Intergenerational Interdependence is a Blessing Not a Curse

December 2, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

¹⁰Do not glorify yourself by dishonoring your father,
for your father’s dishonor is no glory to you.
¹¹For a man’s glory comes from honoring his father,
and it is a disgrace for children not to respect their mother.
¹²O son, help your father in his old age,
and do not grieve him as long as he lives;
¹³even if he is lacking in understanding, show forbearance;
in all your strength do not despise him.
¹⁴For kindness to a father will not be forgotten,
and against your sins it will be credited to you;
¹⁵in the day of your affliction it will be remembered in your favor;
as frost in fair weather, your sins will melt away.

My aunt and uncle, and my father and stepmother, have together organized their lives around making sure my now extremely-elderly grandmother receives the care she needs. My other aunt and uncle did the same for my maternal grandmother in the years prior to her death. It’s demanding work, but it’s their work, and though they avail themselves of all the help they can get in making the work happen, it would be unthinkable that they simply abandon their own mother.

As we finalize our retirement planning, my husband and I have been having conversations with our teen and young adult children about their preferences in how to care for us when the time comes — knowing that we can’t truly plan for end-of-life, it will happen when and how it happens, but we can make certain financial choices that will impact the types of resources they have at their disposal. They, too, can begin thinking now about how their life choices over then next five or ten years (professional formation, choice of spouse, place they settle down) will affect the shape of their adult relationship with us.

Neither my husband nor I come from a culture where expectations about extended-family life take a specific, prescribed form. We do come from a culture (late 20th century USA) where independence is considered the pinnacle of human life. To be dependent on nobody for anything is what makes you a superstar. To need others — not just to enjoy them, but to actually need them — is a mark of failure.

It’s a radically screwed up culture. The reality is that all humans need other people, and that all humans pass through phases of life when they are utterly dependent on others.

Because we come from this culture that idolizes the myth of independence, it is difficult to talk with our kids about plans for a time when they may have to take on all kinds of potentially unpleasant and overwhelming work in order to care for us. You’d think aging was invented last week the way Americans tend to act shocked, just shocked, that human minds and bodies are prone to frailty.

Meanwhile, statistically speaking, if we live long enough to need our children to care for us, and they live long enough to do so, we’re probably going to have to depend on them, personally, for that care, because there will be far too many other Gen-Xers competing for the assistance of fewer-per-elder working-age adults than ever. We can reasonably expect professional nursing care to become cost-prohibitive and social security to wane away, all while our retirement savings are eaten up by the inflationary pressure of the US’s current (under all administrations, this isn’t party-specific) spend-and-spend-and-spend fiscal policy.

So while we would have preferred to be able to have more children (alas they don’t grow on trees), we’ve become grateful in a new way for the ones we’ve got. Before we just loved them for the pure goodness and beauty and wonder of their existence. Now we’re beginning to appreciate some of the possible side-benefits of parenthood.

And that, friends, is what I’ve been thinking about as I watch some of the shallower rationales for abortion slinging around Twitter these days: It is much, much easier to keep a straight face and ask your kids to sacrifice for you when you have already proven you are more than willing to sacrifice for them.

Never easy caring for an aging parent, I don’t think. But hella lot easier doing it when you have no doubt in your mind that they are grateful for you, have always loved you absolutely and unconditionally, and would have done, and indeed did, whatever they possibly could to give you the best life they could manage.

My grandparents, though as imperfect as anyone, loved their kids that much and that completely. My husband’s and my parents, though as imperfect as anyone, loved us kids that much and that completely. We kids, all of us with our many imperfections, have in turn loved our children that much and that completely. I certainly don’t count myself perfect either as a parent or as an adult-child. But I can honestly to say to my parents with undying gratitude: When you sow love, you reap it.

Photo by Tim Green of Alan Wilson’s sculpture “Grandmother with Child” (1996), Railway Road, Blackburn, via Wikimedia CC 2.0.

Of Course Prenatal Learning is Real

November 30, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

Melanie Jean Juneau has a provocative story over at Catholic Stand about her own children’s experiences of remembering life in the womb. I’m skeptical, but think it would be a fun and fruitful avenue of research if anyone can come up with reliable ways to study the question. Regardless of what infants and toddlers do and don’t remember, however, the fact that unborn children are conscious and learning is obvious. Newborns are aware and able to learn, and that’s not because of magic thinking-dust floating in the air of the maternity ward, it’s because they are already able to learn before they make their grand entrance.

Which leads to a funny story. My eldest (born three weeks early but perfectly able to think and learn, he didn’t have to wait for his 40-week gesti-versary to begin expressing strong opinions) is less than two years older than his next-younger sister. Mr. Boy has become much more diplomatic with each passing year, but let’s just say his was not a quiet infancy. Could his complaints be heard through a couple inches of insulating material? Absolutely.

