Is illness the most terrible thing in the world?
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The left loves to tell us about climate and election denial, but I'm here to talk about a much more serious escape from reality: simple cold denial.
Fortunately, in the family I grew up in, mild upper respiratory illnesses were rare, but our reluctance to admit that we suffered from such an affliction became an epidemic in itself.
If my brother and I noticed our mother or father sneezing somewhere in the house, we would go downstairs to begin what could only be called an interrogation. “Do you have a cold?” we would demand. In this comedy, our parents would attribute their obvious cold symptoms to allergies, the furnace or air conditioning, or (my personal favorite) too much talking.
As children learn from their parents, when I experienced the first signs of a cold coming on, I, too, looked for any explanation other than the obvious. Maybe my sore throat was caused by something spicy I ate, I mused cheerfully. Maybe my stuffy nose was caused by not dusting my room, I optimistically suggested. Of course, as my cold progressed, it became increasingly difficult to deny the reality: A bowl of Wendy’s chili simply wasn’t going to lead to emptying several boxes of Kleenex over the course of a week or more.
I was reminded of my previous cold denial last week when, rather tired but not desperate, I caught a cold. It wasn’t too bad. I had completed all my writing assignments and had started reading Anne Tyler’s 1964 debut novel, If the Morning Comes. I stayed home mostly, but was able to attend my usual church services on Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. Most importantly, not once, amidst my sneezes and coughs, did I try to convince myself that I had anything other than a cold.
You see, I’m no longer afraid to deny the onset of a cold to such an extent. As a Hemingway character once said about going bankrupt, my change of heart occurred gradually, then suddenly. Over time, I began to see my family’s legacy of cold-symptom denial not as a sign of strength—a kind of stoic refusal to bow to reality—but as a sign of weakness: to deny a cold so stubbornly was to imply that a cold itself was something to be avoided at all costs.
Then, during the Covid-19 pandemic, I came to the conclusion that many of those who enthusiastically wore masks and lined up for vaccines and boosters suffered from the same superstition I once clung to. Attributing cold symptoms to something other than a cold is not so different from trying to avoid getting sick by putting on a piece of cloth: both are futile attempts to eradicate the reality of illness.
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On February 13, when Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the oath of office as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, I greeted the event with particular enthusiasm — not just for what Kennedy would do, but also for what he would undoubtedly refrain from doing. That is, because Kennedy has achieved this high public health position, I have no fear that some future pandemic will again prompt the imposition of such unconstitutional absurdities as mask mandates, stay-at-home orders, and vaccine passports.
More broadly, if Kennedy can wean modern medicine away from its penchant for over-medicating and over-diagnosing, he will have done a great and lasting good. RFK Jr. can restore the medical maxim of “first, do no harm,” but, better yet,
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
