Shelter in Place, San Francisco, California, August
It seems like a miracle that after only a week I can move better and experience far less pain than I have in several years. It seems like a miracle but, of course, it’s not. It’s science. Some very smart people devoted their knowledge and time to develop the tools and the procedures to make my hip replacement possible. And then under the constraints of the pandemic, they reworked the procedures so they could operate safely and so that I could heal from home. I feel extremely lucky to live in an age when growing old does not necessarily hand me a cane and shunt me off to the porch swing. From here on out (and up until now, come to think of it), the quality of my life will be enhanced and safer - and possibly longer - thanks to the accumulation and application of scientific knowledge.
So then how, after slowly hobbling my way down the stairs, am I sitting under the umbrella in my garden (yay), reading another headline about the politicization and denigration of research and medical advice? It seems simple enough to me that either we accept the risks and profit from an ever-evolving/improving medical science, or we don’t. We cannot have it both ways as individuals or as countries. We cannot let a medical team send a teeny tiny soldering iron through our veins to heal a broken heart or let them put in a miraculous titanium hip that vanquishes the pain, but refuse the medical profession’s recommendation to wear a mask to keep ourselves and others safe. We cannot put our faith in the quick action of a drug to rescue our child from a bee sting or a peanut allergy and then promulgate the notion that a vaccine against dangerous childhood diseases - or Covid - is some kind of medical or government plot. And we certainly cannot or should not ever harass the very people (or their children) who are trying to track down the nature of this virus and keep us safe.
Of course there are risks to trusting medicine implicitly and there is a limit to the miracles doctors can perform. Knowledge grows, medical practice evolves, hacks infiltrate, and people make mistakes. Ultimately, we are each responsible for understanding the risks and making decisions for ourselves. But accusing the medical profession of a political bias and then enjoying the benefits of their labor to live a better life seems not only short-sighted, it seems - from my very grateful vantage point this morning - to be hypocritical and wrong.