Health Care/Joan Retsinas

Health in the Time of COVID: Not Me, but You

Pre-COVID, all the “good health” admonitions centered on “me.” Those dreary strictures — Eat right. Lose Weight. Exercise. Go for check-ups. Sleep enough. Stop smoking. Drink less — zeroed in on an individual’s zeal for self-preservation. The health gurus constantly reminded us of the dangers: The more we veered from the healthy path, the closer we veered to illness.

Freedom lovers and anarchists (admittedly, an odd coupling) joined in the “me” serenade, proclaiming, “It is my body: if I want to smoke, drug, drink, eat to obesity, it is my choice.” The notion — thank you, John Donne — that we are not islands, but linked to one another, eluded them, and eluded the nation, which, whatever the costs of obesity, smoking, et al, rarely intervened. Even gentle measures, like listing calories at restaurants, drew pushback. So did requirements for seat belts, although the unbelted person might injure the belted others.

So, until now, when we thought health, we thought “me.” We didn’t readily link our health-behavior to the people around us.

COVID has changed that focus. The virus does not respond to “me” strictures. In truth, many healthy people are asymptomatic carriers: they do not feel sick, but COVID lives within them. We know that with other epidemics, from smallpox to polio, the disease did not kill everybody. Some people, whether by fate, genes or grace, survived. We don’t know whether the disease lived dormant within them. But with COVID, the disease lives within millions of us.

And, crucially, we know that COVID can easily spread to others, who may lack our fate, our genes, or grace, and get ill, require hospitalization, maybe die. Those patients can carry the virus to hospital staff, and then to their families. The chain of infection begins with an asymptomatic carrier.

Many people, particularly younger people, will recover from COVID. Even if the few days to weeks of recovery are difficult, they will brag that they “beat” the virus. (Sadly, the “long haulers,” may take months to recover, with depleted senses of taste and smell). Once they have recovered, antibodies may protect them, at least for a while. They may, though, continue to spread COVID. Our scientists don’t know how grave is that risk of transmission.

So in this time of COVID, the “health strictures” focus not on “me,” but on “others.”

We wear masks; we avoid restaurants, movie theaters, museums; we take precautions when boarding a subway, train, plane, bus. We don’t hug our grandchildren. We don’t go to funerals. We want to limit the spread of the virus, even if we feel fine, even if we have limited chance of getting sick, even if we feel invulnerable.

But — always a but — a large swathe refuses to heed the “us.” They don’t wear masks. They don’t go for tests. They ignore rules for quarantine. They mingle, mingle, mingle. Some members of Congress, some state legislators blatantly refuse masks, refuse tests. The rioters storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 were largely unmasked, oblivious to the illness they were spreading. Conspiracy-loonies proudly spurn all those “us” measures, calling them a government plot. College students partying after a football victory are similarly oblivious. Have they no parents? grandparents? Nobody they care about?

That self-centered spurning of “us” mirrors the deep chasm of hatred now rending the country, as we devolve into race-based, ideology-based, class-based tribalism. If “we” don’t see ourselves as one nation, then each tribal segment of the “we” can ignore the rest.

With the rollout of vaccinations, we see the same jockeying of one group over another. Lately, teachers have lobbied to bump up the line, even though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has argued that schools are among the safest workplaces. In Rhode Island, state legislators, who have been meeting via zoom, argue for vaccine-priority, because their in-person deliberations are so crucial. Well-heeled executives find loopholes in vaccine lists. We risk turning into George Constanzas. In one “Seinfold” episode, “The Fire,” when a fire breaks out at a children’s party, George rushes out first, trampling a woman in a walker.

Meanwhile, the unorganized, less vocal, the oldest, the ones with no lobbyists- often the sickest, the poorest, those most at risk for COVID — wait, while those yelling “me” rush ahead.

For our country to heal psychically, we will need to listen to each other, to care about the “others” in our midst. Similarly, for the country to heal physically, we will need to recognize that “us.” This is not the Biblical admonition to love your neighbor, simply to honor his wish to live.

Joan Retsinas is a sociologist who writes about health care in Providence, R.I. Email retsinas@verizon.net.

From The Progressive Populist, March 1, 2021

Populist.com