The Torture Of Going To the Dentist

I hate using the word hate.  It's a venomous verb.  I don't hate yucky kale, mushy fish or stinky cheese. I just haven't acquired a taste for them. I don't hate humans, except Michigan fans. But I confess I hate going to the dentist. I would rather endure torture at Abu Ghraib prison than let a dentist near my teeth.

Come to think of it, a dental procedure is similar to being waterboarded in some remote rendition center. Only the music is better in Iraq's Abu Ghraib.  Who selects the tunes piped overhead while you maintain a death grip on both arms of a dental chair?  North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un?  

Millions of Americans share my irrational fear. Some pointy heads in the dental health profession published a study in 2013 revealing 36% of my fellow citizens suffer from this phobia.  Of those, fully 12% are classified as having "extreme dental fear."  I am in the 1% that dentists fear most: whiners.

When a dentist spies my name on the daily appointment list, she likely gulps a few Xanax. "Not that guy!" I expect to be sedated right after I check in with the receptionist.  My teeth are more sensitive than a Woke college student.  A prick with a metal dental tool triggers electrical shocks to my gums.  

My adventures in Dental Hell began with my first trip to the dentist at about six years of age. I started bawling the minute the dentist cooed, "Open wide."  The poking, prodding and probing were excruciating. The dental assistant dropped her girth on my tiny body to prevent movement.

I was too young to remember this episode but it was repeated countless times by my parents whenever I was scheduled for another check-up, along with a stern warning: "Don't cry!"  Not exactly the most comforting thought before entering the Chamber of Torture.  But I never cried again.  So there.

My worst nightmare was the summer before my senior year in high school.  At a routine check-up, the dentist announced excitedly: "I found ten cavities!"  His thoughts must have drifted to an expensive vacation in the Swiss Alps.  This was going to be a whopping payday for a small-town practitioner.

Over the next two months, I shuttled back and forth to the dentist.  It seemed like the whole summer was wasted.  My mouth was permanently numb.  My jaw ached.  My teeth clanked with metal fillings. The anticipation of another  trip to the dentist haunted my dreams and kept me awake at night. 

Then in my 20's, I endured my first root canal.  For the uninitiated, this procedure ranks near the top of the pain scale, at least in 1970's dentistry.  Imagine a sensitive tooth pummeled with a hammer.  Then your mouth is stuffed with foul tasting goop. Warning: there are root canals in Hell.

When I lived in London in 1995, I was introduced to the Dark Ages of European dentistry. The techniques and equipment were right out America's 1950's.  Noisy foot-pedal drills, painful cleanings and brusque dentists.  And those were some of the bright spots.

The dentist examined a tooth that had been throbbing with pain. After a stroke of his chin, he decided an extraction was required. "Do you prefer I use a knife or pliers?" he asked with a poker face. Are you kidding me, I mumbled under my breath.  I almost bolted from his office.

Then he patiently explained he had been trained as a field surgeon in the British Army.  He was proficient at extracting teeth with a knife. But we weren't in a war theater.  Bombs weren't falling around us.  I was in a dentist office, for goodness sake.  "I prefer the pliers," I said. He appeared disappointed. 

Back stateside, I went 18 months without a checkup.  Bad idea.  When I finally trudged to the dentist's office, the torturer peered into my mouth and harrumphed.  "You have a lot of old fillings. Some are deteriorating. You need crowns.  Gold crowns."  This sounded like some crypto currency scam to me.

After a series of agonizing visits, my mouth resembled Fort Knox. Overnight, my crowns were worth more than my stock holdings. My net worth soared.  Big banks became my best friends.

These incidents were leading up to the equivalent of dentistry's MegaMillions jackpot.  An annual check-up revealed I needed a tooth implant.  There are few words that would do justice to the experience.  Close your eyes and pretend a 18-wheeler just plowed into your mouth.  Sideways.

A metal socket was implanted into my gums. Driven in with a sledge hammer or some such instrument. Then a tooth that appeared as if it was found in the zoo was fitted into the receptacle.  I have condensed the process to spare you the grisly details.  I guarantee you having heart bypass surgery is less stressful.

