The “New Normal” Will Be Canceled
In an environment rich in people focusing on the end of the pandemic, we’re setting ourselves up for the next one
I’m scheduled to get my first dose of the COVID vaccine next week. I think it’s the Moderna vaccine, but I honestly can’t recall off the top of my head. All I know is, it will magically change my DNA to make me somehow trackable by the NSA in a way that carrying my phone with me everywhere won’t. Or something; I don’t keep up with conspiracy theories, because that leads to stealing Nancy Pelosi’s stapler. Realistically, at this point, as someone who’s considered expendable by most of society (this is absolutely true for all disabled people, and it’s one of those cruelties that establishment politics goes to great lengths to conceal, because “We’d rather kill Grandma” sounds a lot worse than “We can’t afford to sustain Medicare”), I’m just grateful I have a place in line, especially since I’m hearing more and more horror stories from other glioblastoma survivors who make it through COVID and end up in the ER due to strokes and clots (those of us who survive radiation treatment are susceptible to clotting issues). What worries me a lot more is all of the, “We’ll have the disease behind us, we can get back to normal!” rhetoric that’s surrounding the vaccine roll-out. As a cancer survivor, I know exactly what that sort of, “That sucked, but we never have to think about it, ever again” behavior leads to — more disease, inevitably. I’ve survived three separate brain tumors. If you want to know how I did that, the shortest answer is that I treated the first two tumors as one-off freak coincidences, and tried to lead a normal life. It wasn’t until I heard the words, “Stage 4” with the most-recent tumor that I realized this business of getting neurosurgery every so often and pretending I was a normal person inexplicably plagued with tumors would end in blood and tears. That was the moment I sought out hyper-aggressive treatment, made some dramatic changes in my life to prioritize and manage my health, and spend at least ten minutes a day worrying about my cancer. Because pretending it was a one time deal not only didn’t pay off; it lead to the sort of idiotically positive thinking that allowed me to ignore the third brain tumor until the situation got out of hand.
I’m hardly alone in that, “Welcome to Hell, make yourself comfortable” mentality — virtually all of my fellow long-term survivors have adopted the attitude that death and disease is our default factory setting, and aggressively manage and track our health. We’re all in the “new normal,” but it looks dramatically different than life BC (before cancer). Post-chemo life is definitely never as good as it was prior to a diagnosis, but we all have one thing in common: We’re all still alive, and most of us have outlasted our initial life expectancies. We would not have done that if we pretended that a life-altering diagnosis was in the same category as a dead car battery, which is what most of society seems determined to do. Turn on any television news channel, and you can see stories of people booking tickets on cruises, planning vacations, burning their masks, and generally looking forward to all the same behaviors that lead to a pandemic. No one’s advocating snorting dried bat (yet), but that’s the unfortunate truth every chronic disease survivor knows: if something is obviously dangerous, unhealthy, or unsafe; we would have avoided it, and not be chronically ill. All we can say is, in that morass of habits, situations, relationships, and behaviors that comprise a life, something — or, more frequently, multiple things — made us ill. Could have been Friday night drinks with friends, it could have been buying off-brand vitamins, it could have been that time we sprained a shoulder in the gym and took an extra aspirin. It’s hard to tell. Even though I’m not going to advocate stopping all human activities, I am begging everyone to scale them back a bit until we figure out what happened the first time, take steps to prevent it, and then start aggressively managing all the potential factors that lead to it.
One thing that most people who assume biology is something that happens exclusively in the woods seem aggressively ignorant about is the unfortunate fact that diseases and survivors all change over time. Even the non-infectious ones. Most people with diabetes start their survival journey with aggressively managing their diet, but, as my biochemistry professor once noted, there has never been a documented case of someone successfully managing diabetes exclusively through dietary change throughout their life; eventually, all forms of diabetes require insulin as a form of treatment. And that’s a fairly common, unchanging disease. Most folks I know of have a hard time wrapping their minds around malaria that’s unaffected by drugs, or the treatment-resistant variants of HIV, or multi-drug resistant tuberculosis. Let me just put it this way, somewhere in this vast, wonderful world, there is a strain of COVID that will ignore the current vaccines and infect even the vaccinated. It might be deep in the jungles of Brazil; it might be in a suburb of Perth. If we don’t want that strain to be the one alien archaeologists in the distant future point to as the beginning of our species’ end, we need to stop the enthusiastic race to get back to “business as usual” (and, from a simple psychological perspective, this increasing push to deny any previous trauma and just continue on as if the world is unchanged can not be healthy). Obviously, I don’t have any proven solutions to keep that Johnson & Johnson-resistant strain of COVID bottled up in Perth, but I can think of some simple recommendations that might make it slightly less-likely that we have a live action cosplay of S. King’s The Stand.
My recommendations for the new normal:
Listen to experts — This one might seem obvious, but we all ignored A. Fauci, who holds multiple graduate degrees in the field of infectious diseases in favor of a reality television star with multiple bankruptcies, because he told us that absolutely no changes would have to be made. One of these people is facing multiple criminal investigations, the other is still employed by the government. I know from Planet Cancer that it’s absolutely horrible to have someone in a white coat detail the horrifying substances we will have to ingest in order to see the next election when people in yoga pants are telling us that essential oils are just the thing. Expert opinions are hard to understand, and harder to incorporate into life, but we’ve just seen half a million Americans die from not listening to physicians, public health experts, and researchers. Loudly broadcast ignorance is no substitute for a well-informed opinion, and, to be perfectly frank, if I had my way, lay people would be absolutely prohibited from discussing anything about disease on a mass media platform. Talking heads had their chance at crisis management, we all collectively learned that’s a costly mistake. In my own life; I have to get an MRI to monitor my condition every three months. I hate these scans. Believe me, I really do, more than I can put into words. I was looking forward to the most-recent round because it marked three years post-diagnosis, and could signal that I might move to one scan every 4–6 months, possibly. I brought this up with my oncologists, and they expressed the preference that, for the time, I stick with the three month schedule. This was disappointing, to say the least, but I’m going in for a scan every three months for foreseeable future. I’m not wild about it, but they are the recognized experts (and, when you get two folks who don’t work in the same building separately arriving at the same conclusion, especially in the biomedical field, take it as a universal truth). Americans seem uniquely primed for this bizarre “comforting lies are equal to a harsh truth” thinking (and, I’m starting to think that Germany’s laws prohibiting cults might be a step in the right direction), although I will admit that this entire incident has jaded me to any presumptions about European sophistication or intelligence.
