My great grandfather, Dr. Burrill Crohn, for whom the disease was named, was born in June 1884, and lived until July 1983. So unlike most children of my generation, I got to know a great-grandparent.
Today, thanks to modern medicine, getting to know a great-grandparent is a lot less rare.
“Baba,” as we called him, was considered a medical pioneer in two main respects: First, because he distinguished (what was eventually called) Crohn’s Disease from a host of other gastrointestinal ailments. Crohn’s was not just distinct, but required its own study and treatment.
Unfortunately, there is still no cure.
Secondly, he also was known for taking the mental state of a patient into account, far more than was usual for the time. He had observed that anxiety, stress and other agitations of the mind had a strong relation to people’s ability to cope with or overcome illness.
We now take this approach for granted—some may even overemphasize it. But at the time, this too was rare.
Though a compassionate doctor, he also had a low tolerance for whining, exaggeration and other nonsense.
If one of us kids ran inside crying with a skinned knee, or some other complaint, 19 times out of 20 he would take a look then dismiss the parent with a wave: “There is nothing wrong with this child. Send him back out to play.”
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All this is a preamble to me imagining Dr. Crohn’s reaction to COVID deniers, mask-haters, and others who for one reason or another believe that the virus should be waved off like a trivial bruise.
89 years after he discovered it—invented it is the family joke, one corona skeptics may appreciate—there still is no solution for Crohn’s, only methods for minimizing or managing its chronic and debilitating symptoms. Few of these methods are very satisfactory.
Had a cure for Crohn’s been discovered in Baba’s lifetime—something that might not fully resolve the disease, but would prevent 99.8% of sufferers from having to endure its torments—here’s what I would expect he’d do, just like millions of other doctors have done with COVID. Once he had examined the data, and a credible consensus had formed among his peers, he would have advocated strongly for the use of COVID vaccines, as well as a continued emphasis on masking, until it subsided. He would have told people to take great precautions, and social distance as much as possible.
I feel confident inferring his likely opinion not just because he was celebrated as diligent and objective researcher. Family members have recounted how another relative nearly died as a child, but was saved after he directed her to a doctor who had recently found an experimental cure for meningitis.
I also expect that had he encountered any patient who refused the cure based on quack opinions, YouTube rants, political ideology, or some cussed insistence on “freedom” from the tyranny of expert advice, his compassion would have been sorely tested. From what I knew of him, he was given to kindly care, but also quite capable of giving a foolishly self-destructive ward a stern talking-to.
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Now: There are several people I know well, who I have collaborated with, and/or whose work I follow closely, and whom I still respect, but who have gone down the proverbial rabbit hole of anti-vaxxism, or worse.
My history with them as friends, mentors, artists, activists, skeptics or critics inclines me to consider their peculiar beliefs about COVID more seriously than such beliefs typically deserve. I have tried to consider their arguments sincerely, and see their points of view.
No dice.
Here’s the main logical leap many seem take—off the cliffs of selfishness, careerism, self-defeat, or just reflexive contrarianism.
Since (they say) our government, institutions, and industries have shown themselves before to be so corrupt, or so sloppy, or so lazy, or all three, therefore the pandemic itself must be fraudulent.
Problem is: Just because our elites do practice Disaster Capitalism does not mean that COVID is not real, and that urgent precautions should not be taken.
We should be able to hold these two disparate ideas in our minds: that the pandemic is a real and present danger, even as we question of the motivations and competence of powerfully opportunistic interests. Just because major mistakes have been made in the handling of the pandemic does not mean all such mistakes were deliberate. Never put down to deviousness what can be explained by garden-variety incompetence.
Dr. Burrill B. Crohn, in his 60s
I fully agree that the United States government is highly untrustworthy; that the pharmaceutical industry is often predatory; and that our captains of industry will look at most any calamity and find an opportunity to buy low and later sell high. I also agree that various official responses have too often been misplaced, delayed, half-baked or botched.
For instance: Anthony Fauci deliberately fibbed about the need for mask-wearing early in the pandemic, even as we were told to focus instead on hand sanitization. Correction, this was more than a fib, it was a stupid and damaging lie. One intended to preserve masks for hospitals, but which instead extended the pandemic, and filled up those same hospitals.
Fauci’s ad hoc dishonesty did much to undermine public trust in U.S. official guidance. All he accomplished was to give the paranoid more reason to ignore future mandates.
