This is an essay that I submitted today to my county medical society that solicits such things from its membership for its Physician Wellness Program newsletter. I’m not the only one who writes for the therapeutic value.
Almost from the beginning of the pandemic, I have referred to it as the COVID apocalypse. I use the word apocalypse in both its secular meaning of disaster or catastrophe as well as in its original meaning from its Greek root for uncovering or revealing. With the first meaning, I refer to the toll of illness and death as well as the disruptions of societal functions and global economics that the pandemic has caused. The latter meaning refers to the unmasking of things both good and bad.
Most of the good that the pandemic has revealed has been at the individual level, I think – compassion, service, altruism, and self-revelation – a better understanding that we each have of ourselves and what is important to us. Much of the bad revealed has been at the organizational and structural level – inequity, inequality, injustice, inhumanity, greed and callousness. These things have always been with us, but the apocalypse has laid them bare. It has revealed how politics taints public health decisions, how political rhetoric taints the decision-making of individuals who profess to live by the Golden Rule as well as the decisions of our public institutions that profess to serve us all.
It has pulled back the curtain on pretenses to reveal how corporations that claim to be engaged in making us all healthier readily put profit above probity. It has revealed the hypocrisy of expressions such as “essential workers” when they are used to apply to healthcare workers and first responders but not the workers who keep our pantries stocked, our utilities on, who teach our children, and who make life seem normal despite the ongoing conflagration. These are the workers who make it possible for those of us, more privileged, to work from home, shop from home, and otherwise minimize our exposure to potential infection.
I am among the privileged because my wife and I are retired with a secure income; most Americans are not. I am among the privileged because my wife and I are vaccinated; most of the world is not. I am among the privileged because of an accident of birth, a helping hand from many I have met in life, and an occasional fortunate decision rather than because I deserve it. For these things, I am grateful.
I like that “accident of birth” thought. I try to make my religious friends understand how remarkably lucky we are to exist in this place and time. I view it as a lottery as any of us could just as easily be starving in Yemen, in a village without internet or communication in Africa without access to clean water, or one of the teeming masses in any number of overcrowded developing but not yet developed locations around the world. The USA is less than 5% of the world’s population and those conditions exist here as well, but many of us live better than any medieval Lord. I try to convince them that we have a duty to collectively make those who didn’t win the birth lottery’s lives better, by encouraging the government (the only truly capable entity) to do so, with our money, on our behalf. If reincarnation is a thing, that could be any of them the next time. However, my friends almost universally believe they were placed into, and deserve their lofty position and are part of some kind of grand plan they’re not yet privy to—and the less fortunate are somehow being tested or are less deserving somehow. That kind of narcissistic thinking rankles me.
Exactly, Uwe.