Terrible bargains, regretfully struck
Apr. 1st, 2021 11:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: illness, (fairly mild) discourse, (arguably) venting]
(to avoid any initial uncertainty: not an April Fools post)
I've been seeing a lot of backlash lately against sanitising. People worried about the diseases from the Year Without Colds hitting us all at once when things go back to normal, everyone's antibodies faded and/or out of date; people pointing out that immune systems often get twitchy if you don't give them enough to do and start attacking bits of food or grains of pollen or--if you're particularly unlucky--your own body.
I try not to listen. I know, or at least I suspect, that they are talking to some other audience. They don't know what they're asking me to sacrifice.
(But isn't that always the way? I believe I've mentioned, in bits and pieces of previous discourse that I would rather not revisit right now, how much worse it is when people throw you under the bus because they *didn't notice you were there*, rather than because they thought it through and explicitly decided that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the you. A deliberate tradeoff, I could at least respect.)
An adult with average levels of recklessness but me levels of disease severity would be robbed of approximately two weeks of their life per year, *every* year. At unpredictable intervals, with less than half a day's notice. Not even counting the long tails.
That might not even have been enough to make the air breathable. We suspect it wouldn't have been.
Even if it were, though, and even if I had known exactly what it would cost...I can't say I made the wrong decision. It's a terrible choice to have to make, a choice that no one should be subjected to. I cannot bring myself to blame any of its victims.
(to avoid any initial uncertainty: not an April Fools post)
I've been seeing a lot of backlash lately against sanitising. People worried about the diseases from the Year Without Colds hitting us all at once when things go back to normal, everyone's antibodies faded and/or out of date; people pointing out that immune systems often get twitchy if you don't give them enough to do and start attacking bits of food or grains of pollen or--if you're particularly unlucky--your own body.
I try not to listen. I know, or at least I suspect, that they are talking to some other audience. They don't know what they're asking me to sacrifice.
(But isn't that always the way? I believe I've mentioned, in bits and pieces of previous discourse that I would rather not revisit right now, how much worse it is when people throw you under the bus because they *didn't notice you were there*, rather than because they thought it through and explicitly decided that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the you. A deliberate tradeoff, I could at least respect.)
An adult with average levels of recklessness but me levels of disease severity would be robbed of approximately two weeks of their life per year, *every* year. At unpredictable intervals, with less than half a day's notice. Not even counting the long tails.
That might not even have been enough to make the air breathable. We suspect it wouldn't have been.
Even if it were, though, and even if I had known exactly what it would cost...I can't say I made the wrong decision. It's a terrible choice to have to make, a choice that no one should be subjected to. I cannot bring myself to blame any of its victims.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-01 03:28 pm (UTC)I *did* spend my first decade or so wallowing in filth, and perhaps that was for the best. It's a distinct possibility that--unlike, say, polio prevention--we should not force cold prevention on children too young to understand why it's important, at least not until we invent a less suffering-filled method of raising healthy immune systems.
...I'd be more comfortable with that possibility if people routinely *reached* the stage of understanding why it's important.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-01 04:48 pm (UTC)>>per year, *every* year
Okay, yes, except during pandemics, but you get my point.