So, funny story about prenatal learning . . . his little sister was born crying like a toddler. If you’ve been around newborns, you know that usually they have this distinctive newborn-type cry that’s not real nuanced. As the baby grows towards Peak Toddler, tonal subtleties flourish, and the child develops a whole repertoire of types of crying that can be very informative for the parents. Toddlers and newborns do not have the same cry — unless the newborn has received extensive prenatal voice-coaching from an older sibling.

As a result, my #2 child was born crying not like some just-off-the-cabbage-patch neophyte, but like a seasoned pro. In the middle of the night, I could not distinguish the newborn from the toddler, because they had the same cry. She’d been listening her whole life to the very loud young person who did much of his hollering just inches from her developing ears and brain, so she already knew the language.

(FTR: I can now definitely tell their voices apart, thank you puberty, these days I mistake my son for his father not his sister.)

Anyhow, that’s my personal story of prenatal learning. I don’t think there’s any huge lesson to draw from it, other than that of course your baby is going to have a connection with you, Mom, because of all the months and months of learning your movements and voice and scent, so naturally your baby is going to favor spending time in your arms. Nothing ground-breaking there. Likewise, it suggests that Dad and siblings and other close household members are going to be somewhat known by the newborn already, so that family bond is already forming before you meet face to face.

It’s good.

***

Simcha Fisher has an interview up with an adoptee who talks about the pain and grief of being asked to pretend that adoption is the fairy-tale ending that erases the trauma of losing your first family. It’s not an easy read, so if you click through please understand that you are signing up to enter into someone else’s trauma and listen, and some of what this now-adult child of adoption has to say is very raw.

I think it’s an interview that absolutely attests (regardless of whatever you might believe about the science birth trauma, etc.) to the fact that children are meant to grow up in the loving embrace of their biological mother and father who are committed and faithful to each other and to their child, and that anything that rips apart that fundamental need is going to hurt. It’s a loss, and it’s normal for that loss to be painful and the grief to be lasting. There’s no age when losing one or both parents is just no big deal, move on to the next thing.

But obviously it’s a fallen world, and while we should do everything we can to help children grow up in a peaceful, loving home cared for by their own biological mother and father, if for some reason that’s not possible, we do what we can to find a next-best option. Neither “just kill the victim” nor “just pretend nothing happened, everything’s fine” are the loving response. Loving people is the loving response.

Photo of a little girl in vividly colored striped stockings with pink Crocs by D Sharon Pruitt, via Wikimedia, CC 2.0. Not my child, but I had a few who went in for that sort of fashion statement. Possibly some still do.

Freedom of Speech Matters

November 29, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

H/T to Salon Beige on a European freedom of speech ruling that’s being used by Algeria to justify to the UN the imprisonment of religious dissenters. English language summary of the case is here.

Very short version:

Said Djabelkhir was sentenced last spring to three years in prison for Facebook posts questioning Muslim orthodoxy (as defined by Algeria).
The UN freedom of religion and freedom of expression investigators sent a letter to Algeria saying: What the heck?
Apparently Algeria wrote back and said: We’re not doing anything other than what the European Court of Human Rights already said was AOK.

I haven’t been able to dig up a copy of Algeria’s statement yet, but the reputed contents are indeed consistent in kind, though not in degree, with the ruling on the case in Austria:

The woman in her late 40s, identified only as E.S., claimed during two public seminars in 2009 that the Prophet Muhammad’s marriage to a young girl was akin to “pedophilia.” A Vienna court convicted her in 2011 of disparaging religious doctrines, ordering her to pay a 480-euro ($547) fine, plus costs. The ruling was later upheld by an Austrian appeals court.

The ECHR said the Austrian court’s decision “served the legitimate aim of preserving religious peace.”

What’s the difference between a western democracy and a theocratic despotism? Less and less with each concession to utilitarianism.

Readers: Freedom of speech is worth preserving. Yes, it means that wrong-headed ideas will circulate and gain adherents. But without freedom of speech, you lose the ability to fight back. Your ability to say what is true and good becomes dependent on how fashionable your message is and how neatly it fits with the interests of those in power.

That’s not a world you want to live in.

Image: Norman Rockwell’s painting from The Saturday Evening Post of a man speaking from the audience at a town meeting in New England, used for a propaganda poster entitled “Save Freedom of Speech Buy War Bonds” circa 1943, via Wikimedia, public domain.

Hey, so, what’s the #1 cause of accidental death in children under 5? Anyone?

October 5, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

Take at look at the photo Vox used to illustrate an article about remote workers:

Screenshot of a Vox article illustrated by a distracted parent on the beach.

It’s a woman sitting on the beach with her laptop and phone headset, looking at two young children playing at the edge of a lake or pond (or some other flatwater). Presumably it’s a stock photo designed to capture the idea of working remote. Okay, sure.

