Influential People

No amount of evidence will change the mind of a public in deep denial

Forty-three open tabs. Four google documents filled with links to studies. Quotes from experts. Immunologists. Researchers. I set out to write about COVID armed with all the weapons I can think of to carry. I have a document full of studies about the cardiac effects, another about T-cell exhaustion and immunodeficiency. Pages of links to articles and videos of experts speaking at virtual conferences. Immunologists patiently explaining, no, immunity debt is not a thing, and no, being infected with pathogenic viruses won’t make you healthier. 

But all these weapons are blunted and worthless; I know it as I toggle between tabs searching for something I won’t find. Hidden between these Nature articles and NIH studies there’s no incantation to break a spell. To wake a sleeping nation. To shatter a lovely dream. 

What good are studies that no one will read?

What good is a truth that no one is willing to hear? 

A crisis is ongoing in Toronto. Children are sick; much sicker than usual. Children’s medications are sold out; ER wait times are averaging 45 hours. What the press has termed a “tripledemic” brings COVID, flu and RSV, and pediatric ICUs are stacked to the brim with coughing, struggling kids. The pandemic minimizers and their faithful stenographers in the press come armed with excuses, distractions, and half truths as the scene unfolds: the kids are sick, they claim, because they have been too healthy. 

This week, Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Kieran Moore, urged the public to wear masks amidst the crushing pressure on the province’s ERs and children’s hospitals. Just days later, he was spotted maskless at a party: he was being honored at a “Most Influential People” gathering. He earned his place on the list for, yes really, “keeping COVID under control.” 

Today, another doctor posted a photo bearing a pre-emptively defensive caption: he only unmasked to eat dinner at his crowded medical conference. When disabled activists- now forced to take on the unpaid labor of disseminating critical public health information - rightly pointed out that this was no excuse at all, the doctor replied that “countless people- the majority- are living like this all the time.” When a woman replied that those countless individuals are also hurting people, the doctor accused her of throwing slurs at him. Her exact words were, “they are continuing to harm others, especially disabled folks and kids.” While I haven’t found the slur, I can see why, to him, a mirror looks like an insult.

I would argue that Influential People who gather to party while knowingly spreading diseases that are killing children are not influential people at all. I would argue they are influenced people, doing what is popular to fit in like so many insecure teens. I would argue that in this time, in this place, the influential people are the disabled activists who will be remembered for their work, their bravery, their compassion, and their prescience. 

I would argue that promoting behaviors because “the majority of people are doing it”, has not, historically, been the best way to gauge the moral, or kind, or correct course. 

It might shock a liberal in 2020 that two years after mocking such behavior, they would, themselves, resort to anti-mask propaganda in service of our “back to normal” COVID non-response. At the start of COVID, headlines in prominent papers patiently explained, for the slow and right-wing among us, that no, masks can’t harm your immune system. 

But that was two years ago! Two years and two eugenicist administrations later, maybe masks DO harm your immune system! While we’re at it, maybe vaccines cause heart attacks (obligatory rebuttal here). Maybe disabled people should be called freaks and shut out of society! Maybe we have to “get back to normal” because taking basic precautions is the same thing as hiding in a cave forever! As many on the left suspected all along, the space between Trumpists and The Resistors was, after all, paper thin. Kids are in cages, still; in hospital beds too. We aren’t finished imprisoning and harming children, but “the influencers” seem to be finished tweeting about it. 

Two years ago Republican die-hards shrieked and spat and spiked the national demand for horse dewormer, all in service of their denial, and, I would argue, their fear. While angrily chiding those of us who took to wearing masks as living in fear, their inability to face reality stank of it. After all, isn’t it a bit frightening to live through a world-historical pandemic? Isn’t it a bit sad to watch 20 million people die? Isn’t it a bit upsetting to see freezer trucks and mass graves on the nightly news? Does pretending none of those things are bad, or scary, make you tough? Or childish?

 “I am not afraid of the virus at all,” say the 45-year-old white men in their red hats, with their red faces, in their big trucks.

“I’m not a baby, I’m a big boy,” I hear. 