Pain is not just found in the dental chair.  Once a harassing assistant called my office and left a message with my secretary, claiming I owed $300.  The back office had filed my claim incorrectly.  It was their error.  I never got an apology.  I sent the dentist a nasty letter and told him I hoped his teeth rotted.

More than a decade ago,  I was fortunate to locate a compassionate, skilled dentist who empathizes with my peccadilloes.  Her name is Dr. Joan Dreyer DDS. She is the first dentist I have known with a sense of humor.  Apparently, you are required to be humorless to get a dental certification.  

Dr. D, as I call her, has a syringe standing by whenever I plop in the dental chair.  At the first sign of a twitch, she injects me with Happy Numbing Juice.  The pain disappears.  My heart palpitations vanish. She talks me through each procedure, like a psychiatrist dealing with a troubled child.

I know this may sound like I am a ninny.  But frankly, I don't care. Once you have suffered through the dental wars as I have, it is almost certain you will develop Post Traumatic Dental Stress Disorder (PTDSD). You won't find it in the medical books.  But I assure you it is real.  At least, I think it is.

Burgeoning Crime Wave Swamps Big Cities

America's big cities are wrestling with an unprecedented surge in crime.  No one can claim the rolling swell of crime is a shock in the wake of the nationwide clamor to defund police departments.  City officials bowed to rioting mobs demands, cleaving police budgets and trimming cops on the street.

The impact was predictable.  A Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) preliminary report shows murders and non-negligent manslaughter offenses increased 14.8% after years of decline.  Aggravated assaults climbed 4.6%.  Arson skyrocketed 19.2%. The reporting period covers January to June 2020.

The final FBI report for last year won't be released until this September.  However, In the last three months of 2020, the crime wave evolved into a tsunami.  Homicides spiraled 32.2% in cities with a population of at least one million, according to data in the FBI Quarterly Uniform Report. 

After the George Floyd death, riots and looting erupted in many major cities.  As the lawlessness continued night after night, weak kneed, mostly Democrat city officials surrendered to Black Lives Matter and Antifa by rushing to defund their police departments with little or no public debate. 

Cities including New York, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Austin and Atlanta ordered deep budget cuts that impacted manpower.  Departments were forced to slice payrolls and decrease police presence, which slowed response time.

Cuts ranged from $1 billion in New York City to $29 million in Oakland.  The result was devastating for the most vulnerable residents of these major cities.  Deadly crimes spiked in neighborhoods with mostly African-American and Hispanic majorities.  

In Minneapolis, scene of the Floyd death, murders jumped 46% between December of last year and March 28 of this year.  In New York City, murders shot up 11.8% as of March 21 year-over-year.  Shootings spiked 40.1% in just the first quarter of this year.

Los Angeles reported a 38% increase in murders in 2020, despite the Coronavirus  mandates that kept most residents sheltered in their homes and apartments.  After Austin sliced its police budget by $43 million, arsons soared 73%, aggravated assaults rose 26%.  

Portland, scene of some of the worst rioting, experienced a 1,600% increase in murders in just the first two months of this year.  From July 2020 to February, the homicide rate escalated 270.6%.  Once peaceful, laid back Portland was transformed into a war zone by anarchists. 

These depressing statistics prompted an outcry from citizen groups in these cities, pressuring city councils and mayors to backtrack in the face of withering criticism.  New York reinstated $92 million in its police budget, Baltimore proposed a $27 million increase after chopping $22 million in 2020.

Other cities followed suit, including Oakland, Minneapolis, Houston, San Diego and others.  After being drowned out for months by the anarchists, ordinary citizens and many business said: Enough!  But restoring budgets may be too late for many cities caught up in anti-police media and protests frenzy.

Police are leaving in droves in the cities that refused to back the blue.  New York City Police Department resignations and retirements are up 75% from the previous year.  More than 5,300 uniformed officers have left the force.  When cities defund police, it's a clear signal policing is no longer a priority.

In Minneapolis, more than 200 officers left between last July and this March.  That is a 49% increase from the previous year. The Police Department union blames the lack of city council support and the city's refusal to back officers during the worst of the riots.  