Maskup all the time — So maybe not all the time, and maybe not with the horrible masks that cover 90% of your face, but it wouldn’t be some massive imposition to keep a comfortable cloth-ish mask on-hand at all times, and, whenever you’re in a public space, just keep it on. If you’re at a table in a restaurant or in someone’s home, that’s the time to remove it. Think of this as farting in public — it’s an unwritten rule, and mistakes happen, but, generally, most of us get it, follow it, and it makes life slightly better. Similarly, if we just get into the habit of not inadvertently spraying each other with spittle most of the time, I think we’ll learn to enjoy it, and, hey, it slows the spread of diseases.
No uninvited touching — This is one I know a lot of my female friends (I know that idiom makes me sound like a Ferengi, all the alternative idioms are somehow worse) will appreciate and endorse, but Western culture is amazingly permissive of violations of personal space. It’s not something you’re likely to notice until your physicians warn you not to dawdle in confined spaces (full disclosure, I was never technically immunocompromised and never had to do the same level of PPE that my leukemia friends had to do, but I was in a clinical trial and on multiple drugs correlated with immunosuppression, so all of my physicians just warned me to avoid crowds and touching strangers just as an easy precaution), but people come up, shake your hand, rest their hands on your shoulder, etc. And I’m a large, physically imposing dude; I can not begin to imagine the hellscape that some of my women friends face in a culture that tolerates and protects Harvey Weinstein. I realize I’m given to hyperbole, but I was honestly toying with the idea of getting a shirt with the phrase, “Don’t touch me, I’m sick” printed on it before I finished treatment; that’s how ubiquitous this issue is. I have no idea to what degree this contributed to the spread of COVID, but I find it damning that no one with a news show seriously brought up the idea of maybe not shaking hands and then tousling hair at any point in the pandemic.
End door to door solicitation — Cold calling in general needs to die, physically showing up for the act needs to be a felony now. It wasn’t until June of 2020 that I realized strangers were knocking on my door at least once a month. I don’t know how much that increased the spread of disease, but, like casually making out with strangers on a first meeting (see that entry on touching), is so ingrained in our culture that we’re going to have to collectively address it. If I were to charge someone to spit upon them, I would be arrested for solicitation. If I do the same thing while selling folks a vacuum cleaner, I get a bonus.
Improve public health — I have absolutely no idea what this would look like, but multiple friends and acquaintances in this field have mentioned, over the years, that their field is oft-overlooked and neglected. In keeping with my first piece of advice, I’ll trust that the experts know what they’re talking about, and we should give them all the support and money they need.
Make healthcare and screening a national defense priority — As Neil DeGrasse Tyson pointed out, the reason why we went to the moon was because it was a national defense priority on gaining the ultimate strategic high ground. Today, more Americans have died from a single disease than all US conflicts of the 20th century. Developing treatments for diseases, investing in clinical research and medical training must absolutely be seen in the same light as dumping a trillion dollars into fighter jets. I will be the first to admit that preventing destruction and saving lives doesn’t have the same visceral appeal as razing Laos, but, rather critically, we have to be alive in order to destroy the rest of the planet. And, just as the space race trained and funded the folks responsible for the Internet and the technology industry, imagine what would happen if society made that same investment in healthcare. There’s a chance we could achieve literal immortality.
Requisite vaccinations and regular screenings for emerging diseases — This is a corollary to my proposal to increase public health infrastructure (in fact, maybe this is all that’s needed). If there’s some bizarre new disease in Tanzania that’s infected a dozen people, we need a screening test for it the next day. One of the long-term lessons from cancer is, you need to tackle the small problems (or tumors) before they become catastrophic. A rigorous medical screening system, and a fully-vaccinated populace are the price of admission to the 21st century, not some global conspiracy.
Civil liability for spreading disease — I have friends with German Shepherds, Pitbulls, Rottweilers, and Doberman Pinschers. They’re great people, and, from what I know, great dogs. I have no doubt that they would responsibly leash and train their dogs regardless of the legality involved. But, I’m also aware that there are plenty of people who would be only too happy to let Old Yeller into a kindergarten playground, and are only prevented from doing so because of the law. Specifically, there are civil liability laws that make dog owners liable for mayhem caused by the dogs (the laws vary from breed to breed and state to state, but the general principle is universal). Similarly, if contact tracers could point you out as the instigator of a super-spreader event, and the families of the deceased could bankrupt you, everyone would exercise much more caution and restraint in both event planning and daily life.
Obviously, I’m writing this mostly for entertainment, but I feel very safe in saying that if we race to return to pre-pandemic life without any significant changes, we will, effectively, put society on the exact same economic boom-and-bust cycle that we’ve seen since we deregulated markets in the 1980s. Except that, instead of destroying industries and businesses, people will die. It’s time for an uncomfortable-but-necessary discussion about whether we’d rather have prosperity or life. The days of having it all are long over, along with 523000 Americans.