But Fauci is not the only doctor in our world, and the U.S. is not its only country. Virtually every other (non-quack) across the globe has strongly recommended the use of masks to contain the pandemic. It should been advocated earlier, and for a more sustained period, since the premature lifting of mask mandates has contributed to the development of new variants and helped prolong the crisis.
My own preference would have been for a 4-6 month “lockdown” early on, with the government guaranteeing a basic universal income and full health care during that period, so that the virus could be contained in a few months, and to squelch the emergence of variants. (If you think we couldn't have afforded it, take a look at the receipts for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.) This could have been over by the end of 2020; instead, we are back to levels of infection and hospital crowding from a year ago.
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Say COVID did begin, as some believe, as a top-down plot hatched by billionaires, enacted by the politicians who serve them, to further enslave people to drug makers, to institute more authoritarian restrictions on our movements and privacy, and to further impoverish people so their homes and jobs can be taken from them.
Why then are doctors in places like Cuba “going along” with the supposed plot by running dog capitalists? Isn’t Cuba known for defying American power, and having no allegiance to western corporations?
Likewise: why would our medical industry be calling for people to take measures that keep people out of hospitals, rather than denying the seriousness of the pandemic?
After all, the profits from administering 5-second jabs are nothing compared to the astronomical billings related to hospital care. The equipment, testing, medication, and emergency measures necessary to try to save a single life incur hundreds of thousand of times the billing for a hundreds of quick, simple injections by a CVS or Walgreens pharmacist.
Why would an exploitative capitalist system run by the 1% of the 1% want to squelch its own lifeblood: Tamping down travel, global shipping and supply chains, and the nonstop consumerism of billions of customers? Whatever has been allegedly gained by telling people to stay home, wear masks, and avoid getting sick is nothing compared to the profits which were reaped during the status quo ante. (Sure, Jeff Bezos is richer than ever… But that was already happening without COVID.)
If you care about your freedom, the very last thing you should do is expose yourself to unnecessary risk of hospitalization, let alone death. You may survive a long hospital stay, but a lifetime of insurmountable medical debt will truly enslave you. Not to mention the strong possibility of Long COVID complications, which for some reason are not considered as seriously as the infinitesimal risk of side effects from vaccines.
Really, it’s hardly worth getting into the weeds of such debates. My experience is that those who have already decided to minimize or deny the seriousness of such threats are all but impervious to facts and patient persuasion. It reminds me too much of folks I sometimes tried to reason with during the seven-year St. Lawrence Cement battle. You can patiently and methodically knock the legs out of each of their pat arguments and shallow slogans. Then they just shrug and change the topic to some other excuse for sticking with their original “gut feeling.”
Much of this—in America, at least—seems to come down to a dimestore version of “personal” Freedom. But such rugged individualists rarely project any form of well-considered and principled libertarianism. They sound a lot more like tantrum-throwing children who don’t wanna take a bath, or demand ice cream for dinner.
Oldschool libertarians used to cite the “swing-your-fist” test: My rights end where your nose begins. Now, these Sons of Liberty aren’t even willing to cover their noses to protect yours. Our concept of freedom has devolved into the right to sneeze on your neighbor’s face.
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Anyway.
I was indeed lucky to have known my great-grandfather, the accomplished Dr. Crohn. Even President Eisenhower had digestive problems, and asked for his services. With COVID, many kids born recently won’t get to know some of their parents and grandparents, let alone great-grandparents.
Today, I’m sure Baba would’ve had some tart things to say about COVID deniers, who place their solipsistic attachment to never being inconvenienced over the vast consensus of doctors—dedicated to data, and sworn to do no harm. Sure, there are a few bad and even dishonest doctors, as in all professions. That’s why we rely on scientific consensus, not a Series of One.
I never knew my other three great-grandfather. But I do have a hunch what one of them might have advised about this pandemic. My father’s grandfather was an engineer named Robert Winthrop Pratt, who among other things designed the waterworks and sewers of places like Cleveland and Havana. Some of the public infrastructure he created more than a century ago is still in use today.
But in January 1920, at RYT age of 43, he came home from the hospital where he’d seen his newborn daughter Mary for the first time. He told his young son Lawrence that he wasn’t feeling so well, and closed himself in his bedroom.
Where he died of the Spanish Flu.
P.S.: I mentioned this to a COVID-denying friend—how I didn’t want to suffer the same fate as my ancestor. His all-too-predictable OAN-grade response was: “How can you be sure he really died of the Spanish Flu?”
