Too Short for a Blog Post, Too Long for a Tweet 297

Here are a few excerpts from a magazine article I recently read, "A COVID Serenity Prayer," in the October 10, 2021 issue of The Atlantic.

Human beings have always coexisted with threats to our health: violence, vehicular crashes, communicable diseases. And many of us have meandered through our perilous existence without thinking much about it. Sure, people may drive more cautiously at nighttime, use condoms with a new partner, and avoid walking through dark alleys alone. But before the pandemic, we didn’t lock down our lives to eliminate all risk. Schools didn’t close during flu season. Doctors didn’t preach abstinence for all in the face of herpes and HIV. We had accepted the inherent riskiness of being human, and we took reasonable precautions where possible.

But for many of us, the pandemic blew apart our complacency—at least when it came to the risk of contracting COVID. People rejiggered their lives with a singular goal in mind: Don’t get infected with the novel coronavirus.

Of course no one wants to get COVID. The Delta variant continues to take lives and cause lasting harm for many. But abstinence from living isn’t sustainable, nor is it healthy. In trying to contain COVID-19, we unleashed other health risks.

So what do we have to accept? We have to accept that there is no inoculum for uncertainty—that no human contact is risk-free, that no vaccine is perfect, that we can never guarantee safety in life.

Doctoring isn’t about walling off patients from certain exposures. It is about acknowledging our messy world and arming patients with tools to safely inhabit it. Right now, it’s about helping patients redefine health as more than simply not getting COVID. Health also means accepting that living is about more than simply not dying.