the virus firsthand

and came out safely on the other side.

God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble.

Therefore will not we fear, though the earth be removed, and

though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.

—Psalm 46:1–2 (KJV)

CONTENTS

Introduction

Chapter 1     When Did We Know?

Chapter 2     What Is a Virus?

Chapter 3     Past Pandemics

Chapter 4     What Is SARS-CoV2?

Chapter 5     False Remedies and Bad Information

Chapter 6     So, What Exactly Are the Numbers?

Chapter 7     Confirmation Bias

Chapter 8     Behind the Mask and the Vaccine Stab

Chapter 9     Is COVID Going Away, or Is It Here to Stay?

Chapter 10   The Problems with Testing

Chapter 11   The Problems with Treatments

Chapter 12   Is COVID Permanently Changing How We Do Things?

Chapter 13   When COVID Goes on and On

Chapter 14   Lockdowns and Mandates

Chapter 15   The Perspective of a Frontline Registered Nurse

Chapter 16   Personal Stories of COVID

Chapter 17   Matthew’s* Saga

Chapter 18   The Ongoing Vaccine Conspiracy Debates: Updates

Chapter 19   The Vaccine Trials

Chapter 20   Looking Ahead

Acknowledgments

Endnotes

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this book is to bring to light the effects of a pandemic on the United States and how we are still trying to cope with it as a nation. It is not intended to lean politically one way or another, although some of the political ramifications of COVID-19 will be discussed. Is it impacted by my own opinions? Certainly, it is, and no doubt some of my opinions won’t be welcomed by many who disagree. But that is the power of the First Amendment and the right each of us has to sit down at a laptop and do exactly what I am doing at this moment in time. Hopefully, you will agree with at least some of what I discuss. Oddly, I find myself agreeing with both the left and the right, depending on the specifics. It is beyond sad that our nation, and even the world, has made a virus a political issue and not just a medical dilemma.

It most certainly isn’t intended to second-guess Almighty God and His purpose for our nation. He has written all that He intended for us to know in His Word. Our interpretation of the Bible should not be done with any preconceived biases toward what we want COVID-19 to portray or what we believe God is doing with it, if anything at all.

Since the effects and implications of this virus are continuous and ongoing, the intent is also not to post data that will become outdated by the time this book reaches publication. The bibliography (notes section) will contain some links and articles that were fresh when I used them. Though newer information will be available when you are reading this, I didn’t use the articles for data sets but more as an historical account about an ongoing pandemic. Not every point I make is referenced in the note section because I dissect some topics more than once. Also, I credit you, as the reader, to be able to check out some of the more general topics on your own without feeling that it is necessary to cross-check my superscripted links. That can get mundane very quickly.

On the other hand, this work is not merely an emotional read about personal situations involving those who have dealt with this illness. Those stories are contained within, but this book covers much more than those. My goal is to cover what this nuclear-microscopic piece of semiliving material has done to wreak havoc across our country in so many ways.

Superscript websites and articles are referenced in the notes section at the end. I didn’t immediately post the reference tag as soon as I began discussing a topic that was researched, but I did at the end of that particular subject. So, it may seem that information wasn’t referenced where facts or figures are mentioned, but if you keep reading, the superscript will be there. I just didn’t want too much repetition in referencing any material.

This is also not a scientific work. There is some information in here that was necessary for describing the effects and symptoms of past pandemics and COVID itself but merely to provide a basis for what a pandemic is. Its main focus is on the day-to-day impact of the coronavirus on individuals and groups and the ongoing debates about nearly every issue that has resulted. Some of the debates are just old issues with new names. Others are totally new, especially to all of us who are alive now and have never lived through anything like this before.

By the time you are reading this, what I have written will be recent history and can be used as a reflective reference of where we were at particular times, primarily in 2020. Just as with 9/11, the scenario changed as time went on, and as we learned more and more about what had happened, more books and articles appeared for several years. That will happen with COVID as well, and it should. That’s why I tried to remain general in my focus and just look at different aspects of our daily living that were affected by this uninvited guest.

It will appear at times that I have contradicted myself. I don’t think that’s unique. Most of us have shifted back and forth on our opinions about COVID since it first became apparent that it wasn’t something just happening over there in China, like SARS. As we continue to learn more about it, see how it could affect those infected, and realize how the CDC chose to enforce mandates, scrutinize testing, and publicize data, we can conclude that we received a lot of mixed information and misinformation. So, our thought processes became confused. This is no surprise.