Today the Ivermectin-eaters are hardly alone. By now, just about everyone is shrieking and spitting mad about the suggestion that COVID might be bad for you. When a 40-something celebrity drops dead of a heart attack, it’s rude to mention her concurrent COVID infection. When your progressive employer invites you to an in-person conference, it’s gauche to ask about infection prevention. And when children appear to no longer have functional immune systems, it’s insensitive to say, might we have harmed them? Might we want to be sure? Might we want to stop reinfecting them, over, and over, and over again, with a dangerous, novel virus?

The same people who laughed at their neighbors for swallowing snake oil are swallowing every pseudo-scientific explanation they can find for the ongoing, recurring, worsening, mysterious, definitely-not-COVID-related health issues they’re encountering. 

Here is a link to a study called, “Pulmonary Dysfunction after Pediatric COVID-19.”

Here is a link to a study called, “Immunological dysfunction persists for 8 months following initial mild-to-moderate SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

And here is a link to Public Health Ontario data which shows that RSV positivity rates in the province were actually higher last year than this year; there is no way to shove the inelegant “immunity debt” hypothesis over these numbers. There was no lack of RSV infection in Toronto last year. Yet the kids are much, much sicker. 

You don’t have to click through to these studies and charts if you don’t want to know what they say. And a lot of people, it seems, do not want to know what they say. 

We hurl “afraid” and “fear” as insults, even though fear is an emotion with a purpose; it protects us from harm when we encounter danger. Grief, anger, sorrow: these are emotions with purpose as well. When someone dies, it’s okay to feel sad. When 20 million people die, it’s not okay to feel nothing.

Our collective COVID response in this moment is rife with denial and toxic positivity. Those who try to shine a light on the ongoing crisis are told to lighten up, loosen up, are even accused of having psychological disorders. We are too mad, too mean, too loud, and too “negative”. In a country that condoles our bereaved with the empty aphorism that “everything happens for a reason,” perhaps it’s unsurprising that we are unable to sit in sorrow, experience discomfort, or process grief. 

Right now we are a nation partying fiercely, anxiously, atop the bodies of the people we’ve lost and continue to lose. We scream the lyrics to our favorite songs in crowded bars because we don’t dare sit with our silence and hear the words of warning echoing from every lab, every Long COVID patient. Our eyes are closed, and our hearts too, because when we open them, everything will rush in. Too much will rush in. What we’ve done will rush in. What we’ve lost will rush in. 

We take off our masks so we can see each other smile. Frowning just isn’t something we do around here. 

I’m not a researcher or an immunologist; that’s why I decided to write a personal essay instead of a medical one. If you’d like to know how COVID is affecting you- and your children’s - immune system, lungs, heart, kidneys, and blood, the answers are just a google search away (pro tip: search in the medical journals, not in the press). I can’t tell you anything the most prominent researchers in the field can’t. But first you have to want to know. First you have to accept the things you cannot change. First you have to let in sorrow, anger, guilt, rage, and, yes, even fear. 

Today we remember ACT UP activists for their rage and their beauty in the face of the AIDS crisis. I believe tomorrow we’ll remember those who gave everything to disturb the false peace we’re basking in. Anger is beautiful when it is righteous and in service to justice; smiles are ugly when they paper over mass death. 

I believe we will remember those who faced this moment fully and without fear; those who wore masks because it was right, not because it was popular, and because it was lifesaving harm reduction. We will remember those who died, and some day we will act as though they mattered. 

And as for what we’ll forget? Probably all the parties, the concerts, the pointless professional conferences where smiling faces exchanged COVID with smiling faces. We might remember those who indulged in fantasy when our children needed us to grow up. But we certainly won’t consider them influential. 

When I see unmasked faces in the grocery store, in the post office, at the pharmacy, I see human beings who will not, who cannot believe that COVID is dangerous. Maybe they believe it’s the flu. Maybe they envision a new normal where the blood vessel-damaging, immune-system attacking, novel SARS virus lives side-by-side with us in harmony. Maybe they think horse dewormer is a secret cure.

And if children must die gasping to indulge that little fantasy, what of it? After all, mental health is important. We’re here for a good time, not for a long time. Maybe just ten years. Maybe just two.