Wendy here! This blog post was sent days ago and I missed posting it so some of the numbers may have changed from last week. Sending lots of love and wellness to all of you!

 The Musings of the Lunatic Farmer do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of Polyface Farm; they are meant to stimulate unorthodox thinking especially in the arena of preserving liberty.

            I deeply appreciate the backlash over my posting about wanting the coronavirus so I could go ahead and get immune to it.  That's certainly the most aggressive pushback I've received on any posting to date and I take it humbly, as one who doesn't have all the answers and certainly doesn't know everything.

             What I was trying to say is what a military colonel just verified on the phone with me this morning--he's a strategist.  The problem is that we're not differentiating vulnerable and non-vulnerable populations.  Whenever you have a problem, you itemize risk and categorize various levels of risk.

             Do I want my mother who's 96 to get it?  Of course not, and if felt sick, I certainly wouldn't go over and visit her.  For the record, she's going about her routine like normal with no fear because "I'm ready to go," she says.  So if I'm foolish, at least I can blame Mom.  Going to nursing homes?  Of course that's high risk and needs precautions.  The reason Italy and Spain are suffering inordinately is because they have a huge smoking population, and Italy especially has an old aged demographic.  We know that anything that reduces lung health makes a person susceptible to the coronavirus; even to the point of death.

             Those of you who thought the post was simply being flippant about it misread it:  I'm asking for scientific response and to dispense with blanket hysteria.  To shut down the country and put healthy, low-risk people and situations in the same category as high risk is simply an incorrect response.

             In Virginia, the government has declared grocery stores essential but farmers' markets non-essential.  Does anyone think shopping at Wal-Mart is less risky than shopping at an open air farmers' market?  Daring to question official edicts seems to be off limits.  As Peter Bane, guru of permaculture says, in times of epochal change, the most important asset in society as to preserve the ability to think and do things differently.  That's where innovation occurs.

             Furthermore, the experts who consistently and routinely liken this to the Spanish flu of 1918 and other flu-type viruses should realize that the best defense is a good immune system.  I have lots of friends who religiously take the flu shot and get the flu every year; others never take one and never get it.  If you're waiting for a coronavirus vaccine that's as efficacious as the flu shot, you might be putting your faith in the wrong place.

             And yet people bow and fawn in front of these experts as if their edicts are gospel.  Remember, the experts told us the earth was flat, that women didn't want to vote, that airplanes would never be valuable to the military, that alcohol should be prohibited, that hydrogenated vegetable oil is better than butter, and that crackers and cake were the foundation of good nutrition (the USDA Food Pyramid).  The whole point of the iconic anthropological book GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL is that proximity to livestock and generational immune exercise reduced vulnerability in a given culture.  This is not pinning hopes on some vaccine; it's foundational societal strength, and I want to be part of a robust health society.

             If we don't categorize risk factors in response, and if we don't invest in immunological function, we simply delay our collective ability to withstand the virus and get over it.   More and more people are beginning to wonder if the cure is becoming worse than the disease.  Do I want anyone to die?  Of course not.  I don't even want anyone to go to the hospital.  But every policy has tradeoffs.  Setting speed limits, making Coca-Cola, Little Debbie's sugar, bungee jumping--we personally and corporately measure risks every day.

             While Virginia has 200 confirmed positives and 3 deaths, in that amount of time far more people have died on our highways, been abused by a spouse, or suffered from superbugs created by factory farm sub-therapeutic antibiotics.  How about we have a national campaign to boost immune systems?  Perhaps if we put as much attention on that as developing a vaccine and sending our jobless rate to 30 percent we'd actually get where we need to go.

             The single biggest suppressant of the immune system is loneliness.  Who knows how many people will get the coronavirus in a weakened state because they're alone?  Has anyone measured that?  Interestingly, in 1918 the only urban city in America that kept its bars open was Milwaukee.  Guess which city had the lowest infection rate from this deadly flu?  Milwaukee.  Was it drinking, enjoying some time with friends, or a fluke?  Who knows?  Wouldn't it be interesting to know?  I fear that in the hysteria of the moment anyone who dares to question is automatically branded an uncharitable ignoramous (like I've been).

             Folks, it's a great big complex life web out here and we're going at this thing from an extremely narrow, reductionist, Western paradigm without a healthy dose of holistic, Eastern, connectedness thinking.  And if we can't respect a contrarian view (known as the lunatic fringe in business parlance) than how will we ever learn anything?  We eat at the orthodox table plenty.  And please, please, please, let's all keep our sense of humor; laughter is the best medicine.  Perhaps we should declare a national day of laughter and all the news media should take the day off and have comedy acts all day.  I'll be we'd all feel better tomorrow.

             How are you boosting your immune system?