The great general Colin Powell died this week from COVID complications.  He was fully vaccinated.  At his age, any illness could have taken his life, yet if the vaccine were truly as effective as the experts say it is, surely General Powell should not have been infected with COVID.  Surely the wonderful vaccine, which has been said to be so safe and effective, should have protected him against COVID.

General Powell's vaccine was of no use against COVID.  He submitted to experimental gene therapy in the hopes that it would protect him, and it did nothing for him.  That hasn't stopped the experts from proclaiming General Powell's death as next door to proof that the vaccines are working.

Ian Sams, an adviser to the Department of Health and Human Services, is fretting on Twitter that what he is pleased to call the anti-vaxxers will use General Powell's death as evidence that the vaccines may not be as efficient as advertised.  A professor of Emergency Medicine at George Washington University, Dr. Leana Wen, huffs that news reports should mention that General Powell also suffered from cancer and Parkinson's disease, which could have made the vaccine less efficacious.  Dr. Wen also served as Baltimore's health commissioner (and briefly as the head of Planned Parenthood, America's premier abortion corporation —ed.), so she's really an expert.

It all makes me think of another kind of expert, Dr. Ignaz Semmelweis, the physician who pioneered washing hands to prevent disease.  Semmelweis actually knew what he was talking about because he ran the obstetrics wards at the Vienna General Hospital in Austria in the mid-19th century.

Semmelweis observed that, in those obstetrics wards that physicians attended, the mortality rate was high; in those that midwives attended, the mortality rate was low.  The only difference between the doctors and the midwives was that doctors did autopsies and frequently delivered babies with the blood of the dead still on their hands.

Semmelweis concluded that something was clinging to the doctors' hands that was harmful to the women giving birth.  Beginning in 1847, he began begging everyone to wash his hands with chlorine before going into the obstetrics wards.  The death rate plummeted.

Everyone should have been thrilled.  However, the medical community resented being accused of killing people.  To further discredit his ideas, although he was a Hungarian-born German, and may have been an atheist, a Catholic of Jewish descent, the rumor was spread that he was actively Jewish and, therefore, insulting Christian doctors.

Semmelweis was thrown out and, eventually, as his behavior became increasingly erratic (possibly Alzheimer's or syphilis), he was relegated to an insane asylum, where it's quite possible that attendants beat him to death.  The experts had spoken.  Evidence was not important when placed in the balance of what was politically correct and conformable to the accepted medical doctrines of the day.  This was back in the 1800s, and nothing has changed in the 21st century.

General Powell is not the first vaccinated person to die of COVID.  He is merely the most high-profile person to die of COVID.  Vaccines are designed to protect populations, not individuals.  There will always be illnesses and deaths among the vaccinated, no matter what disease they are supposed to be protected against.

COVID is unique only in that no prophylactic treatment is offered when a person tests positive.  Those diagnosed with COVID are ordered to quarantine and to go to the hospital only if they feel sick.  By then, it may be too late to save them.

As Semmelweis did, there are people demanding that the experts follow the evidence and employ early treatments to save people unnecessary suffering and death.  And like Semmelweis, these people are being ridiculed by experts who claim to know better, even as the body count rises.

COVID is causing a great deal of unnecessary suffering and death because the experts in charge are only experts in the bottom line of preserving the status quo and following the money.  We need experts like Semmelweis, experts who follow the science even when the conclusions go against what the people in charge want us to think.

Pandra Selivanov is the author of Future Slave, a story about a black 21st-century teenager who is sent back in time and becomes a slave in the Old South.

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