We may never know the truth of what happened. Personally, when truth remains unknown, I believe that the worst thing to do is to invent the truth by speculating about what happened to the point where we start believing lies. I hope I put a nix on that in this book, whether you agree with my contentions or not. I try to focus on logic and actual science, although I do have my own opinions, as we all do. But science, in its true essence, does not allow for bias. So, we must try to be open-minded in approaching anything new and unknown without putting the blame here or there or denying its existence without first digging in and seeing what is happening in reality.

Reality means looking at real-life situations. I did that as best I could. I not only interviewed those who were ill to various degrees with COVID, but I sourced some news reports with accurate data on specific cases. I also interviewed asymptomatic people, because, unlike the flu, you can have COVID and never get symptoms.

There is a lot we still don’t know. One thing about scientists is that there is some degree of arrogance that exists in the field. Some scientists think that they know more than they don’t know until proven otherwise. This has truly borne out with this virus. Many researchers who are well known have had to walk back claims, correct themselves, try something else, and so on. Others who promoted some weird conspiracies have simply disappeared off the radar. Remember to give the ones who are proven researchers the benefit of the doubt. This is all new to them too. Most have admitted they were wrong and are striving for the truth, as we all are.

This writing only encompasses a portion of the many topics that could be discussed about this horrible disease. I intentionally kept away from politics as much as possible, since COVID doesn’t go after anyone of a particular political persuasion. Also, there are people who, just because of their political affiliation, view the virus through that particular lens. The effects of elections, stimulus checks, and so on are also not discussed, although some are touched on. The focus is more about the disease itself and what we have done and are doing to try to stop it. It’s mostly a series of snapshots from 2020 to give the reader a synopsis of what was going on as we were hit with COVID-19. I apologize if the issue that is of most importance to you was not included. I didn’t want this to become a textbook or a long-winded news venture. It’s much more personal than that.

God sits upon His throne. People die daily—some from COVID-19 now, where, not long ago, this was not the case. The bottom line is that some people are now dying from a novel virus and not from an underlying condition; we know this to be true, because if they had not contracted COVID, they’d likely still be alive. Others died because of an underlying condition, and they also happened to be COVID positive, so their deaths were labeled as caused by COVID—a sad result of politics. Others still, as survivors, are bound for the remainder of their lives to suffer from some disabling effect of the virus, perhaps lung damage, nerve damage, or even an anxiety disorder.

Although the intent of this book is not to be about Christianity, I beg the question here before we begin our adventure: where will your heart be when you meet God on the other side? Because we all will, sooner or later, whether from a virus that we knew nothing about in 2019 or something else.

Whereas ye know not what shall be on the morrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away. (James 4:14 KJV).

In the meantime, let’s expose the lies and myths, reveal the truths, and look toward a hopeful future, whenever that may be.

CHAPTER 1

When Did We Know?

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W e are creatures of habit. Unless it is during the blistering heat of summer in coastal North Carolina, I walk my younger greyhound each evening. Or maybe I should say he walks me. Longo is a solid, eighty-five-pound mass of muscle and energy, and his daily walks are a new adventure for him each time. As we exit through the garage door, he automatically turns to the west, where we head down the winding streets of our neighborhood. Usually at this time of day, the sun has just set, and the sky is streaked with corals and soft peaches, yellows, oranges, and that unnamable color somewhere between powder blue and gold.

It’s peaceful and serene, but we are not alone. It seems that everyone in the neighborhood has a dog or two, and everyone is walking them. I greet the people, and Longo greets the fellow pups, his tail flapping wildly to and fro as he sniffs and sniffs. He’s forever sniffing. Greyhounds are known to be sighthounds, gifted with an uncanny ability to see very far off. But I seem to have acquired one that is more olfactory.

Longo loves to pull me from tree to tree and every bush and flower in between, ever sniffing to see what fellow canines visited before him. And, patiently, I let him. I’m in no hurry.

As we were walking one evening last March, after a hiatus due to my being incapacitated for a couple of weeks, it dawned on me that Longo’s sense of smell was one of the first symptoms, when suddenly absent in humans, that was a red flag for COVID-19.

