‘Childish wisdom’ A response to vaccine skeptics
By Daniel R. Pichel
During elementary school, like up to fifth grade, we had one of those unforgettable music teachers. Her name was Nora, but everyone knew her as Madame because she spoke French. She was fabulous in organizing Mother’s Day events and other special dates. I remember on one occasion that she edited (with students from the school) several fragments of Mary Poppins. I particularly keep in my memory the “Supercalifragilisticoespialidoso” and the “Chim chimney” of that presentation, and I am sure that many of those who shared classrooms at the Pedagogical Institute in the seventies will also remember it.
The fact is that Professor Nora played the piano with amazing ease and taught us the funniest children’s songs. She asked us to write the lyrics in a notebook and illustrate it with figures referring to what each song said. A few years ago, I found in my house one of those notebooks full of such fond memories.
The vast majority of those songs were compositions by two Latin American authors. The Mexican Francisco Gabilondo Soler, known by his stage name Cri-Cri, and María Elena Walsh, Argentine poet, and composer, made a career writing for the children of the continent.
As always, children’s songs used to tell stories of animals or situations that, for the most part, carried some subliminal message in the background about letters, numbers, family or responsibility. Thus, with the piano accompaniment of our “Madame”, we had fun with the choirs of La mona Jacinta, La patita, Las vocales, El chorrito, La vaca studios, Los tres cochinitos, El corazón vaquero, and many others.
This week, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic and our environment, I particularly remembered one of those songs that we were taught in childhood. It was called The Reverse Kingdom and it spoke of a place where everything that happened was different from what logic would indicate.
Thus, in the kingdom that told that song “one thief is vigilant and another is judge” “Two and two are three”, “there is a Pekingese dog that falls up” and that there is no one dancing with their feet ”.
Well, it seems that the world is becoming the kingdom that Ana María Walsh envisioned when composing her song. It turns out that lawyers and architects have dedicated themselves to speaking on social networks about epidemiology, virology, cellular immunity, antibodies, and vaccines, as if that was learned in codes and decrees, or if it was drawn with rules, squad or AutoCad.
Incredibly, there are relatives of people who refused to be vaccinated for who knows what absurd reason and who are now hospitalized with Covid-19 pneumonia, who still refuse to be vaccinated, based on truly ridiculous arguments.
Doctors who have been trying for a year and a half trying to educate the population on what to do to control the pandemic, are threatened with lawsuits for breaches of ethics before our inert Medical College, for questioning that other colleagues publicly question vaccination, which has shown to be the best way to face not only the Covid-19 pandemic but any infectious disease.
A scientific article, backed by solid data, verified and endorsed by the most prestigious medical journals and societies in the world, is questioned based on any idiocy that was read in a WhatsApp message that was circulated by someone who most likely barely reached sixth-grade science. Anyone with an Excel sheet overwhelmingly contradicts the data published by the CDC, Imperial College of London, Johns Hopkins University, or the US National Institutes of Health.
All this without counting the number of experts in the manufacture, distribution, immunogenicity, or clinical applications of vaccines that have emerged like mushrooms in the forest during the last six months.
Because it turns out that these experts continue to question vaccination based on arguments such as that if you already had Covid-19, you do not need vaccines because you already have “natural immunity” or that the vaccine is not a vaccine because it does not “immunize”, and another series of torments. All this, despite the fact that it has already been published in real journals (and not on Twitter), that the antibody titers due to the infection, decrease markedly after three months and that is why it is recommended to be vaccinated anyway.
The solution for many of these people is if they don’t want to get vaccinated, don’t get vaccinated. The time will come where, to get on a plane, enter a restaurant or be hired, they will require the certification of their vaccine. Then, they will run to get vaccinated so they can get to visit Disney World.
Oh, and another song by María Elena Walsh, which Professor Nora taught us, and which told the story of a sorcerer who lived in a town called Gulubú, made it clear how to face the pandemic when it said: “ and all the witchcraft of the little witch of Gulubú, they were cured with the vacú, with the vaccine, moon moon lu … ” So now everyone knows, get vaccinated!
The author is a cardiologist. The article first appeared in La Prensa
