"But the truth is: humans have no choice but to live with viruses. We always have. I’ve lived with a potentially fatal one buried in my bone marrow for almost 30 years. I still test HIV-positive. Almost certainly, I will die HIV-positive. But I will not die of HIV. And that’s ok. As long as I can prevent it wreaking havoc on my immune system, and ruining and ending my life, I’m content to live with it. We’re almost friends at this point. These viruses challenge the psyche, and the trick, it seems to me, is not to deny their power and danger, but to see past them to the real goal: the living of your life. If you are not careful, this one viral threat can crowd out all other perspectives, distort your judgment of risk, and cause you to be paralyzed by excessive caution and fear. But defeating a virus often does mean living with it. We already do this with the flu. There’s no reason we can’t do it with Covid as well."
Writes Andrew Sullivan in "Let It Rip/How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Live With The Virus" (Substack).
Posts
4 comments:
Owen writes:
"Sullivan’s essay is wise. The term “virus” was coined to describe things that are only half-living, obligate, able to replicate but only by commandeering the machinery of a fully alive host cell.
"In that spirit we should address the virus as part of our lives, not replacing our lives. Evolution suggests that with multiple passages through the population its genome will become less lethal; and our collective immunological resources —through vaccination or through infection and recovery— will make it less lethal still. So there is comfort in that prospect, and we should be encouraged therefore not to behave like children, demanding absolute safety and perfect health. These are impossible goals and, in light of the likely commingled fate of virus and ourselves, they are less and less relevant. They become a trap, a delusion, a dead end.
"We will coexist —unless our leaders suffocate us with a mental virus, commandeering our social capital to produce an endless series of panicked lockdowns."
Leora writes:
"I’ve been having vague thoughts contrasting the responses to AIDS and Covid. People who are still pissed at Diane Feinstein for closing the San Francisco bathhouses as a response to a deadly and contagious disease that could be avoided by behavioral changes are now insisting on children being masked daily because of a contagious but, in their case, not very deadly disease which apparently like the flu and the common cold can’t be avoided. Both extremes seem highly unhealthy."
LA_Bob
12:24 PM (6 hours ago)
to me
I agree with Owen's comment -- and Sullivan's essay, of course -- except for the part about behaving like children.
Owen writes:
"Children don't "demand absolute safety and perfect health." They simply assume it and behave differently when the assumption fails and they're injured or ill. This is one reason adults have to protect children. Children don't and can't know the bad things that can and do happen. Adults know (or should have learned after being adults for awhile).
"Over the decades, politicians have encouraged the illusion that they and they alone can "protect" us, their subjects, from the Bogeymen of Life, from financial ruin to weather to war to disease and death. They infantilize us to complacency that all will be well on their watch. It earns them our continued support when things work and costs them when they "fail". They have fostered in pursuit of their own interests the "demandingness" Owen describes.
"We will indeed coexist with the virus as we have viruses in the past. But we have to grow up and realize our "leaders" are no better and not necessarily wiser than we are."
William writes:
"There is a lesson here relating to 'Climate Change', for those who wish
to see it.
"Many of the voices one hears in the public square assert without
evidence that "COVID-zero", or something close to it, is both necessary
and attainable; we just need to completely change the way we live our
lives. Indefinitely, if not forever. And if you are unwilling to do
that, or even just unsure that approach is wise or appropriate, you are
beneath contempt and must be banished from the public square.
"Similarly, many voices assert that the planet can be saved, and Climate
Change defeated, if only we completely change the way we live our lives.
Indefinitely, if not forever.
"Of course, COVID-19 is real, and can really kill you. So that is one
major difference.
"Anyway, in a few years, once it is clear that living with COVID-19,
rather than defeating it, will be the end state, one wonders whether
anyone will reconsider their positions on other issues. JK, I don't
really wonder about that."
Post a Comment