Except: If you are the parents of an otherwise-healthy American child under the age of five, of all the many dangers you might worry about, this is literally the most likely cause of your child’s accidental death.

Here’s the CDC’s general fact sheet on drowning deaths.
Here’s their chart showing the general categorizations of causes of death by age group, 2018 data. As you can see, “Unintentional injury” is the leading cause for all children except infants (and indeed all adults under 45 during 2018).
Now look at the breakdown of what those “unintentional injuries” were. Drowning is #1 for children ages 1-4, and #2 for children ages 5-9.

In other words: If you want to save young children’s lives, the #1 most effective thing you could do is try to reduce the number of drownings.

Repeat: If you want to save young children’s lives, the #1 most effective thing you could do is try to reduce the number of drownings.

How do you do this? By making sure young children are adequately supervised around water.

***

I have serious, serious problems with Vox using a photo like this as an illustration for their remote-working article because it normalizes, however incidentally, what is in fact the number one cause of accidental death for children ages 1-4. Would you illustrate your remote office scene with a stock photo showing dangerous firearms handling? A child not being properly secured in a car seat? A kid getting into poison while the parent is taking a work call?

No, you would not. You would not do that because the article is about employee wages (important topic), and you would not put a photo of a dangerous childcare situation (even if meant humorously or metaphorically) unless your purpose was to discuss dangerous childcare situations.

I am uptight about this because this photo literally models the way your child ages 1-4 is most likely to accidentally die. This is the picture. This is exactly how it happens.

***

I know this because, as longtime readers get to hear at intervals, my kid was in that situation at the pool. She was four years old, playing on the wide shallow steps on a quiet morning after swimming lessons, not ten feet from where a lifeguard was on duty. She knew where she could safely play, and she was not a risk-taking child, she was a rule-follower.

She accidentally stepped into slightly deeper water. As she silently panicked and struggled and started to drown, at any time she could have saved herself by reaching for a railing, the edge of the pool, or the step up, all of which were within her reach the entire time.

Because I was watching, I realized what was happening. I got up, walked into the pool, picked up her and carried her deckside. She was okay, because I went and fished her out immediately. As I stood there holding my child, me dripping in my slacks and blouse, my leather shoes soaked, the lifeguard came down from his seat and approached me, concerned and uncomfortable.

I assumed he was coming to have someone listen to lung sounds.

He said to me, “Ma’am? I’m sorry, but you’re not allowed to wear street clothes in the pool.”

***

He was the lifeguard. It was a quiet morning. My kid had been playing right next to him. And he’d completely missed the fact that she had begun to drown and I had gone in and rescued her. He had no idea.

***

If you’re on your phone, or reading your book, or checking your e-mails, you can very easily miss it when your kid starts to drown. It doesn’t make noise. It looks like a kid bobbing in the water. And when you miss it, you will not be alone. If the unspeakable happens, God forbid, your child will have died of the most likely cause of accidental death in children ages 1-4.

***

So no, this isn’t about parent-shaming. If you’re one of the parents who has lost a child to drowning, you know that it’s just a painfully common, seriously dangerous thing that happens, and it can happen even when you do everything right.

***

This is really hard. It’s hard because before you are a parent, the pool or the beach is where you go to relax. It’s hard because now you’re a parent and you are so, so tired. Watching kids swim is boring. I mean: Really, really, really boring. Suddenly the thing you used to enjoy is work. Boring work.

And the thing is, as a new parent (or an experienced parent, let’s be honest), it’s hard to know what to worry about. There are so many hazards, and you can’t raise your kid in a bubble because that’s not good for them even if it were possible. Good parenting requires allowing a certain amount of risk.

So it’s easy as a parent to misjudge what the most serious dangers to your child are. Even worse: No matter how perfectly you judge, no matter how attentive you are, bad things can still happen. Nothing you do can keep your child 100% safe. Again: This isn’t about parent-shaming. Not at all.

But still: Images of parents not watching their children near water are images of the number one cause of accidental death in children ages 1-4.

***

I’m not all “let’s cancel Vox” or “there ought to be a law”. What I’m saying is: Let’s be aware that an image of young children playing by the water while the adults nearby are distracted is the iconic image of how young children die. It’s the picture.

And I’m the one who’s the crazy person for minding, because we as a culture aren’t honest about this. A TV show that has smoking for goodness sakes gets flagged in the ratings, because of the bad example it sets. Understandably. I don’t want my kids getting the idea that smoking is no big deal.

I likewise don’t want parents getting the idea that distractions at the pool or the beach are no big deal either. I’m not saying smoke around your kids (please don’t), but your child would be safer if you had the cigarette but not the book, phone, or laptop in your hand as you watched the kids play in the water.

That’s just reality. A publication like Vox should be taking that reality seriously.

