As a person born with a genetic bone disease, x-linked hypophosphatemia, I have been thinking a lot about the COVID-19 pandemic and so have many of my fellow XLH-ers. Are we at a higher risk because of our disease or do our drug treatments compromise our immune systems? The doctors are saying, “No… folks with XLH are no more likely to get COVID-19 or suffer severe consequences if they do get it.”
I don’t disagree with them but my response is, “I don’t need the trouble.” Having XLH already complicates our lives enough so honestly, I don’t want to even catch a cold, let alone the flu or COVID-19. Do I want additional body aches? Um, no.
People’s responses to the pandemic have been fascinating, too. We can shelter in place and protect ourselves and others to “flatten the curve” or we can go out in the world, catch it, leading to “herd immunity” (unless you’re one of the unfortunate ones who die from it, you know, survival of the fittest and all), etc. We can wear a mask or not wear a mask.
We can go to a house of worship online or in our cars or by God, we can go in person and sit close together because no one is going to trample on MY rights to go to church. (And that last thing I find really funny because I have actually “gone to” more church (online, of course) since this all started in March than I had gone to in the last 6 months. And I’ve even gone to a variety of services online, not just one denomination. It’s felt like I’ve had an “all-you-can-eat” buffet of church services in the last 2 months. I don’t understand the complainers who feel like their religious freedoms are being taken away. We’ve actually had MORE.)
The conversations with my mother about this pandemic have also been interesting and have lead me to read some about the history of polio. My mother, who is 83 years old, remembers when she was a little girl not getting to go to the lake with her brothers because of polio outbreaks. I did a little research on that. Polio was considered a “summer disease.” Public pools would close, camps would close, in order to keep it from spreading. Children were the most vulnerable, as you may already know. And to quote an article from NPR in 2012 about polio in the United States, “In 1952 alone, nearly 60,000 children were infected with the virus; thousands were paralyzed, and more than 3,000 died. Hospitals set up special units with iron lung machines to keep polio victims alive. Rich kids as well as poor were left paralyzed.” Franklin D. Roosevelt, who contracted polio as an adult, founded the March Of Dimes in 1938, primarily to combat polio. (A side note: As an XLH patient in the early 1960’s, I was helped by the March of Dimes.)
Interestingly enough, not very many people were infected or died from polio. The first major outbreak in the U. S. A. was in 1894, so the disease wasn’t new. And if they got it and lived, they might “only” be paralyzed. Why did people get so whipped up about it? They could have waited for “herd immunity.” Instead, scientists got to work on finding a VACCINE. People kept their children home and away from public places in the summer, since polio seemed to rear its ugly head then.
I have watched with fascination the protests going on in my state (NC) and others of people marching to their state capitols to protest all the restrictions (business closures, mask wearing, social/physical distancing, etc.). I have wondered how we got to this point in our country from 1950 to 2020. In 1950, people were willing to be inconvenienced in order to keep their community’s children safe from polio. In 2020, Americans will not tolerate being inconvenienced.
Now, I am not trying to simplify all this because it IS complicated. Number one, people will do about anything for their children. If COVID-19 affected only children, similar to polio affecting primarily children, then people now in 2020 would go overboard with protecting their babies. Mask wearing, hand washing, social/physical distancing, cancellation of schools and church would be, OF COURSE, the thing we would do without question. Children are valuable.
BUT, COVID-19 primarily affects (and kills) old people and, well, MeMaw lived a good life and it’s unfortunate, but it was almost her time to go anyway and the government could sure use that social security money she won’t be needing anymore. Of course no one is saying this out loud, but they’re sure living like it’s true. “Forget these restrictions, let’s go see Grandma.” And Grandma isn’t going to say no, because, well, she grew up in a generation where women never said no because that’s impolite and well, she misses her grandkids.
And of course, we do need our society working because there are bills to pay and rich landlords certainly aren’t going to give their tenants a break on their rent and our health insurance system IS, AFTER ALL, based on either full-time employment or being married to someone who has full-time employment. So, I get it, it’s complicated.
But with all this protesting, I still have to wonder, at what point did we, my fellow Americans, devolve to caring more about our individual rights than we care about our neighbors? I see this regularly, too. People who won’t wear masks because, it’s an inconvenience. People who get up in your personal space because they really don’t care or the rules don’t apply to them. People who believe in conspiracy theories because they think a certain political party is out to get them. People who think they know more than doctors and scientists. (That last one just slays me.) People who follow the One who said, “Love your neighbors as you love yourselves,” but stop short at hand washing, mask wearing, staying at home, sneezing into your elbow or whatever.
Now, I must confess. I am an introvert. I’m doing really well with staying home. My car misses me. I have sat out on my front porch for long periods of time and watched people go by. I have been very productive in my workshop for the past couple months. If we were getting graded for staying at home, I would get an A++. I realize that the extroverts are not doing well with this. This is possibly hell for them.
So, what did extroverted people do in 1918 when they were told to stay at home to keep their community safe from the Spanish flu? What did they do prior to 1955 (first polio vaccine) when they had to keep their children at home? I don’t know. They didn’t have FaceTime or Zoom to help them get through it, so maybe they wrote letters. A major inconvenience to them, of course, but they were willing to do it for the safety of their community because for some reason, back then, THE HEALTH AND SAFETY OF THEIR NEIGHBORS WAS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE RIGHTS AND CONVENIENCES OF THE INDIVIDUAL.
What a concept. I think Jesus referred to this concept as “love.”
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