Robert MacNeil Christie, Author

I am now a member of that not-so-exclusive global social network that I always intended to avoid. I guess you could call it the ‘COVID Club.’ Clearly, we are not able to control everything that confronts us in our lives, especially the invisible threats. I had done everything ‘right,’ such as getting the vaccine and all the boosters recommended by public health authorities and wearing a mask in any crowded space. However, unpredictable vulnerability is one of the consequences of living in the modern interconnected world.

Skeptics and deniers conjure all sorts of ‘reasons’ why public health officials and their extensive research and testing are not to be trusted. But that is all politics; I always try to look at the data and go with the probabilities. That worked well for over three years, as I saw many succumb to the virus. But, after all, risk remains a matter of chance. Minimizing risk is never an absolute.

The ‘Invisible Hand’ of Unintended Consequences

Well, maybe I had gotten a bit casual about it lately. I had been traveling, in and out of many public places and I recall occasionally forgetting my own COVID cardinal rule: the more crowded the venue the more imperative it was to wear a mask. However, it is still a matter of probability; there are no guarantees regardless of how cautious you are. Besides, masking protects others from you spreading COVID to them much more than it protects you from being infected by them.

The thing about a disease ‘going viral’ is that it depends on how closely people interconnect. With modern air travel, anyone anywhere in the world is at risk soon enough, the degree of risk being a matter of proximity to the spreader. The more people you contact, if only at 6-foot distance, the higher the risk. Contacts in an enclosed space increase risk.

On the other hand, it only takes one if it is the right (wrong) one, and you cannot know who it was in most cases. Once I tested positive, I informed several friends and acquaintances with whom I have had contact in the last few days that I tested positive after a miserable day of body aches and a cough unlike any other. On the other hand, a victim may be contagious days before feeling any symptoms. I will remain contagious for nearly a week, barring complications, after testing positive. The ‘good news’ is that because I took every precaution I could instead of falling for those demagogic conspiracy theories, I seem to have a relatively mild case. And I am a member of that very high risk demographic: old. After two and a half days since the onset of symptoms, the deep cough has eased up some and the body aches are less severe. I’ve been sleeping a lot.

It Is All the Same

Why does all this make me think of Si Wa Lee, the old Korean acupuncturist who did more for my shoulder injury in 1972 than the orthopedic surgeon could expect to accomplish? In response to many exigencies of life, Dr. Lee would reply, “same-same.” He had a holistic view of the world as well as the greatest diagnostic skill I have ever seen. He could look you in the eye and tell you how your stomach felt. How many gastroenterologists have done that for you lately? I have benefited ever since from exposure to Dr. Lee’s sensible worldview.

Some folks in western medicine are gradually coming to understand the body-mind-gut-ecosystem as the whole complex adaptive system that it is. We ourselves are each a superorganism that includes more ‘foreign’ cells than our own. The burgeoning field of Earth System science is taking a whole-systems perspective too, as it must by the very nature of its subject matter. Linear cause-effect analysis has just about run its course as the primary form of scientific investigation.

Understanding viruses and their spread and being able to design and produce vaccines to constrain them, as well as develop public health practices to stem their spread, also requires complex-systems thinking. It is about far more than identifying ‘bugs’ and killing them. We live in a world of complex adaptive living systems, and our responses to crises need to reflect our understanding of that fact; so does our planning and preparation for the crises that will inevitably occur.

On the Downhill Run

I began this essay in the earliest days after testing positive for COVID, when the body aches were not yet the most severe. Past the peak now, I am on the downhill run. The fever has broken and the pain and very deep cough are beginning to subside. I just happened upon one of those internet conspiracy sites where not only is COVID framed as just an ordinary flu blown out of proportion for some sinister goal of deceiving the American people—with the evil Dr. Fauci at the center of the plot, of course. The writer also claims that the American population will decline by 70% in 2025, purportedly because of a biological war with China. Now, I do not doubt that most major military powers (U.S., Russia, China) continue the insane practice of developing biological weapons, but the exact conditions under which any of them might launch such a war require more scrutiny than speculation. Even a genetically targeted weapon (say, against a specific ethnic group) would have a significant probability of unintended consequences, dangerous to who knows exactly whom.

Oh, and here is another area where America’s diversity is a distinct advantage: diversity is much harder to attack than uniformity. Oh, and by the way, Critical Race Theory (dubbed “CRT”) does not ‘foment racial hatred,’ as the white nationalist propagandists claim; it demands an accurate reading of the bad as well as the good in American history. In that way, the denial of the actual existing racial hatred that is the legacy of the Jim Crow era can be honestly faced and eliminated by understanding.

And we don’t need to protect those sensitive little children (of parents “who think they are white” -Baldwin, The Fire Next Time) from awareness of the horrors of American history. I was outraged as a teenager on hearing about slavery, slave ships, and lynching, as well I should have; it never occurred to me to feel bad about myself as a result. As a human, however, it was and is my responsibility to do what I can to oppose dehumanization.

American culture has such a long way to go; trying to destroy open-minded education and critical thinking by posing wild conspiracies on social media is the exact opposite of seeking the good society. Suppression of critical inquiry is one of the first steps toward fascism and the violence it always entails.

The COVID fog is lifting; I can feel it. Now, let us lift the political fog of fear, hatred, and appeal to autocratic attempts that would destroy the protection from the violence of tyrants that diversity and democracy offer us all, if we are willing to do the work.