Thinking Clearly about “Long COVID” Confusion

September 20, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

This is a rebuttal of Michael Fumento’s “The Myth of ‘Long COVID'” at The American Spectator. Per his author bio, he’s a guy who studies the phenomenon of epidemic hysterias; I absolutely agree that there exist some documented cases of localized symptom-outbreaks that fit that definition, so I don’t categorically dismiss the possibility.

I further agree that there is a cultural aspect to disease-naming and disease-categorizing.

Finally, as this lengthy essay will affirm, I agree that there is no doubt a significant amount of imprecision in the current understanding of what is and is not the syndrome called, for now, Long COVID. (For those who are wondering: I don’t have Long COVID. Just don’t. If you came here for a personal story of that disease, you’re out of luck.)

However, I think Fumento makes a number of very serious errors in his analysis, and I’d like to address some of the more egregious ones. Let’s start with his demographic diagnosis, and then we’ll work through his other major arguments and finish up by refuting his main conclusion.

Complaint #1: It’s mostly women who get this.

Um, okay? It’s mostly men who get gout. The fact that a disease or disorder predominantly (or even exclusively) affects one sex or the other does not disprove its existence.

Complaint #2: It’s mostly women in their 40’s and 50’s who get this.

Right. So, many diseases are specifically described by the age group primarily affected. That’s just a very, very common aspect to the diagnostic process. As a result, unfortunately this means atypical patients often get overlooked and struggle to get a diagnosis. But in terms of aiding in the initial evaluation of a patient and deciding where to begin the diagnostic process, age- and gender-related rules of thumb can be helpful.

Complaint #3: It’s mostly white women in their 40’s and 50’s who get this.

Okay, so it’s possible that there’s a genetic component to this, such that certain ethnic groups are more prone to the disease than others? But I doubt it. Could be, I’m not strictly ruling it out.

I expect, though, the racial disparity is more related to the part where Black women, even wealthy, healthy, highly-educated Black women, are struggling just to not be ignored while they drop dead of complications of childbirth, and frankly a generalized but poorly-defined sense of “I feel like crap” is probably lower on the priority list. When you have long, long experience of being ignored by your medical team even over life-and-death matters? You begin to realize there’s just no point in bringing up the small stuff.

Complaint #4: It’s mostly rich white women in their 40’s and 50’s who get this.

And I’ll tell you why: Poor people expect to feel like crap and then they die. Sorry, that’s just how American medicine works. It’s wrong, it’s a travesty, but it’s been categorically affirmed by all my friends who don’t meet the rich-n-white description.

Wealthy white women, in contrast, experience in our culture a powerful, persistent pressure to be fit, trim, and energetic. I’m not going “oh poor us”; I’m just telling you a thing that exists and which drives healthcare-seeking behaviors.

If you are poor-and-exhausted, you drag yourself through whatever you have to do to cover your basic expenses, and then you go home and watch TV, and rich people tell you how unmotivated you are and how your poverty is all your fault. If you are rich-and-exhausted, you don’t get a pass to act like the great unwashed. You’d better fix that problem, because you are a rich lady, and your job is to be fit, trim, and energetic.

So absolutely, any disease whose primary symptom is exhaustion, but which isn’t at present easily diagnosed by lab work, is going to be most persistently pursued by the people who have the time, money, and motivation to keep on hounding their physicians for answers.

Complaint #5 There aren’t any tests for it.

It’s not just women, by the way, who get this treatment. Anyone from the 80’s around? Remember when ulcers were all about your stress level? Typically men, but also women, were told they just needed to relax. Your friggin’ stomach was bleeding, but yeah, it was just your Type A personality. After all, lots of people get stomach upsets when they are stressed out, so if you have a bleeding ulcer, you must just be really, really, really stressed.

And I mean, your stomach bleeding is a kinda stressful thing, I imagine. So the correlation was there, right?

Anyway, now we can treat ulcers with antibiotics, so I guess men (“men”) are just not the headcases they used to be.

Or maybe it’s that we develop diagnostic laboratory work because we have a difficult-to-diagnose disease phenomenon for which no current test exists, and it takes trial and error and often years, decades, centuries, or millennia before a reliable medical test can be developed. That’s just how medicine works.

Complaint #6 There’s no agreement on what “long” really means.

This is valid but misguided. I absolutely agree that we need to refine our understanding, but that in no way means the disease, or diseases, does not exist.

