Two people-watching episodes this past week brought into focus the real crisis in public health. WuFlu is not a public health crisis, in itself. Rather the grossly politicized exploitation of this novel respiratory disease virus, in service of the lab coat left system, advocated by Woodrow Wilson in the late 1890s and starkly warned of in President Eisenhower’s farewell address, has corrupted and effectively silenced real public health advocacy. Consider two real public health perennial campaigns, largely lost in the noise of COVID exploitation.

I was in my local veteran’s organization canteen (bar) last weekend, having counted the money and updated the bookkeeping. A woman in her 40s had a cough. Her comment: “it is just a smoker’s cough.” That statement called to mind a much younger veteran, a man in his late 20s, coming in after the previous night’s partying with a heavy cough as he went to the cigarette machine for another pack. We have known, since at least the late 1950s, that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and a host of other very unpleasant long-term ailments. COPD, anyone? Listen to old-time radio and you will hear the cigarette companies in the late 1940s, early 1950s, assuring you that doctors attested that their customers experienced no throat irritation from smoking their product.

This brings to mind the much larger scope of 75 years or more of public health real science about heart disease, lung disease, and cancer prevention and treatment. Screening and early treatment have long been the message, grounded in real medical statistics. Yet, we saw a vile lab coat leftist bureaucrat, Anthony Fraudci, stand real public health on its head, stopping preventive care for critical months and hyping fear to his tiny bailiwick’s benefit.