Estimates suggest about 3 percent to 4 percent of Americans are immunosuppressed. Some fall into the same category as my daughter, who takes daily drugs to tamp down her immune system. Cancer patients often have their immune systems temporarily wiped out during chemotherapy. Others have conditions or diseases, autoimmune and otherwise, that alter their ability to fight infection. In all, somewhere north of seven million people, not counting their loved ones, fall into this woolly space. And that number doesn’t include children younger than 5 who are not yet vaccine eligible, though they fare better than adults on average. (During the Omicron surge, the United States reported the highest numbers of hospitalizations for children under 5 since the pandemic began.) To be sure, there have been a few hopeful studies showing our loved ones would survive Covid, but none of us want to be part of the experiment to see if that bears out.
I understand that in the big picture, we are not so many; accommodating us can feel onerous. But this is only one way to see the problem. What if we also calculated the benefits of teaching empathy and inclusion?
In other words: What if we could see this time as an opportunity for a correction? Covid broadened the scope and definition of vulnerability, allowing everyone, however briefly, to viscerally understand the need to protect one another. We worried over our aging parents, our asthmatic selves. We were “all in it together,” clapping each night for the brave frontline workers. What if we applied that understanding going forward? What if we no longer thought of the world as so blithely divisible? Instead of a return to how life was, unconscious of those who are unable to accompany us, why not situation-specific considerations for different populations?
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