Story time, by way of example, I have a lifetime history of “long” respiratory infections:

As in an infant and toddler, I was constantly getting pneumonia. After ruling out cystic fibrosis, my pediatrician put me on prophylactic antibiotics so I could attend preschool without becoming deathly ill. That’s one kind of “long”.
I grew out of that tendency, but in early elementary school, and again in my late 20’s and early 30’s when I was having children (possible explanation for the latter: pregnancy can suppress your immune system), I was prone to getting bronchitis, and it would last about a month. That’s another kind of “long”, compared to the average cold or flu.
In my early 30’s, after a shorter cold-type illness, I developed exercise-induced asthma, which went away after a couple years (and which responded to treatment during those couple of years, so it was fine). Yet a different type of “long”.
In my mid 30’s, after a rather annoying bout of bronchitis, I developed the Incurable Cough of Death, exactly like the one on TV, except no fake blood in my hands and no getting written out of the show by the end of the season. It lasted for years, freaked people out (but only people with a sense of humor, because it presented primarily if I’d laugh at someone’s joke), but was otherwise harmless. Then I stumbled on the effective treatment and it went away promptly. So that was yet another kind of “long.”

Interestingly, by the way, as long as I stay on NAC (thank you Canada for existing) I have no further problems with respiratory infections, I catch them all but clear them extremely quickly. So . . . there’s another kind of long: 4o-some years of being prone to a thing, and then you figure out what works, and suddenly you’re fine. (And hopefully the FDA doesn’t do that thing where they hand over monopoly power and price-rigging on the thing that makes you fine. Yes, there’s a reason the FDA is suddenly very, very interested in a previously boring, generic, naturally-occurring substance.)

So, that long (ha) personal story not just to vent spleen, but to say that Fumento is correct, the “long” in Long COVID is currently being used to lump together a wide variety of types of lingering illness. There are no doubt several different disease processes that need to be parsed out, and probably some commonalities as well.

None of that negates the existence of a long-lasting COVID and/or post-COVID illness. It just tells us that hello, COVID itself is still a toddler.

I do, however, completely agree that we need to distinguish, at a minimum, cases where the acute infection is just taking a long time to clear up; cases of lasting heart or lung damage that is easily connected to the acute disease process; cases of persistence of other well-known infection-symptoms like loss of taste or smell; cases of extreme fatigue, autonomic dysfunction and other symptoms that are commonly associated with post-viral syndromes.

I’m honestly puzzled that anyone who is familiar with recovery from respiratory viruses is not able to easily parse these out into broad categories. This is not new. The virus is new, but post-viral illnesses and injuries are ancient and well-documented.

Complaint #7 It’s All Long COVID Now

Abso-freaking-lutely. Some of the people who think they have Long COVID probably don’t. Malingerers happen. Mistaken diagnoses happen. It’s a thing.

You know what else is a thing: Comorbidities. You could have Long COVID and migraines, or an ulcer, or a tendency towards spraining your ankles, and maybe the two are connected, or maybe they aren’t. Over time, some of the “Long COVID” symptoms will probably be ruled out. In that whittling-down process, the medical establishment will probably overshoot, and hopefully a later corrective will occur.

(Anyone from the ’90’s remember how that went with heart attacks?)

We are currently in the stage where people are comparing notes and attempting to identify patterns. It is normal for people to err on the side of mentioning a symptom they think is related but in the end maybe is not. Sometimes erectile dysfunction is just erectile dysfunction. Probably not so much among those rich white women in their 40’s and 50’s though.

And yes, absolutely, given that Long COVID is a hot topic, there are no doubt many people who simply don’t feel well, don’t know why, and have grabbed at this one as a possible explanation.

Complaint #8 People on the internet are jerks.

I agree with this.

Complaint # 9 Depression is a brain disease.

I have a relapsing and remitting disorder of my autonomic nervous system (final dx tbd), and it can cause some weirdly amusing symptoms.

–> For a couple months one winter, I would wake up every morning at 4AM with a runny nose. At first I thought it was allergies — maybe my bedding was dusty — but of course one doesn’t suddenly get allergic to one’s pillow at 4AM and it clears right up at five and you go back to sleep with no further problem.

The obvious answer is that I was experiencing some slight wonkiness in the normal set of biological changes that happens in the early hours just before waking (ahem “before” in this case). Not allergies, not a cold, definitely not psychosomatic because I was perfectly happily asleep until the runny nose woke me up. Started out of nowhere one day, happened every early-morning for a couple months, and then went away. Sometimes a runny nose is almost, but not quite, just a runny nose.

Now it is entirely possible to experience autonomic symptoms that are strictly related to peripheral neuropathy (in fact, diabetic peripheral neuropathy is a major cause), but let’s be real: Probably, if you’re a person who experiences a wide variety of relapsing and remitting symptoms of dysautonomia across multiple body systems, there’s some brain involvement in this disease process? So call it a ‘brain disorder’ if you like.

Post-COVID syndromes appear to often, not always, have brain involvement (and this will probably become a distinguishing feature in parsing out different types of post-COVID illness).

Depression is also a brain disorder.

So is Alzheimer’s.

So is Multiple Sclerosis.

Ditto brain tumors, strokes . . . all kinds of stuff.

Your brain has many, many different ways it can, for many different reasons, not work how it ought.

