Why Are We Surprised?

Our non-mask wearing, non-social distancing, pack-’em-in-a-crowded-indoor-space encouraging president has been diagnosed with COVID. Why are we surprised? Most of us aren’t… we’re just ready to be surprised by whatever comes next.

I wasn’t going to put out a newsletter this week because I needed a break, but then the debate happened. Watching through a pediatrician’s lens, I decided to write about bullying and disrespect, about the devolution of discourse and how it impacts our children. I had a whole post about my kids’ progressive school and its renowned talking stick. Beginning in kindergarten all the way through senior year of high school, small groups of kids gather once per week to talk about dilemmas or worries or life events, each session guided by a single rule: the person with the talking stick speaks, while everyone else listens. My kids enrolled during middle school and I’ll admit it took us all a while to wrap our brains around the concept of the talking stick. But Tuesday night’s (non)presidential debate hammered home the value of such a simple idea: speak calmly and thoughtfully when it’s your turn, and remain quiet, or better yet listen, when it’s not.

I wrote the post and held it back because the noise of the week still felt deafening – if I didn’t want to read my own newsletter, why would you? Then, late last night, Trump took the talking stick via Twitter to announce he tested positive for coronavirus. And despite the incredible cacophony of voices across every news – and non-news – outlet, I felt an overwhelming need to grab the talking stick for a moment. As every physician I know has been saying for months and months, coronavirus doesn’t care who you are, it just wants to enter your airways and settle into your cells so it can thrive and multiply. It doesn’t discriminate based on gender or geography; rather it selects based upon crowd size and access to your mucus membranes. Coronavirus infects people regardless of age, it just seems to do a much better job of reproducing and spreading in the bodies of teens and adults compared with babies and young kids. It doesn’t care about race or ethnicity, but because it spreads easily in crowded environments, particularly those bathed in recirculated air, it impacts poorer populations which in this country tend to be overrepresented by people of color. In the end, though, regardless of the size of your house or your bank account, if you want to minimize your risk for infection, the steps are clear: keep distance, keep masks on, and keep yourself outside as much as possible. Trump had more opportunity than almost anyone else to follow these simple public health interventions, but his refusal and open mockery have landed him exactly where statisticians would predict: locked in his room, ordered to isolate so he doesn’t spread COVID to others. Access to resources doesn’t insulate us from pandemic – acting on them does.

This newsletter is dedicated to clear understanding. When we are not holding the talking stick, if we actually listen to what is being presented, we have the opportunity to protect ourselves with knowledge. Below you’ll find just a few stories this week, all dedicated to deeper dives. They are longer reads than my usual links, but I have shared fewer of them. I urge you to spend a little time in the quiet space of reading this weekend, absorbing the stories of others in order to better protect yourself and your family. Viruses will do what they are designed to do – spread. It is up to humans to internalize and then act upon the lessons that keep playing out before our eyes in order to stop them.

  • Understanding that sometimes we just need to laugh… and that people totally look like their dogs.

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