The story is the same in other crime plagued cities.  Seattle and Portland have both reported the biggest wave of  police departures in recent memory. Staffing shortages are exacerbating the out-of-control rise in violent crime in these cities and others.  Cutting police budgets has deadly consequences.

The head of the Police Union in Portland had harsh criticism for City Commissioner Joe Ann Hardesty, who spearheaded the defund the police movement in the city,  "Roving gangs of black clad rioters do not speak for the hundreds of thousands of residents and business owners, who want a safe and clean city. Yet local politicians supported them."

Some concerned law enforcement officials are speculating the defund the police movement has a broader agenda than just addressing the law enforcement shooting of African-Americans. Former Arizona police officer Brandon Tatum, author of an upcoming book on the subject, has a plausible theory.

"I believe it's an agenda to completely destroy and dismantle local police departments so that the (federal) government can have control of law enforcement in this country and push a nationwide agenda," Tatum said in an interview. 

Tatum has a point.  If law enforcement is federalized, then the government in Washington can enforce mandates and restrictions that support its progressive agenda.  Imagine a federal cops seizing guns from legal owners, forcing citizens to get COVID vaccines or policing public speech.

That would be a dangerous development that would infringe on Constitutional rights.  However, if the Washington progressives pass laws, then what better way to force compliance than having a federal police force to do its bidding?  It's a sobering thesis that should worry every American.

Evidence Mounts Virus Escaped From Wuhan Lab

A  clump of square buildings hunker in the forests of Wuhan China.  At the epicenter is a windowless steel structure, which houses a bio-safety level 4 laboratory. The sterile lab handles some of the world's most contagious pathogens and also conducts classified research for the Chinese military.

The facility is located just a few kilometers from a "wet market" where the first Coronavirus infections  emerged. In recent weeks, the Chinese scientific lab has bolted into the headlines as scientists take a fresh look at a once discredited theory that a leak at the facility may have been the origin of the Coronavirus.

Nearly 18 months ago, the official version circulated by American and Chinese health officials claimed the virus spread from the market, where vendors sell meat, fish, produce and some live animals. Scientists agreed the Coronavirus was naturally transmitted from a bat to humans. Few questioned the thesis.

A brave scientist speculated the virus may have spread as a result of an inadvertent leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. (WIV).  Molecular biologist Richard H. Ebright expressed concerns because of previous leaks at labs in Beijing.  Facebook and Google banned any discussion of the lab leak theory. 

In recent weeks, a drizzle of conjecture has evolved into a downpour of circumstantial as well as unambiguous evidence that the Coronavirus may be linked to a leak from the Wuhan facility, despite continued and often contentious denials from Communist Chinese officials.

Last year President Trump publicly speculated the virus may have been engineered in a laboratory, fueling a firestorm of outrage from scientists and the media. They coordinated an attack on the accusation, demeaning it as a conspiracy theory.  The lab leak thesis was effectively banned. 

The Washington Post huffed that the president and his supporters were "fanning the embers of a conspiracy theory that has been repeatedly debunked by experts."  The New York Times labeled the claim a "fringe theory."  The media piled on to promote its narrative that Trump was solely to blame for the virus.

Still questions lingered in medical chat rooms and among scientists whose concerns were never made public.  There were coincidences too foreboding to deny.  However, Dr. Anthony Fauci led a chorus of scientists who blotted out even the possibility of a leak being the origin for the pandemic.

A recently-released trove of emails from Dr. Fauci, the government's top specialist during COVID, revealed at the time he was pooh-poohing the leak publicly, he and his associates and colleagues privately discussed the possibility that the virus had indeed escaped from the Wuhan lab.

As early as last January, Dr. Fauci was alerted about the suspicious characteristics of COVID samples.  Kristian Anderson and five virologists, noted "unusual features" in the virus and added "one has to look really closely at all the sequences to see that some of the features (potentially) look engineered." 

Anderson also noted in his email to Dr. Fauci that he and his team "all find the genome inconsistent with expectations from an evolutionary theory."  The team's initial impression later flip-flopped, but they offered no evidence to support their new claim the laboratory scenario was no longer plausible.