Furthermore, depression can be comorbid with other brain disorders in a variety of ways:

You can be prone to depression and also, completely separately, come down with a brain illness or injury.
Your brain illness or injury can cause depression as one of its symptoms, because it affects some part of your brain that impacts your mood.
You can develop situational depression because having a brain injury or illness is not always the fun and inspiring experience people say it is.
You can just be exhausted from your illness, and it looks like depression but it isn’t; actually you are a friggin’ superhero because every damn thing you do is a thousand times more difficult than it otherwise would be, and if you didn’t have the drive and determination that you do, you really would just lay there until you starved to death.

Depression can look like fatigue? Yes. But also, fatigue can look like depression.

Years ago when I first consulted my GP about what turned out to be a chronic illness, he came in to the exam room and asked me what was going on, and here’s what I had to tell him: “I feel like crap.”

That was it.

At the time, I’d been this guy’s patient for about a decade, and the spouse and in-laws had been with his practice since the late ’70’s. He knew what I was like. He knew that “I feel like crap” was a pretty good indicator that something was wrong. So when the routine lab work came up with nothing, and follow-up with assorted specialists came up with nothing, we were stuck, but also: Something is not right here. We determined we’d just have to wait and see, and if it was going to get worse, we’d end up with more data.

But depression was never on the menu, not because I never get depressed, but because the evidence of my life was the total opposite of a person with depression.

I feel like crap was a major problem because I was undeniably active and engaged and exhibiting zest-for-life and all that. Otherwise I woulda just watched TV at night and chalked up long miserable days to getting old and having a crappy job (counter evidence: love my job), like other people end up doing because their doctor tells them that if they can’t find proof in the lab work, it must be stress or depression or some other vague thing outside the doctor’s specialty and therefore not a real problem.

(Fat people, of course, are often much quicker to diagnose. Lots of doctors will tell you: It is literally impossible to have any other disease until you lose fifty pounds. You don’t even get to be depressed, that’s reserved for people who are thinner than the doctor.)

And again: It’s entirely likely that some fraction of the COVID “long-haulers” are misdiagnosing themselves, and depression is the source of their fatigue and lack of mental clarity.

But it’s just silly to therefore conclude that post-COVID syndromes are strictly a mental health problem. It would be more astounding if a sometimes-fatal illness didn’t cause a long term disease process in a portion of the survivors.

That’s just the reality of being infected with a potentially lethal virus. It can hurt you.

Time for another rainbow. Photo of a rainbow at the base of a mountainous valley (Glen Coe) with light on the hillside and clouds obscuring the peaks, taken by © User:Colin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC 4.0.

The Other Religious Objection to the Vaccine Mandate

September 17, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

Crux reports on a group of Christian healthcare workers fighting New York’s COVID vaccine mandate because there is no religious exemption. The article observes, as others have elsewhere in this debate (including some friends whose opinions I value greatly), that multiple states don’t offer religious exemptions for vaccination in general, and that this lack of such protection has been held up in court.

Well, okay, there we are. And yet . . . I’m still an American of a certain generation, married to the Bill of Rights and not planning to give up arguing for religious freedom just because the courts aren’t protecting it. US law has a long and deplorable history of failing to live up to the ideals of its founding documents, and I am grateful to the many, many people who have sacrificed in the never-ending wave after wave of movements to correct various injustices over the past couple centuries, some of them far more egregious than what I’m about to write about, others less so.

So anyway, like Fr. Matthew Schneider, I accept the argument from reputable Catholic bioethicists about remote cooperation with evil. Furthermore, reminding you: I’m vaccinated, and hold the general opinion that you probably should be too (but I’m not your doctor, and I am far, far too aware of what it’s like to be a medical anomaly to delude myself that there aren’t exceptions to that probably).

What I want to say is this: There exists another class of people who have serious religious or conscientious objections to Biden’s vaccine mandate even if we have no objection to the vaccine itself. I’m one of them.

What is it that violates my conscience? Being expected to force other people to receive an unwanted medical treatment.

Seriously.

I have no problem with parents requiring their minor children to undergo reasonable medical treatment against the child’s will. That’s the legitimate authority of a parent to make such decisions. Been there, held the kid down while the pediatrician drained the abscess. Not every ten-year-old is equipped to make such calls.

I have no problem with the state putting a minimum of safeguards, with an appeals process and civil rights protections in place, to intervene in cases of gross negligence or abuse by anyone tasked with making medical decisions for someone else. That’s reasonable.

I have very serious objections to the state requiring me as an employer, manager, or colleague, to be involved in forcing another worker to receive a medical treatment they do not wish to receive.

I know some of y’all do exactly that for a living. You’re gonna tell me it’s no big deal.

Nope. It’s a big deal.

Many of us don’t go through life forcing other adults (or their children) to receive, as a matter of bureaucratic policy, medical interventions they object to.

