musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

The Amity that Wisdom knits not


The World Health Organization has recently declared the ongoing outbreaks of Mpox in Congo and elsewhere in Africa to be a global emergency, requiring urgent action to curb the virus’ transmission.

Will these crises never end? Are we forever destined to experience new untamed diseases ravaging our world? I mean think of Ebola, Zika, SARS, multi-drug resistant TB, norovirus, chikungunya, avian flu… The list seems endless.

The most memorable, in recent memory at least, was obviously the Covid pandemic that seemed to catch most of us off guard. What surprised me as much as anything, though, was the resistance to some simple, yet basic preventative strategies like masks and social distancing. It was as if some people were unwilling to act for the common good; were unwilling to accede to recommendations that they found inconvenient or excessive. I remember that even many of my closest friends were… well, hesitant…

I had never thought of Kasha as obstinate or particularly unreasonable, but sometimes… well, sometimes, she had some strange views. No, perhaps not strange -just different from mine. Domain-specific, I suppose. I mean, we agreed on many things -okay, some things- but not on masks.

In that time of wrath and tears, I told her there was both a moral responsibility, as well as an enlightened self-interested duty, to protect others in the community from acquiring any hidden viral passengers that we may be inadvertently broadcasting. Each of us is a potential fomite, an unbeknownst Typhoid Mary. I told her she should be wearing a mask.

“That’s just stupid, G! I’m vaccinated, and I am careful not to sit or stand too close to anybody I don’t know.” I raised an eyebrow to object, but she pre-empted my response by anticipating it. “I mean I don’t hug people… uhmm, well, most people.” She stared at my mask for a moment. “You said you were vaccinated, too, didn’t you…”

I nodded, but actually, I was going to object to her use of the word stupid -a pejorative term at the best of times. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly brilliant, but there seemed to be a large chasm between that and stupid. “So, why is wearing a mask stupid during a pandemic, when new viral variants are popping off like firecrackers?”

She stared at me for a moment and then rolled her eyes -no doubt in disbelief at my continuing stupidity. “Because that’s what vaccines are for, G. Why else would anybody get vaccinated?”

I have to admit that I shrugged at her -or at least tried to aim it at her. “But the job of a virus is to avoid immune retaliation…”

“And the job of a vaccine is to prevent that from happening!” she added with a smirk, interrupting me once again.

I took a deep breath and smiled at her tenacity. For me, stupidity was not simply a lack of intelligence, an inability to reason, or process things in the world properly. I had read somewhere that stupidity is actually something else entirely: a matter of continuing to use the wrong tools for a job -after all, they had worked before even if they no longer do; they might still work if we gave them a longer try. Stupidity was more a clinging to conceptual obsolescence than an inability to conceptualize.[i]

Still, I suppose I couldn’t really blame Kasha. None of her family were even vaccinated, let alone mask-wearers; she was raised like that: mistrustful of authorities who claimed omniscience and then altered their opinions about what they once believed. Her parents, and certainly Kasha, were otherwise law abiding and community-minded… but they simply didn’t trust what they were being told to do -it was too much out of their field of knowledge, too much out of their control. There was no doubt that the inventing, distributing and normalizing of new concepts was tough work for them.[ii]

They would certainly have been more obedient had they fully understood and believed what was being promulgated -understood why the instructions seemed to be  constantly changing. They were simply stuck with what they had been given to believe had worked in the past; they were confused that it was often no longer appropriate. Vaccines worked for measles, polio and multiple other diseases that had terrorized us in years gone by; they were told vaccines should work this time as well. But because they may not be 100% protective, there was still some risk; masks, however, might reduce the danger while the authorities again sorted out why the old tools were less effective this time around.

So, as far as I could tell, it was not me who was being stupid about wearing a mask to make sure I wasn’t acting as an unwitting viral vector. Kasha, however, didn’t think of my actions as appropriate, nor my tools particularly helpful for the job. It seems to me, though, that what might be stupid, would be failing to adapt to changes in the risks, and assuming the initial tools, the initial vaccines, would be enough -despite the subsequent appearance of the various viral mutations, and their novel strategies to avoid immune detection.

Or perhaps, stupid is too deprecatory a term to use, too freighted with contempt. Perhaps stubborn is more apposite; I certainly would never think of calling Kasha stupid.

She, however, would not let go of the term. “So if there really is a virus going crazy in our midst, why aren’t people dropping in the streets…?”

“The ones not wearing masks, you mean?” It was my turn to interrupt.

She shook her head angrily. “That’s still just stupid, G!” she said, loudly emphasizing the word ‘stupid’ with tiny little drops of saliva spraying from her mouth like a perfume nebulizer. “The vaccine must be working!” I could almost see the exclamation mark in the air in front of her.

I realized that no matter what I said, she would remain unconvinced. I was actually beginning to feel a bit stupid -no, foolish– for arguing with her. Then, maybe in response to her unmasked aerosol, I sneezed and took off my mask to wipe my nose.

She glared at me with frightened eyes, and took a step backwards. “Why did you take off your mask, G?”

“I needed to wipe my nose, Kash,” I answered, and crumpled up the tissue I’d used to put it back in my pocket.

“I thought the mask was supposed to do that kind of thing…” she said, frowning.

Since my mask was still in my hand, I decided to treat her to a smile that she could actually see. “It did,” I said. “Did you see any droplets of the sneeze coming through the mask?” I twinkled my eyes at her mischievously. “The virus is airborne, remember. The mask just prevents any droplets from your breath hitting other people when you yell at them…”

She blinked at that -but slowly. Carefully. Kasha was not one to submit to the fell clutch of circumstance nor bow to the bludgeonings of chance, as the poet Henley wrote, and she was not stupid, either. She reached into the satchel that was  always slung over her shoulder, and pulled out a mask.

I have to admit I stared at her in amazement for a moment. “I thought you were one of them – a member of the conscientious objectors, Kash,” I said, putting my mask back on my smirking face.

She smiled as she donned her mask and rolled her eyes theatrically. “Maybe… but I’m not stupid you know, G,” she said, sighed loudly, and then hugged me…

[i]https://psyche.co/ideas/why-some-of-the-smartest-people-can-be-so-very-stupid

[ii] Ibid.

, , ,

gozzter

, , ,

Leave a comment