About a week or so ago, a new patient came to my house for an evaluation. I ask new patients if they're vaccinated, and if they are, I offer to see them in person, which I much prefer. This patient showed up wearing a mask, which I thought should have been unnecessary. I asked him if he thought he was protecting himself from me -- I reassured him I've been vaccinated twice and had two boosters -- or if he had just gotten accustomed to wearing masks. He said he was wearing a mask because he was not vaccinated, and he claimed I never asked him if he was. (I always ask new patients if they are, and I don't let them come here if they're not.) So, I told him it was extremely unlike me not to have asked, and it was sort of unbelievable that I didn't. And we started to talk about vaccination against the coronavirus. Or I started talking about it. He tried to cut off the conversation saying he didn't want to talk about politics. I told him this was not about politics. (As an aside, it was certainly about dishonesty and manipulativeness.) But it was about infectious disease, an epidemic, and epidemiology.
I am a recipient of, and subscriber to, an online publication called The Lever. The founder took the name from someone's old saying: "give me a long enough lever, and a fulcrum, and I can move the world." The Lever has a strong progressive bent, but it does not shy away from criticizing Dems/libs when they're not acting honorably. Today's column is about a collection of companies, including, for example, a California fast food place called "In 'N' Out Burger," which are not forthcoming about the extent of the environmental impact they have, or their "carbon footprint." And more specifically, it was about the Biden administration's failure/refusal to enforce laws regarding reporting in these areas. Meta Platforms and the perpetually law-breaking Wells Fargo were also mentioned.
Frankly, I have no trouble understanding why these companies don't want to comply: it interferes with their profits. And I have no trouble understanding why the Biden administration doesn't want to force them to comply: the companies are no doubt donors. I think if anyone asked these companies, or the Biden administration, why they (mis)behave as they do, they would say it was about money. If they could force themselves to be, you know, honest for a moment.
But it's not about money, any more than vaccination against the coronavirus is about politics. It's about the state of the planet, and all the things (including people) that live on it.
Presumably, these people and corporations, if they bother to spend a nanosecond thinking about it, think either that this won't really affect them, or that they'll have so much money that the money will shield them from it. Clearly, they're not bothering to consider their children, if they have the poor judgment to have any, or generations after that.
We have big problems in this country. We're totally focused on money, our "campaign seasons" last way too long, they depend on private money that controls the behavior of electeds, and electeds get separated far away from the public/voters/citizens. Things that are not political get converted to political considerations. And in a cyclical way, it's all about money. And the people who are hungriest for money need it the least.
These things are about medicine, or what's happening to this planet. They are not about politics or money, or power, or narcissism. (Well, maybe they're about narcissism.) It's really too bad we can't just come to agreement about the things that are most helpful and meaningful to the most people. We find the dumbest things to fight about.
If you're interested, you can look up The Lever, to see what the columns are like. Likewise, you can look up The Intercept, which is also very reliable online journalism. If you just want someone to tell you you're right, you can follow CNN or MSNBC or Fox News or Newsmax. But you shouldn't need someone just to tell you you're right. You can manufacture that conclusion for yourselves.
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