Yes, I fully support Good Samaritan laws that protect amateur and professional medical care providers who are making snap decisions under duress. Totally reasonable, likewise, if someone is resisting emergency lifesaving treatment because they (temporarily or not) lack the capacity to think rationally, that a care provider make a good faith assessment about whether and how to proceed in the patient’s best interest. Attempting to save another’s life often occurs in situations where there is not time for reasoned discussion and reflection. We do the best we can.

If someone is declining on-going lifesaving treatment because they are experiencing intractable pain or severe depression? It is reasonable for healthcare providers and family members to attempt to mitigate the person’s suffering so that they can make their decision in a better state of mind. These are difficult situations and I understand that there isn’t a blanket protocol that can properly balance all the many factors at stake in any one case.

But. But. Yes. Many of us, religious or not, belonging to a particular faith or not, have serious conscientious objections to being coerced, under threat of grave financial penalty, to be party to forcing a medical intervention on someone for whom we have no medical guardianship whatsoever.

The fact of my being your supervisor, your HR specialist, your office admin, your CEO, or your company’s stockholder does not make me qualified to make medical decisions for you. Requiring me to actively participate in forcing such a decision on you is wrong.

Again: Based on the information currently available, I personally think getting vaccinated against COVID is the better medical decision for most adults and for many minors. I personally have no religious objection to the vaccines themselves, or I wouldn’t have gotten vaccinated. I have no objection to public health policies that promote vaccination as part of a larger, multi-pronged strategy to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. There are many public health interventions that I consider morally sound.

I do, however, have grave moral objections, founded in both my formal religious beliefs and my deeply held philosophical beliefs, against forcing medical treatments on others.

The Biden vaccine mandate creates a massive class of persons who otherwise have zero medical responsibility for their colleagues or employees, and yet are obliged to participate in enforcing the vaccine mandate. I think a plain reading of the US Constitution provides for a religious exemption for those of us who have conscientious objections to coercing others to undergo unwanted medical treatments.

Time to post the Bill of Rights car again, CC 2.0. One of these days I’m going to have cleaned my house, caught up on my backlog of paperwork, perhaps even gotten the laundry done, and then I, too, might go out in the yard and starting copying the Bill of Rights onto my vehicle. And then I will have arrived.

What You’re Doing When You Vaccine-Shame Priests, and What to do Instead

September 14, 2021 By Jennifer Fitz

At Catholic Vote this morning: “Bishop Orders Unvaccinated Priests Not to Minister to the Sick.” I’m not going to comment on the details of that case, which others know far more about than I ever will. What I want to discuss is the concept in general, and why it deserves serious scrutiny. To do that though, let me tell you about my parish priest.

Who are we talking about when we say “unvaccinated priests”?

I have no idea whether my pastor is vaccinated. Haven’t asked, and if he’s mentioned it I’m not aware of it. I do know that he had COVID last fall, and that came as no surprise to anyone. Why? Because he is one of the many, many priests who have given their lives wholeheartedly to living in persona Christi.

Compared to his previous post, where he flew into active combat zones to make sure soldiers had access to the sacraments? Donning the PPE and administering Last Rites is just another day at the office to this guy. Yes, in fact he would rather die than risk your going to Hell. He’s that kinda guy, and there are many many other priests just like him.

So yep, despite doing all the things, no surprise he eventually got COVID, just like many healthcare workers who were observing precautions religiously have gotten COVID. Thankfully he recovered.

I’m not aware of any case of a parishioner getting sick from his non-vaccinated self administering the sacraments over the course of the first year of the pandemic (nor since), though it’s possible, of course. From what I’ve seen, he remains meticulous about using precautions at Mass. (And he was always the guy you could count on not to get spit on his hands giving communion on the tongue. Love that man.)

Since day one he has made sure parishioners could stay involved in parish life while isolating, and even as most parishioners have been able to return to in-person Mass and parish activities, the parish continues to livestream Mass and offer zoom-access to meetings and Bible studies.

Given his natural immunity as someone who has already had COVID, I trust he and his physicians have examined the question and made whatever decision is the most prudent on whether, how, and when to get vaccinated.

I expect many, many priests are in a similar situation.

In contrast, since these are the guys who do the funerals, I expect this late in the game there aren’t so many priests who simply think COVID is “no big deal.” They are on the front lines. They anoint the dying and bless the cadavers. They know.

So what are the effects of vaccine-shaming guys like this?

It shows you don’t know the difference between “unvaccinated” and “COVID-naïve”.

Given the age minimums for ordination, most if not all priests are in the age range where vaccinating is almost certainly the more prudent course if somehow Father has managed to evade COVID infection all this time.

And of course it’s possible that Father Heeldragger has somehow both never been infected and declined vaccination, despite Bishop Dataguy begging and pleading for his COVID-naïve priests to please, please, please just get the shots.