The reason for my own inability to walk my dog for almost three weeks is probably the same as hundreds of thousands of others across the country, and probably globally. I possibly, and perhaps probably, had the virus but still didn’t know. Now, as I write this late in 2020, I am still unable to get tested for antibodies. But I am able to write about my experience. Those of us who had something happen to us early in 2020 but are unsure of its source can relate to my personal account. Yours is surely different, but you are certain of the strangeness of what happened to you.

My husband and I had taken a cruise to the Caribbean on the Holland America cruise line in February. Neither of us experienced any health issues. It was a great trip. I did get bitten by mosquitoes early in the trip in the Dominican Republic at a coffee bean plantation, and I became concerned because there was an outbreak of dengue fever going on. Dengue fever is spread by mosquitoes that bite in the morning hours, and that’s when I was bitten. But I never got the fever. I’m not a hypochondriac, but I am prone to getting bitten by insects and spiders quite often!

As we watched the news in our cabin each day, we became alarmed at the virus that had appeared in Wuhan, China. We knew it had occurred before we left, but it never crossed our minds that it would spread outside of China. It was another bird flu thing. Or so I thought.

Then we heard about the cruise ship that wouldn’t allow people to disembark. That was the Princess cruise ship that had docked in Japan. There were people on board who were sick with the virus. We still weren’t concerned because it was in Asia, and we were in the Caribbean. I nervously thought about how awful it would be to have your vacation turn into a prison, trapped in your cabin for days on end.

Our trip ended uneventfully. We flew home from Fort Lauderdale through Atlanta and back to our home airport in North Carolina. When we got home, we heard about a Holland America ship that could not dock. No one was sick, but Asian ports would not let it dock. What was going on?

By this point, this coronavirus had appeared in New York City and in Seattle. The Seattle cases had been spread by a visitor from Wuhan, China, to a nursing home facility. People were dying. They needed to get this pestilence under control. Why were people traveling here from China?

About a week after our return, I woke up with a headache. I’m prone to migraines, but this was in the front of my head. It wasn’t a migraine. I felt slightly dizzy and nauseous. Since I teach English online to foreign children in the mornings, I don’t have to leave the house to go to work. At least that was a blessing because I also had a very raw, sore throat. I took my temperature, which is normally 97.4. It was 98.9. I didn’t consider that a fever. Later I found out that any temperature above your personal norm could be a fever for you.

I taught my classes and went back to bed. Fortunately, I didn’t have any classes the next day. I became progressively more exhausted as the day wore on. That’s what I remember most vividly—the extreme fatigue. I got up and went to sit in the family room recliner. It was like I had climbed a hill for a half hour. What was going on? We have an upper floor in our home. I thought of the stairs and realized I couldn’t even attempt it. I wondered if there was something wrong with my heart. I took my blood pressure. It was low but not out of normal range.

The next couple days were a blur of the same. I cancelled classes. I barely ate anything. Then one evening, as I was feeling a hundred years old just walking down the hall to the bedroom, I felt a jolt like a Taser to my right side in the middle of my ribcage. It caught my breath. I couldn’t breathe for a few seconds. It was like someone held a branding iron there for about three long seconds. Then it happened again. I don’t remember screaming then, but I know I did. My husband wanted to take me to the emergency room.

I refused, saying that I could die in a hospital. That may have been fortuitous, because there were no known COVID cases in our county at that time, but people were going to the hospital near us with what was probably COVID.

I went to bed. The Taser shocks continued but lessened as the night wore on. I wondered if it was what a pulmonary embolism felt like. I tried to Google search it, but I was too tired.

The next day, I was still exhausted but didn’t have that Taser feeling again until the evening. And it wasn’t as bad. The following day, I taught my classes. Then I went back to bed. But I got the Taser shocks in my left big toe and behind my right ear. They tingled and burned. I realized this was neurological. It still had not dawned on me that it could be the coronavirus, since there were as yet no known cases in my county—and very few in my state. I had not considered my travel. When you are sick, your mind isn’t thinking clearly.

After that week of misery, I slowly recovered my stamina over the next two weeks. By then, the virus had made its appearance in my county via positive tests and pretty much in every state. I started watching the Worldometer statistics website daily, since one of our sons lives in Asia. But his country was faring better than most.

