A CLEAR DIFFERENCE BETWEEN COVID & THE AIDS CRISIS

Over the last week, eighty-four-year-old gay actor George Takei, best known as Sulu from “Star Trek,” was trending on Twitter. That’s not so unusual. The social media platform has given him a higher profile with more than three million followers, many of whom presumably were not around in the days of Sulu and may have never connected with any of the “Star Trek” incarnations. (Takei also has ten million Facebook followers.) He’s known for tweeting sharp, sometimes humorous, takes on politics, clearly leaning left, as well as regularly recognizing LGBTQ accomplishments. 

 

In 2019, after Donald Trump refused to denounce the Proud Boys during a presidential debate, Takei took to Twitter, proposing that the LGBTQ community take over #ProudBoys by using the hashtag and tweeting photos of men kissing. That would show what proud boys truly looked like. It worked. 

 

This week’s attention comes from a tweet opining that people who choose not to be vaccinated and wind up in hospital should not get priority care over others seeking treatment for equally urgent conditions.

The willfully unvaccinated who wind up in hospitals from Covid should not receive priority medical care over other very sick or injured people who are as much in urgent need of medical care.

— George Takei (@GeorgeTakei) August 13, 2021

Provocative. It’s reflective of the palpable frustration regarding the rise in COVID cases yet again and the inability to stop the spread of variants in part because too many unvaccinated people continue to spread the coronavirus. The unvaccinated pose a continuing burden on the healthcare system and, while claiming their stand is, inter alia, an assertion of individual rights (it’s more complicated than that), causing the general public to face a regression in terms of their own freedoms (e.g., renewed travel restrictions; mask requirements reinstated) and affecting the livelihood of many service industry workers due to such measures as restaurant and bar closures. 

 

Many responded to Takei’s comment with wholehearted agreement, almost 40,000 liking his tweet and 9,000 retweeting it. I first ran across the tweet on Saturday morning when someone identifying as gay embedded Takei’s tweet and responded by saying this was a hideous, draconian proposition, akin to arguments during the AIDS crisis that gays shouldn’t receive empathy or care since those that got AIDS brought it on themselves.[1]

 

Oh, dear. Good point. Medical care does not judge. A lifelong smoker who gets lung cancer gets every possible treatment deemed effective. She is not tsk-tsked and told to wait until a nonsmoker with lung cancer is seen. An AIDS patient teetering toward hospice care does not wait longer as another patient in an equally dire medical condition is attended to. An addict who overdoses is not left if an unconscious person from a car accident is rolled in on a gurney.

 

These are the kind of ethical hypotheticals presented in university classes or on a Friday night as a group of philosophically minded hipsters smoke weed. Yes, we’ve heard that hospitals are struggling in treating and finding beds on account of increased admissions since the pandemic began. We’ve read about patients set up in hallways and even tents. Still, there are medical practitioners with different specialties and hospital units for different afflictions. The predicament Takei’s comment pertains to most would presumably involve patients in intensive care. Again, doctors won’t pit vaccinated COVID patients against the unvaccinated or someone with cancer against the antivaxxer person with COVID. Yes, in crisis situations in hospitals, certain cases take priority, but presumably this is based on how acute a patient’s needs are. Let’s hope, at least, that a scenario in which two patients with absolutely equal needs arrive in an ER with only one attending physician is indeed a hypothetical. Otherwise, I suppose it’s first come, first served. 

 

But as I was riding the elevator the next day, a flaw came to mind regarding the person who asserted that Takei’s suggestion was the equivalent to AIDS shaming. The smoker, the addict, the gay man who becomes ill requires care based on behavior alone. There is no vaccine for lung cancer, no vaccine for addictive disorders, no vaccine for AIDS. Presumably, if such vaccines existed, there would be similar frustration if a person particularly susceptible to an affliction didn’t take the vaccine and becomes ill. The initial behavior is not judged but the choice not to be vaccinated, a behavior or non-behavior itself, is what’s at issue. It’s a different level of culpability, heightening Joe Public’s frustration and likely contributing to a greater sense of regret from the patient himself. 

 

 No lie, I got light-headed just looking
 up photos of people getting vaccinated.

There are vaccines for COVID. True, we have no long-term research on any potential harm from taking it. Like EVERY OTHER vaccine, it is not 100% effective. Also, like every other vaccine or medication, there are potential side effects, some very serious. Just listen to the fast-talking listing of side effects, including death, in every medication commercial. I am taking daily meds with frightening short-term and long-term dangers, but I talk with my doctors, strongly resisting over several conversations, and then I acquiesce, choosing to trust the expert and rely on the overwhelming odds I’ll be all right. I am my own a medical problem. I tune out talk about vitamins, I am reticent to take any medication and I am terrified of needles. (It’s documented as a clinical phobia in my rather thick psychiatric file.) Still, I take my meds. I got vaccinated. (Sorry, vitamin D pill. I’ll do without.) For both shots, I asked the poor staffers, “What’s it like stabbing people all day?” Yes, I see needles as incredibly invasive and threatening. To be clear though, I was profusely apologetic for my wimpy behavior and I repeatedly expressed gratitude for their work.

