We reached a milestone today: Rio Arriba County now has had more than a 100 cases of Coronavirus reported in the county, 101 to be exact. By my calculation, we’ve had 40 reported in the past two weeks.
It no longer matters where or why. All that matters is how one avoids getting infected.
The medical establishment is coming out of hibernation. Last week Eye Associates called to reschedule my examination. Of course, I had seen someone else a couple weeks earlier.
Yesterday, I got blood work done for my annual physical, which now is planned for next week. The receptionist told me they never closed, but did most of their work by telephone. They’re only now resuming routine appointments.
The ritual was the same yesterday and at the ophthalmologist’s office. The door is locked. At the eye doctor’s the office manager came out; at the physician’s, someone talked to me through a window. In both cases they asked me the standard screening questions.
Yesterday, smoke filled the upper atmosphere, and I was having breathing problems. I probably had half the symptoms I was asked about: shortness of breath, fatigue, headaches, runny nose. I answered each my either saying no, or only because of the air.
Then we got to the question no one can answer truthfully: have you had contact with anyone who’s had the virus. I went to the grocery store and post office on Monday. All I could say was, "not that I know of."
The women weren’t particularly concerned, because their next step was to use an external thermometer on me. I apparently had a slightly elevated temperature in Santa Fé, but again she assumed it wasn’t a problem.
We were participating in a ritual whose purpose was mutual reassurance. My physical demeanor probably was more important. The woman who worked for a physician probably had developed an acute awareness of how people stand and talk when they are sick. That unconscious knowledge was the most important screening mechanism.
I later asked someone in the doctor’s office what she did if someone was sick. She said, she didn’t let him or her in.
I rephrased the question. What did you, meaning a doctor’s office, do when someone showed up who was sick, but probably not from Coronavirus? That is, after all, one reason we ask to see a doctor. To that she said, it depended.
The screening has put some changes in medical practice in dramatic relief. Doctors don’t treat immediate illnesses; their schedules are too filled to get a time slot. One is expected to go to an urgent care center or emergency room. We hear from insurance companies what that costs them, and then all of us in our increased premiums.
The change, in part, can be attributed to the development of antibiotics that control the spread of infectious diseases. When people lived longer, because they no longer died in an epidemic, new medical problems arose like heart attacks and cancer. Doctors now administer tests for those problems, and most of their time is working with people who are not sick, but who have serious medical conditions. (Notice how we’ve changed the language to match the situation.)
Similarly, we’ve been discovering hospitals cut back their capacity after they no longer needed beds for people who were sick. Instead, they were supported by elective surgeries that required little or no hospital time.
One doesn’t want to go back to the time when cholera, yellow fever, or polio spread through communities killing many, including doctors.
But, with the passing of the threat of infectious diseases, the institutions we used to rely on - the doctors and hospitals - changed their functions, and have been having to relearn their skills as we watch them.
Perhaps more important, we’ve shed our fears. When I was a child, polio was rampant in my hometown. After a boy in the neighborhood died, I was no longer allowed to play with a friend. Her mother was a nurse and wouldn’t let her outside.
No one knew then polio was a virus that spread through contaminated water, although, I think, people had a healthy suspicion of certain lakes. As a result, people like my friend’s mother took precautions.
We’ve forgotten how to handle fear. As a consequence, some overreact, like the ones who bought up all the cleaning supplies during the first weeks when the pandemic was only in Washington and New York states. Others treat fear with bravado and refuse to surrender to masks and other precautions,because they never had to when they were children.
Sources:
Wikipedia. "2020 Coronavirus Pandemic in New Mexico." Updated 1 July 2020.
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