This space tries hard to avoid overt political issues. But today, with the novel coronavirus sitting in front of our eyeballs on waking and hanging out in our brains throughout the day – whether we happen to be infected or not – it’s almost impossible to avoid how politics impacts the reality of the pandemic. The following is offered just because it seems such a ridiculously obvious way to address the problem.
Recently, this letter of mine appeared in the New York Times:
“At 86, I am absolutely fine with dying — although I’m healthy and active and would not turn down another five or 10 years. So if I wind up with Covid-19, give the ventilator to someone else.
“What bothers me is that if our national leadership had just a fraction of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s brain, they would follow his very rational advice to send all available ventilators to New York until the curve begins to bend, and then ship them to the next crisis area. Under that system, San Francisco would get an adequate supply in time for my neighbor and me both to survive.”
About that “give the ventilator to someone else” line. I should say up front that this is not some lofty altruistic declaration. Ventilators are not a lot of fun, and many older patients (one physician friend suggested a scarily high percentage) wind up dead on them anyway. Even for just a few days, lying still with perhaps a hole in my windpipe and for sure a tube down my nose for nutrition approaches torture, in my considered opinion. Lying still would additionally involve being unable to write, communicate or do anything else that makes life meaningful. Thus, compromised with a dangerous virus and probably soon dying alone without loved ones of any sort nearby – no thanks. Shoot me with all the morphine on hand and let me go.
I am a grateful and enthusiastic board member of End of Life Choices California. As such I’m a firm believer in Medical Aid in Dying: the right of terminally ill, mentally competent adults to ask their physicians for life-ending medications. Now legal in nine states and the District of Columbia, MAID will, I hope, eventually be “best practice” for the medical professions. Refusal of a ventilator falls in the category of mechanical aid in dying, of sorts, and why not?
The second, less esoteric issue addressed in my brief letter is simply a plea for national response to the next pandemic – which Dr. Anthony Fauci, may he long survive and prosper, tells us is likely to come with a reappearance of the novel coronavirus in the fall. Assuming it doesn’t start somewhere they’re still convinced it’s a hoax – hello, Mississippi? – maybe we as a nation could adopt a fast and sensible strategy: throw everything we’ve got at the first peep-through, and try to snuff out subsequent peeps-through as fast as supplies can be diverted from the first. My degrees are in Art and Short Fiction, not medicine or policy, and I admit to having only a rudimentary left brain. But how does this not make sense?
I’m just saying.
For more about MAID, and a lot of other good information you can use, I encourage you to visit https://endoflifechoicesca.org/.