The emails were publicly disclosed in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request from Judicial Watch.  The duplicity of Dr. Fauci was further exposed when another FOIA request uncovered U.S. tax-payer funding of the Wuhan lab, in spite of the virologist's earlier denials in a Senate hearing.

Pressed  again on the matter, Dr. Fauci told lawmakers the government granted $600,000 in funding over a five year period.  But documents furnished by the Health and Human Services divulged that between 2014 and 2019, the U.S. provided $826,277 in taxpayer funds. 

The money came from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) directed by Dr. Fauci.  Documents show the funds were provided over a six-year period for "Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence." NIAID funneled the money through a third party, EcoHealth Alliance.

Perhaps, it was just a coincidence that the Wuhan lab was conducting studies on bats and Coronavirus at the time of the outbreak.  The U.S. State Department raised eyebrows in January when it released a bombshell fact sheet that was generally ignored by a partisan media.

The fact sheet confirmed Wuhan was conducting experiments on a bat virus, including "gain of function" research on the engineering of "chimeric viruses" or man-made pathogens.

Gain of function is used to describe a process that alters an organism or a disease in a way that increases its pathogenesis, transmission or the types of hosts it can infect. Done ethically, this type of research is useful because it allows scientists to develop vaccines and medicines for treatment.

In the wrong hands, this research could be used to engineer an existing virus for rapid transmission or to cause a pandemic pathogen to replicate more quickly, increasing the spread to humans.  Research groups in the EU and US both regulate the oversight of this process in most labs to ensure safety.

In its document, the State Department insisted it had "reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV (Wuhan lab) became sick in the autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illnesses."

Vanity Fair reported some officials at the State Department were explicitly told not to explore the Wuhan lab's "gain of function" research because it would bring what the publication described as "unwelcome" attention on U.S. government funding of the research. It would open "a can of worms" the outlet said.

The State Department claims triggered questions about the credibility of Wuhan lab's senior researcher Shi Zhengli who said there were "zero infections" among the WIV staff.  Denials from Chinese officials escalated in the face of a Wall Street Journal investigative report that fueled renewed speculation.

NBC News, quoting U.S. intelligence officials, followed with a broadcast revealing that a database of more than 22,000 virus samples at the Wuhan lab were removed from public view for so-called security reasons.  The disclosure cast a shadow over the probe by the World Health Organization (WHO).

Peter B. Embark, the head of the WHO group that investigated the origins, admitted in late February that his group "didn't do an audit of any of these labs, so we don't really have hard facts or detailed data done at the Wuhan lab." Yet he still contended it was "extremely unlikely" the virus originated at the lab.

That explanation did not satisfy some virologists.  Last month, 18 virologists published a letter in Science criticizing WHO 's joint investigation with China.  "Although there were no finding in clear support of either a natural spillover or a lab accident...the two theories were not given balanced consideration."

Even the WHO director general conceded the joint investigation's report lacked data to support its findings. The State Department backed by 13 countries said the WHO probe was "significantly delayed and lacked access to complete, original data samples."  

With interest heating up, Republicans are calling for President Biden to declassify all U.S. intelligence related to the Wuhan lab and the COVID-19 pandemic, so the American people can get answers they deserve.  Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan initially balked at releasing the intel.

This is the moment for politicians to put aside their differences and use the full resources of the government  to investigate the lab leak theory.  There has been too much government foot-dragging, failed probes derailed by China and a lack of transparency on this critical matter. 

What's maddening is why it has taken so long for the country's chief pandemic expert Dr. Fauci to unequivocally determine the origin of a deadly virus that killed nearly 600,000 Americans. The media has been complicit by its lazy reporting of the standard, approved version of the origin.

Why was it so critical for Dr. Fauci and other scientist to cling to the wet market theory?  Why did it take 18 months for the circumstantial evidence to appear in the public domain?  Was scientific curiosity shelved until after a presidential election because Coronavirus was the Democrats' campaign gift?

Don't expect answers to those questions from the administration, the media or the party in power. The opinion here is the wet market thesis will never be overturned.  The lab leak scenario will be swept under the Oval Office carpet after a "show" investigation.  There is no appetite to rattle relations with China.