At this point, though, having seen Delta work its way through the population, I’m wondering what priest (not an introvert’s dream job) is both a COVID-denier and hasn’t been infected? Because the people I know who pretend this is no big deal (until the right body drops dead and then they realize it is)? These people aren’t staying home. They are out, getting exposed, getting infected. If Alpha didn’t get them, Delta’s doing sweep.

So yes, indeed, if there’s a priest out there who isn’t taking the virus seriously and who also hasn’t acquired immunity one way or another, for the priest’s sake the bishop might feel compelled to act, and is perhaps tempted to act in a dramatic fashion. But if a bishop is indulging in vaccine-shaming in the much more likely scenario that Father does have acquired immunity? It’s not just dumb, it’s dangerous.

When you “make an example of” of someone, you make an example of him.

You’re Bishop Prudentius and you want people to know that COVID is serious business. So you to say yourself: People need to know that Father Bullhead is a walking health hazard!

Okay, well, bad news: Father Bullhead has a following.

Now maybe Fr. B’s been at war with Bishop P. for the past year, and Bullhead’s unvaccinated status is public knowledge and a point of pride, and the vaccine-shaming is just another skirmish in the on-going war between the two. Fine. Whatever. I have no advice.

But what if Bullhead is in a far more common scenario: He’s kept quiet so far. Maybe he’s afraid of the vaccine because of a bad personal experience, or because of poor information he’s received. Maybe he thinks he already had COVID, even though it wasn’t confirmed at the time. Maybe he’s just overloaded or chronically disorganized and he meant to get vaccinated but never quite got around to it. But until now, Father B. has not made public his unvaccinated status.

What happens when his bishop does a public vaccine-shaming? Suddenly a whole pile of anti-vaxxers are affirmed in their decision to dig in their heels. Father B.’s not vaccinated, and he’s awesome! We love him! See, we’re not the only ones! If we got our shots now, we’d be betraying him!

Is it dumb? Sure. But do you really want to feed that dynamic? I hope not. What’s even worse, though, is the other kind of ignorance vaccine-shaming feeds.

Why yes, your vaccinated priests can also spread COVID.

Here’s a short, readable summary at Nature on the information available mid-August 2021 on the reality that vaccinated people can indeed transmit COVID infections.

Does vaccinating slow the spread? Looks like it, and thank God. But when you vaccine-shame priests (or anyone) by setting double standards on precautions, you are putting people in danger.

You are doing this by lying.

To act, in explicit, public ways, as if Vaccinated = Safe, Unvaccinated = Unsafe is to lie. It is simply untrue.

Vaccinating reduces risk of contagion, but it does not make your vaccinated priests safe to others. A vaccinated priest can still kill his vulnerable parishioners.

It doesn’t matter if, now that he’s had his shots, only a mere 5% of Father Compliant’s elderly and immune-compromised parishioners die at his holy, venerable, and vaccinated hands, thanks to the infection-reducing powers of modern medicine. Those people will still be dead, thanks to an attitude of devil-may-care, he’s vaccinated, la la la. Better than more parishioners dead, if that’s how you want to look at it, but still too many.

Y’all. Knock it off. And for goodness sakes the flu hasn’t gone out of business either.

Which would be why my parish’s clergy are still sanitizing and masking up for communion, ya know?

Vaccine-shaming is a dangerous distraction.

The best information we have at the moment suggests that COVID-naïve adults (at least those of ordination-age and older) should get vaccinated unless they have a serious contraindication otherwise, and that at-risk persons of any age should get vaccinated if possible. So yes, bishops should strongly encourage their COVID-naïve priests, if they have any, to get vaccinated. Please.

But the reality is that vulnerable persons remain vulnerable, and that vaccinated persons remain potentially infectious.

Therefore, the prudent course is to:

Use basic hygiene and ventilation for everyone all the time. Who really wants that nasty stomach virus the kids are about to start spreading anyway? This includes, by the way, having subs lined up for your religious ed teachers. Yes, I said that. Don’t pressure volunteers to come serve sick.

Default to specific measures to prevent infection in close-contact situations, such as when administering the sacraments. You could still allow a less-vulnerable, asymptomatic priest to say something like (if true), “If want me to remove my mask while I anoint you, I’m comfortable with that, but the default is to leave it on. Whatever you prefer is fine.”

Use extreme caution with highly-vulnerable persons, even if the priest administering the sacrament is vaccinated and asymptomatic. Continue to dispense the faithful from Sunday Mass if they have serious reasons to avoid public gatherings. Continue to offer lower-risk ways of accessing the sacraments. Continue offering ways for parishioners who need to isolate to remain involved in parish life.

And if the priest is the highly-vulnerable one, keep on protecting him, too. Please.

Photo, worth a click-through: Rainbow Valley, Australia. CC 2.5. On first glance the red-rock formations remind me of parts of the US desert southwest, but when I look again, nope. Completely different. Except when it’s not.