On a fall evening in 1983 I was an intern working a shift at the Middlesex Hospital emergency room in Middletown Conn. when two anxious parents brought their 3-year-old into the ER — he was having trouble breathing.
The youngster was hunched forward and struggling with each breath, each attempt at inhalation was accompanied by the ominous sound of a narrowed airway. X-rays soon showed the signs of a swollen epiglottis (the “trapdoor” that opens and closes with each breath and protects us from choking on food). It was apparent the child had acute epiglottitis caused by a bacteria called Haemophilus Influenza (H. Flu.).
This was a deadly condition that could cause the child to choke to death rapidly, within hours of his first fever. This diagnosis struck terror in my heart, if he did obstruct, one had to perform an emergency tracheostomy to try to save him. I had never performed a tracheostomy, let alone one on a 3-year-old. My fear was shared with my supervising second year resident who felt as helpless as I did.
We called the ENT on-call, he said he would get there as quickly as possible. In the meantime we started intravenous antibiotics and stood by the boy’s gurney and prayed that he would not die on our watch. The ENT arrived and together we sat by the boy’s bedside all night, an emergency pediatric tracheostomy tray at the ready, we would only have 2-3 minutes to act if the patient obstructed. Fortunately, the antibiotics took hold and by the next day the danger had passed.
Most parents today have never heard of Haemophilus Influenza let alone encountered it among their family or friends. However, before 1987 when a new conjugate vaccine against H. Flu was introduced there were over 20,000 cases of H. Flu meningitis, epiglottitis and pneumonia a year in young children. H. Flu meningitis was often fatal, but even if children survived the infection, it often left them with permanent deafness or intellectual deficits.
A girl in my first-grade class was struck by H.Flu meningitis and while she survived was made permanently deaf from the illness. My wife’s uncle had died from H.Flu epiglottitis as a 7-year-old while growing up in New Haven.
Diseases such as Smallpox, Measles, Polio, Tetanus, Diphtheria, and Pertussis killed our ancestors in past generations by the thousands or even millions but were vanquished by the introduction of vaccines. Vaccines work hand in hand with our immune systems by presenting a piece of protein from the surface of a virus or germ so that our own defenses will recognize a dangerous pathogen should it be encountered again. It is one of the most natural and elegant inventions that medical science has ever introduced.
Now Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is trying to take this miracle cure away from Americans. He has disbanded the highly qualified vaccine advisory committee and replaced experts with political hacks and charlatans. He has fired the experienced and respected scientists who headed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and halted all mRNA vaccine development at NIH thus making us totally unprepared for the next pandemic to come to our shores.
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Covid 19, which had a 1% mortality, killed 1.2 million Americans in 2020 before the mRNA Covid vaccine was developed. Avian Influenza is currently widespread in our poultry and cattle industries. If it makes the jump to human to human spread it will be catastrophic; farmers who have caught it from their animals have had a nearly 50% mortality rate. You don’t need to be a math major to understand that an Avian Influenza pandemic would have the potential to kill tens of millions of Americans.
RFJ Jr. is letting monsters out of the closet and unlike the fairy tales of old, these monsters are real- I have seen them. Talk to the elders in your family, they will tell you of loved ones and friends lost. Then demand that our elected officials protect us by firing RFK Jr. and repairing the damage that he has caused during his six-month rampage against our public health infrastructure.
Michael Good, MD is a retired family physician living in Durham.