There are things I don’t remember. I don’t remember if I ever lost my sense of smell. I didn’t think to check. I don’t remember if I was short of breath. I didn’t have a cough, nor did I recall having any shortness of breath. But I do know that if I had tried to run twenty yards, I would have collapsed.

Not only did I discover a few months later that my strange neurological condition is something that can appear with COVID-19, but I found out in September that I was exposed to someone who had COVID right after we returned from our trip. I didn’t know it at the time. And I was exposed to the person for an extended time in close proximity. This was before any lockdown or masks or social distancing mandates were in place. Remember, we returned in mid-February.

To protect the person’s identity and the others who were exposed, one of whom became ill for a much longer time than I did, I won’t delve into the details. But now it seems more likely that this is where I picked up what was probably COVID-19.

As for my husband? He is the one with type A blood. People with type A blood are supposed to get sicker if they contract the virus. I am type O, the more resistant type, according to studies. He felt rather run-down for a couple of days, and that was all.

I know of a pastor and his wife who were affected. The pastor got very ill but not sick enough to be hospitalized. His wife, who took care of him, slept next to him, and was never far from his side during the whole ordeal, tested negative during his recovery. She never had it. It begs the question, are there people out there who are naturally immune to this coronavirus? And if so, shouldn’t we be looking for them to create plasmas? Naturally immune people are more valuable than those who had it and recovered because, as we learned later, you can possibly get it again.

In my recently released novel, The Last Bloodline, a bacterial pandemic hits the world with a vengeance, but natural immunity exists. It makes a huge difference in the outcome of the book. (The sequel is under construction right now.)

There are issues the general public question daily, have insight into daily, and have information about daily that the scientists, doctors, biased media (in all directions), and self-made experts don’t want to hear about. It seems that so many people have their own narratives that they have come to believe about COVID-19, and it is almost impossible to change their minds with accurate data and actual results. I fail to understand this problem, but it’s not unique. People choose to believe what they are most comfortable believing, whether it is more or less frightening or exciting than what is really happening. It is just like a court case I observed a few years ago, when the medical examiner was asked by the judge why he was being so hard on the defense in his responses. He simply answered, Well, they aren’t asking the right questions.

As I recovered, I resumed the writing of my novel, which was nearly done. I was admittedly perturbed that I had started a pandemic thriller in October 2019, only to have it manifest in reality. The best scenario would have been for it to remain fiction, but here we are.

COVID-19 is a very strange and elusive virus. It will be discussed in detail in this book but not in such scientific terms that you will get bored and put the book down. My goal is to show you how strange it is and how we are still trying to figure it out, and the progress made to that end by the time the book got sent to publication. In effect, I suppose I am documenting current events that, by the time you read this, will be historical.

I know that many of you had or know someone who had a similar experience early in 2020, perhaps even before we heard of what was going on in China. What really was going on? Well, I’m sorry to disappoint you on that rabbit trail. I’m not going to be writing about any Wuhan virus conspiracy, and I’m sure there are many books already out there that dig deep into that. But whatever happened to many of us was not a typical run-of-the-mill illness. And we can take that to the bank.

As the months have passed by, more evidence has surfaced to indicate that SARS-CoV2 was in the United States in the fall of 2019 when we were not taking any precautions. Hospitals were treating people who had tested negative for the flu but were obviously quite ill. Specifics will be referenced later.

CHAPTER 2

What Is a Virus?

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L et’s begin with basic science so that we have a working knowledge of a viral pandemic. This may be a review for many readers, but it doesn’t hurt to refresh your memories.

First, what is a virus? There are many ways a virus can be described, but it is difficult to define something that isn’t really a living and breathing organism and is smaller than any known natural organism.

Unlike bacteria, viruses don’t eat, or have nuclei, or multiply. (The only living cells without nuclei are red blood cells.) Viruses replicate. They produce submicroscopic clones of themselves by plugging into specific receptor cells within a living host, shedding their protein coats, and genetically changing the structure of the DNA or RNA within the cells into more viral protein. These new cells have become more virus, and in very simple terms, they search out more cells in the host in which to replicate themselves.

Well, are viruses alive then? The answer is yes and no. They lack the common organic material that a single-celled organism has to be called living, yet they can replicate. The initial interest in viruses stemmed from their association with diseases—the word, ‘virus’ has its roots in the Latin term for ‘poison.’¹

Viruses can’t move. It takes something to