What Me Worry?

Apparently the sky is falling. Finally. It doesn't phase me a great deal. One of the perks of being old. I'll be getting my terminal illness or hopefully just keel over painlessly or even better in my sleep, at some point in the admittedly unknown future and that's simply the way it goes. I bring it up simply to point out that there's nothing you can do about it. Despite the bizarre attempts of my elder comrades to endlessly exercise, take pills and get all forms of therapy to prolong their lives. In complete futility. Easy come, easy go. It's called life.

But I have to say that never in my entire life did I see the level of existential angst that exists on a daily basis in present times. On the TV, streaming, podcasts, what used to be called newspapers and magazines, etc. There is a never-ending litany of gloom and doom descending upon us from every direction. It makes the fear of nuclear war during the Cold War seem like a minor neurosis.

Economic hard times that pale before the Great Depression and other eras. Which is not to say that a lot of the world's people aren't suffering but everything is relative. But get ready because some serious shit is coming down the road. It always is.

I read today about the creation of mirror life. It's when Frankenstein scientists create bacterial life forms that are the mirror image of existing life forms. You see, all organic molecules and life forms are either left-handed or right-handed. It's simply the way things evolved. And now scientists are trying to create life forms that are opposite of what happens in the natural world. There could be some theoretical upsides to it (as in profitable), but the downside is that you will be creating life that never existed before on Earth and could of course wipe out all currently existing living matter on Earth. And would be immune to all forms of antibiotics and other therapies. At least that's the risk that a whole bunch of famous scientists and Nobel laureates believe is real. They really want to stop this, but hey, there's a lot of money to be made potentially. But let's keep things in perspective. Mother Earth really doesn't care about life forms and will continue to go on either with or without us and all other life forms. She has seen Ice Ages, Heat Ages, Floods and everything in between. Round and round it will go again. And then new life forms may or may not pop up. It's the way things go.

Similarly, Mother Earth really doesn't care about climate change. Humans and all other life care about it, though only humans are really aware. Though I have to say that smart species like orcas and elephants may be noticing things as well, but they don't have any laboratory equipment for documentation purposes. When they communicate with each other they probably just say, “Don't you think some weird shit's going on?” I think they know.

Mother Earth also doesn't care about vaccines and germs in general. Polio virus and measles are life forms that have been in existence for who knows how long (at least thousands of years) and if they come back with a vengeance and wipe out a bunch of humans, the only people who will care are the humans who get it or have to deal with it. For everybody else, hey, not my problem. But once again, a lot of hand wringing before the shit hits the fan. Will the masses rise up in rebellion? Will the mall in Washington, DC fill up with millions of people protesting? I think not. There's too many people busy shopping on Amazon or Walmart to worry about such mundane matters. And there are new and better iPhones to learn about to make an informed choice for purchase. Who's got time to make an informed choice about vaccines? And without entering the fray, theoretically speaking, there really are choices to be made.

It turns out that I likely was among the last physicians in the United States to ever see acute polio in a child. I was an intern at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami in 1978 (it is claimed that the last wild type polio case in the United States occurred in 1979) when a really sick kid came in. Nobody had a clue what was going on and they could only give him supportive care, which frankly, is all they could do even today. Finally, the smartest physician in the hospital, who was an older gentleman, was asked to see him. This physician was an immigrant! From Cuba, that communist pariah no less! A scoundrel! He took one look at the kid and the chart and in about 5 minutes smiled and told everyone to take a good look because they would likely never see this again. And proclaimed it acute polio. He had seen hundreds of cases when he was a young physician in Cuba, decades before. Nobody else in the medical center had ever seen it. It was pretty amazing, because he was spot on.

Speaking about the people rising up, what happened to the War on Poverty or the War on Drugs or the War on Cancer? Apparently we either lost these wars and made secret treaties or peace agreements, or we ran out of soldiers to fight them. The latter of course didn't happen since we have a whole bunch of poor and addicted and cancer riddled people on Earth. There's just other things to think about.

There was a politician in the old days, named Tip O'Neill, former Speaker of the House, who once famously said, “All politics are local.” He should have generalized further. He should have said, “Everything everybody thinks or does is local and has to do with them and their friends and their family and their small social circle. Everything else is moot.” But that's too many words for most people to follow. His quote is much more succinct and to the point. That's because he was a good politician.

Getting back to the War on Cancer, have you ever noticed that everybody battles cancer courageously? There are no whiners or complainers of the excruciating pain and suffering that they are going through, demanding more pain meds and more and more care to ease their pain. Crying and screaming in agony. Everyone is a courageous hero who has cancer as far as the general public is concerned. I'm sure there are plenty of them, but there are also plenty of people who are miserable and suffering as they die and are not so stoic. I've been around some of those in my day and believe me, it shakes you to the core with empathy and a feeling of helplessness. Is their disease any less or more valid than others because they are begging for more help? And not being fully courageous?

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Opposingly, if you are wimpy enough to die from diabetes, no one ever says that you fought a courageous battle against that. People might begrudge the concept that you suffered through your diabetes, but they would never go so far as to call you a hero or call you courageous. Even though they may have started hacking off your toes due to lack of circulation, working their way up to your feet, ankles and knees until your legs are gone. And then your kidneys fall apart. Somehow there's no bravery involved in that and no diabetics have the appreciable level of heroism attributed to cancer patients. But as always, they have their own ribbon, blue and gray with a drop of blood on it. Hey, everybody needs a ribbon for their disease.

And no one with dementia, a disease of true suffering for everyone involved, is ever imbued with courage. Probably because they have no idea that they even have the disease. An unfortunate situation in terms of war mongering. But for fundraising purposes, I am comfortable to predict that there will soon be a full-blown War on Dementia. Actually there already is a low-key version that has developed in the medical community and among early nonprofits that predictably use militaristic terminology. With its own ribbon, even though all the good colors are already taken. So purple and teal are sometimes being used. Using an elephant as a representative symbol, given its reputation for a fine memory. I'm not making this up. It's the American Way.