We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and "they" responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting.
Thursday, February 02, 2023
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We made science a team sport, and in so doing, we made it no longer science. It became us versus them, and "they" responded the only way anyone might expect them to: by resisting.
Perspective: Facing the New Covid-19 Reality
ReplyDeleteNow that we know that upwards of 2 million residents of the USA have perished because of Covid-19, and that the scientific community was correct about reporting how masks, vaccines, and other mitigations would keep transmission and deaths down, the trouble is how their warnings were perceived, a created ignorance of what science is and what scientists could do and was doing.
What I dislike about my link in the Perspectives column of NEJM above, is that we are not counting deaths from vital organ damage caused by Covid a year or two after the virus has been recovered from. All that organ damage will lessen life expectancy in the USA for decades.
For instance, if I had contracted Covid when I was in my 30s, it would have damaged my heart, the heart being just one of the vital organs the virus erodes. Then in my 40s, when in the ER and the first responders were trying to bring me back to life from a heart attack, my heart would have been too damaged, and I would have died at 48. Anyone who has been at the hospital while a loved one was on the verge of death, knows that vital organs fail, often like dominos, before death, or they hold up in survival.
When I see 30-year-olds going around understanding why seniors are wearing masks, but they are not, I think a few things. First, I understand the moderate CDC political need in the climate of scientific ignorance and resistance, to relax the guidelines for younger folk masking up and getting vaccinated. So the younger generations are following it and know we seniors are as well, a half victory for deniers. But also, there's this acceptance of ignorance, a misunderstanding that their contracting Covid will take time off their lives, sort of like when we see young people smoking cigarettes. We older folk want to say, "Don't you know how that will either take years off your life, or will make your seniors years harder to take?" And then there is the accepted ignorance, that even if the young person is willing to isolate after contracting Covid, a period exists when you don't yet know you have the disease, when it is highly contagious and you are highly dangerous to others, and then when you take a test that comes back positive.
It's because of the political climate in the USA, that we could not defeat the virus early on, that we could not come together to defeat the greatest and most heinous enemy this country has ever faced, one that would torturously kill millions of us and continue to kill us even if the enemy gets defeated, if.