avatarEllen Beth Gill

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Get with the program, honey. Peers say Covid is over.

I’m home, sick, and had a scary-ish night last night coughing, trying to breathe through swollen and clogged sinuses

Sick, sleep deprived, and coughing up a lung for days now, I noticed this NPR story about a married woman with a young child annoyed with her immunocompromised husband who wants to observe Covid precautions per his doctor’s opinion on his risks. He’s already had Covid, and he described the first time as months-long and “traumatic.” She wants to go out to eat and go to the movies. The story characterizes the husband, not as rationally concerned about a known risk, but as anxious. The expert from whom NPR sought advice is a neuropsychologist. I think that’s weird. I’d have asked an immunologist or a virologist.

I’m not immunocompromised. I’ve been out to eat, traveled to other cities on airplanes, and gone to local and Broadway shows. That’s all true, but I think it’s strange and sad that I have to say that, or you all will pass me off as a nut. Maybe you will anyway. I don’t care all that much. I just don’t want to attract the nasty comments from the pressuring peers.

I go out, but I pick what’s worth it to me. Movies aren’t worth it to me. Fast food, Denny’s, and IHOP aren’t worth it to me. Grocery shopping is not worth it except under certain circumstances. I like the spice store. My favorite local restaurants with my friends are worth it. My friends' art shows are worth it. Art classes? I decided to go back to in-person art classes and came up sick after the very first class where the man painting next to me coughed up his lung for the entire 2-hour class.

I’ll go back to class when I’m better, but what an ordeal. My doctor is too busy to opine on my ailment or what I need to get over it. I can get an appointment later this month because I made it five months ago for another reason. I tested negative for Covid in a home test I administered to myself. I don’t know what I have, but I haven't been this sick in decades. OTC meds don’t seem to work. I wonder if that has anything to do with rampant shrinkflation. Maybe we get less active ingredients with each dose?

The last time I was this sick, it was the early 1990s. Everyone at my firm contracted a bad virus and missing work was frowned upon. I coughed and was miserable for a couple of months. Those wicked coughs are most of the reason I hate getting sick. One of the partners was hospitalized and recovered. Our videographer was immunocompromised. He died. I don’t think he was even 30 years old.

Anyway, getting back to the immunocompromised man, NPR’s expert said this couple should compromise and go out sometimes because the spouse who wants to go to the movies suffers, and the other is just an anxious, silly, fearful man. It’s all in his head. Well, apart from the problem that NPR asked the wrong type of medical professional, it is somewhat refreshing for someone to dismiss a man’s concerns for a change. Usually, the experts say it’s all in her head.

Look where COVID is the worst in 2024. Could it be the place that was run by a narcissistic modern-day nazi who told everyone to take veterinary medicine prescribed for parasites in livestock and bleach? Could it be the place where there’s an entire political movement dedicated to stopping people from getting historic life-saving vaccinations that created the more comfortable last half of the 20th century?

The USA’s new policy on Covid is to go out and have fun. Based on what? They don’t say, but I’m guessing it came from some economic office and not some medical research facility.

My commentary on all this is through the lens of my sick, sleep-deprived brain and tons of thick, icky mucus untouchable by any remedy designated as DM, is that we were peer pressured to move on from Covid to the benefit of the few and detriment to the many, and now we’re stuck with a forever problem. And more recently, we’re peer pressured to ignore all diseases. If you immunize or take precautions, you're a silly, fearful, anxious basket case who needs psychological or cognitive treatment. Bosses want everyone at work. Politicians want to insult the opposition and credit their disease-ignoring policies with economic improvements. The media buys in. We’re well trained to “get over it,” like disease is something you can just get over in your mind. Little brainless viruses know who’s over it and who’s not.

The cough lozenges that don’t work have little inspirational sayings like “Conquer Today” and “Get Through It” to get me up and back to work. It’s all mind over matter. How American.

It wasn’t so long ago that medical breakthroughs to fight diseases were pursued, and people waited in long lines to get their vaccinations. My mom took my sister and me to the local park center for polio vaccinations. We cried and earned lollipops. My mom was delighted she didn’t have to worry about polio like her parents did.

Now? Measles is the new freedom. I remember when they said it was bad because it causes miscarriages, birth defects, and death. Polio will be fun, right? My dad had a classmate in an iron lung who didn’t find it fun, but that was then. I imagine a smallpox epidemic will send these virus freedom fighters over the moon with glee. Someone’s bound to be thrilled with whatever I caught. We’ve become a creepy nation of Typhoid Mary wannabees.

The not-so-funny truth is that the peers who pressure us to ignore Covid and other diseases like they don’t exist are the same peers who, throughout history, pressured others to smoke, cut class, drop out of school, shoplift, drink, drive drunk, snort that line, inject whatever into that blood vessel, notarize that paper without the signer present, come in to work sick, go to that art class sick. Peers basically suck, but they’re always in control.

NPR’s expert on cognitive and not viral problems believes this couple needs couple’s counseling. If you have a hammer, everything starts looking like a nail.

Me? I think the immunocompromised man has a valid point, and the wife doesn’t want to live that life; they’re at an impasse. No for better or for worse for her when movies, daily specials, and wine selections are at stake. I get it but it’s still heartless. Ultimately, they have different needs and should get a divorce. The world of lying politicians, money-grubbing medical providers, and peers tore their family apart.

And no, the ginger tea recommended on the All-American diagnose-yourself-because-you’re-doctor-needs-to-make-more-money-than-he-can-from-you website is not working. Tea? Is that all the modern 21st-century medical billionaires can offer me? No wonder the man in the article is distressed.

Covid-19
Measles
Vaccines
Politics
Medicine
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