About five years ago, long before COVID was invented (key word), there was something going around. There's always something going around. This one, whether it was cold or flu or croup or epizooty, was especially hard for some people to shake.

Buddy of mine had it for awhile, waiting it out. One night at bedtime, he found himself short of breath, which seemed odd. He wound up going to the hospital, where they decided his lungs were waterlogged. They fed him Lasix and he was better in no time. Except they had to do some tests, just to be safe, and they told him he should talk with a cardiologist because of something called congestive heart failure. I wish they wouldn't use the word "failure", but I don't get to make the rules for them.

Cardiologist decided he now had something like 14% heart efficiency, and advised him on how to deal with his new life. His new life included regular meetings with the cardiologist.

Six or so months later, they somehow justified another heart assessment. This time, his cardio efficiency was about 85%, which is essentially normal. Nobody, except maybe Lance Armstrong, has 100% cardio efficiency. His "recovery" violates the cardinal rule of CHF: you cannot recover from it, all you can hope for is making the best of a bad situation and adapting to your new zero-stamina life.

The cardiologist was baffled, but not overbaffled. It's a big world, strange things do happen, and the broad AMA doctrine doesn't encompass the entire gamut of healthcare, even if they think it does.

His was an outlier event. As much as we've been hearing about myocarditis in the past few months, I have a hard time seeing it being a bizarre flurry of outliers. It's likely linked to something else. Elevated atmospheric CO2 levels, maybe. Hey! That's the solution! Let's try to blame it on carbon emissions!

As the elephant in the room dances gleefully.