I'm So Glad You Asked! This is How I "Dare"

From J.Wade

Chicken pox is a virus. Lots of people have had it, and probably don't think about it much once the initial illness has passed. But it stays in your body and lives there forever, and maybe when you're older, you have debilitatingly painful outbreaks of shingles. You don't just get over this virus in a few weeks, never to have another health effect. We know this because it's been around for years, and has been studied medically for years.
Herpes is also a virus. And once someone has it, it stays in your body and lives there forever, and anytime they get a little run down or stressed-out they're going to have an outbreak. Maybe every time you have a big event coming up (school pictures, job interview, big date) you're going to get a cold sore. For the rest of your life. You don't just get over it in a few weeks. We know this because it's been around for years, and been studied medically for years.
HIV is a virus. It attacks the immune system, and makes the carrier far more vulnerable to other illnesses. It has a list of symptoms and negative health impacts that goes on and on. It was decades before viable treatments were developed that allowed people to live with a reasonable quality of life. Once you have it, it lives in your body forever and there is no cure. Over time, that takes a toll on the body, putting people living with HIV at greater risk for health conditions such as cardiovascular disease, kidney disease, diabetes, bone disease, liver disease, cognitive disorders, and some types of cancer. We know this because it has been around for years, and had been studied medically for years.
Now with COVID-19, we have a novel virus that spreads rapidly and easily. The full spectrum of symptoms and health effects is only just beginning to be cataloged, much less understood.
So far the symptoms may include:
Fever
Fatigue
Coughing
Pneumonia
Chills/Trembling
Acute respiratory distress
Lung damage (potentially permanent)
Loss of taste (a neurological symptom)
Sore throat
Headaches
Difficulty breathing
Mental confusion
Diarrhea
Nausea or vomiting
Loss of appetite
Strokes have also been reported in some people who have COVID-19 (even in the relatively young)
Swollen eyes
Blood clots
Seizures
Liver damage
Kidney damage
Rash
COVID toes (weird, right?)
People testing positive for COVID-19 have been documented to be sick even after 60 days. Many people are sick for weeks, get better, and then experience a rapid and sudden flare up and get sick all over again. A man in Seattle was hospitalized for 62 days, and while well enough to be released, still has a long road of recovery ahead of him. Not to mention a $1.1 million medical bill.
Then there is MIS-C. Multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is a condition where different body parts can become inflamed, including the heart, lungs, kidneys, brain, skin, eyes, or gastrointestinal organs. Children with MIS-C may have a fever and various symptoms, including abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea, neck pain, rash, bloodshot eyes, or feeling extra tired. While rare, it has caused deaths.
This disease has not been around for years. It has basically been 6 months. No one knows yet the long-term health effects, or how it may present itself years down the road for people who have been exposed. We literally *do not know* what we do not know.
For those in our society who suggest that people being cautious are cowards, for people who refuse to take even the simplest of precautions to protect themselves and those around them, I want to ask, without hyperbole and in all sincerity:
How dare you?
How dare you risk the lives of others so cavalierly. How dare you decide for others that they should welcome exposure as "getting it over with", when literally no one knows who will be the lucky "mild symptoms" case, and who may fall ill and die. Because while we know that some people are more susceptible to suffering a more serious case, we also know that 20 and 30 year olds have died, marathon runners and fitness nuts have died, children and infants have died.
How dare you behave as though you know more than medical experts, when those same experts acknowledge that there is so much we don't yet know, but with what we DO know, are smart enough to be scared of how easily this is spread, and recommend baseline precautions such as:
Frequent hand-washing
Physical distancing
Reduced social/public contact or interaction
Mask wearing
Covering your cough or sneeze
Avoiding touching your face
Sanitizing frequently touched surfaces
The more things we can all do to mitigate our risk of exposure, the better off we all are, in my opinion. Not only does it flatten the curve and allow health care providers to maintain levels of service that aren't immediately and catastrophically overwhelmed; it also reduces unnecessary suffering and deaths, and buys time for the scientific community to study the virus in order to come to a more full understanding of the breadth of its impacts in both the short and long term.
I reject the notion that it's "just a virus" and we'll all get it eventually. What a careless, lazy, heartless stance.

My answer:

As someone who has had chickenpox, has lived my entire life with hsv-1 (cold sores), and engages in multi-partner sexual activity, my answer is, if you don't want it, you do what you need to do to protect yourself from it and I, as someone with two of the things mentioned in this post and who engages with an activity that puts me more at risk of contracting a third than someone not taking those risks, being open and honest and having accurate information is everyone's best defense. Beyond that everyone being free to take what risks they deem appropriate for their lives is still an important principle.

You aren't a coward if you don't want to expose your kids to my kids while they have chickenpox. You arent a coward if you don't want to kiss me and risk getting hsv-1, you aren't a coward if you want to take no risk of getting aids. And, that point of contention is hyperbole - no one has said that about people who don't want to take the risk, at least not on a large, collective, scale.

HOWEVER, you don't get to tell me I can't expose my kids to chickenpox and have them get out of the way something that, because 90 something percent of the population has it and the vaccines do not prevent shingles, they're likely to get at some point, and we know that it's better to get it before puberty because it's easier on the body if we do.

You don't get to tell the person, who I've told I have hsv-1, that he or she doesn't get to kiss me, especially when 80-90% of the population has it already, most are asymptomatic, but can still spread the virus when it is asymptomatically shedding in the body.

You don't get to tell me that I have to live under strict sexual rules so that I never risk getting aids.

Those are all individual choices and the individual has to live with the consequences. Also, herd immunity and acceptance of inevitability and the willingness to gather information to serve the mass amount of people who have already gotten COVID and those who will are views an individual can take.

I got chickenpox and hsv-1 (and I'm not lucky enough to be asymptomatic) through no fault of my own. And, I have learned a really important life lesson: shit happens and you learn to live with it. And, how to live with it is entirely up to you. You can be bitter and miserable because you're a "victim", or you can learn how to minimize the recurring impacts and live your life to the fullest within your restrictions. That information will be available as we learn more about this virus.

So many people have already contracted COVID and will contract this virus no matter how many precautions we take, and humanity, as a whole, will go on. We'll all learn how to minimize its impact on our bodies.

I don't have a problem with some of the list of precautions that the author suggests we should follow. I regularly practice them and some not on the list anyway. Like I do wash my hands after being out and we leave our shoes at the door, because not only does that help me be a lazy bitch, but it keep the outside that has collected on our shoes out of the house. I wash my body when I get home if I've been out and using a public restroom. We have inside, outside, and bedtime clothes to keep separate the various contaminants of each place. Clothes worn to the doctor's office get changed and put in the laundry bin immediately. Because COVID isn't the only risk from being out and about.

However, the specifics aren't the author's main point. He is posing a moral question. He sees this one way and wants to know, how dare I see it differently? So, to the author: How dare you suggest that I have to see it your way? How dare you suggest that I must care about what you care about? How dare you suggest that I adopt a perpetrator and victim mentality, and must believe that having something that could spread to someone else must stop me from living?

I'm a free-thinking, liberated individual, that's how I dare.

You don't get to make decisions of risk for others because you are only responsible for the risks you are prepared to take. You don't want COVID, chickenpox, herpes, aids ... YOU do everything YOU can to avoid them, but if you get them? My suggestion? Take responsibility for YOUR choices, learn how to minimize their impact, and don't adopt a bitter victimhood mindset.