 

People who aren’t vaccinated are impacting those of us who are. It’s not just antivaxxers who’ve engaged in questionable behaviors during the pandemic. It might not have been wise for anyone to walk around in indoor public spaces without a mask or attend cousin Rita’s wedding along with seventy other people. But a very high percentage of now-vaccinated people making these choices remain unaffected. The initial behaviors may be the same, but medical science, but the risks are far different in terms of both incidence and degree. 

 

Again, I think Takei’s tweet was a way of letting off steam and drawing attention to his social media platform. Many vaccinated people who are back to having to wear masks, putting off foreign travel and/or missing their shifts waiting tables for a low wage yelled, “Yeah!” and pressed the like button. I highly doubt his message made any unvaccinated person fret and rush out to get a shot. In fact, I suspect rhetoric like this causes antivaxxers to double down. No. Vaccine. Ever. Perhaps it’s a stance they’ll stick with till the day they die (hopefully due to old age, instead of this mutating coronavirus).

 

Like many, my frustration grows by the week, maybe even by the day. I also feel that getting closer to normality--some form of a freer “new normal”--is being impeded by the holdouts. How did we become so divided and stray so far from the initially universal notion of “We’re all in this together”?

 

Many of us have done what we were supposed to do, what we thought was for the greater public good and now we’re left to bang our heads against walls and “like” what Sulu says. The antivaxxers have received more than their share of airtime. Quite literally so. They make their own maddening and provocative statements. It goes both ways.

 

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[1] Sorry, I’ve searched for the tweet and can’t find it, but I’m pretty sure I’m accurately saying the gist of it. If not, I defer to dearly missed Gilda Radner’s Emily Litella. 

BUY GAY OR BYE GAY?

Do you make it a point to seek out LGBTQ-owned businesses?

There was a time when that made perfect sense. It was a given. In my early years in Vancouver, I remember picking up a new copy of the gay yellow pages every year or so and skimming through it, making mental notes of businesses and services I might need to access. Buying from LGBTQ providers was just another way to support our community.

But here I need to come clean. Even back then, I couldn’t just blindly support an enterprise that dared post a rainbow sticker in the corner of a window. (Yes, there was a time when the symbol made a bold statement and risked a loss of business while cultivating a niche clientele.) I couldn’t fully commit to the unwritten expectation: I’m gay so you should support me. Quality and value still mattered. And, despite how much it rubbed me wrong as I grew up, I seem to sometimes verge on being a cheapskate like my father. Too often it turned out that the gay business couldn’t really compete, not just against big box stores (which I tend to avoid) but compared to other small businesses. Should I fork over an extra five or ten bucks of my paycheck just because a service provider is gay?

My first hairstylists in Vancouver were gay but that quickly became problematic. First, I developed crushes on each of them. (Hell, that happened to me in Los Angeles, too. My first ever boyfriend was a stylist. Sure, we met in a bar, but I suspect that’s where my soft spot for guys with scissors began.) The crushes were never returned. That alone wouldn’t have sent me away. Back then, in particular, I had eternal hope. Surely one day my hairdresser would snag his comb on that mole in the back of my head and, not only would he offer a first-ever apology, but he’d suddenly be smitten. I love a guy with a big mole. Said no one! I stuck around until I admitted what had been a problem all along. The cuts were passable, but the chair-side manner was wholly lacking. They couldn’t even fake an interest in the conversation, mmm-hmm-ing and uh-huh-ing in all the wrong places. I finally decided to seek unrequited crushes in other places and I’ve had women stylists ever since.

When the stakes have been higher, I often went first to the gay guy. There were times I felt my business was taken for granted. Yeah, I’ve got this. I’m gay, he’s gay. It’s a done deal. Sometimes the stereotype of gay men being flaky when it comes to dating seemed to spill over to the business world. The gay-owned bakery I show up at to begin my daily writing wouldn’t open on time, the service would seem indifferent despite my loyal patronage. An interior designer submitted plans for a home reno that looked like an embarrassing cut-and-paste job from other people’s websites. An insurance agent wouldn’t show up for a scheduled meeting. A contractor suddenly abandoned a job, never even bothering to come by to pick up the tools sitting in the basement. A mortgage broker would call to cancel ten minutes after our session was supposed to have started. The gay brand took a beating.

Recently my rainbow support has wavered again. Since I’m listing my condo and hoping for a quick, profitable sale (Isn’t that what all sellers hope for?), I decided not to go with a family friend whom I’ve used on several occasions and found to be too passive. Instead, I interviewed two real estate agents with multiple recent sales in my building. Both are experienced, high performers in the condo market. One of them turned out to be gay. While we met, you could feel us feeling each other out, testing our gaydar readings. I noticed in his pitch materials that he gave back to charity, not just to the SPCA but to a local AIDS organization. Advantage gay realtor.

But then I looked more closely at the materials each agent submitted and there was a slight difference in the commission percentages each would take upon the sale of my unit. I punched the numbers into my phone calculator and that seemingly small disparity worked out to $2000. I made the decision harder than it should have been. Personally, I thought the gay realtor was nicer and I felt considerable gay guilt. A quick online search of provincial real estate commissions affirmed that he was charging me more than the industry standard. This was a business decision. The charitable causes were a distraction. How much did he actually give and isn’t that a personal matter anyway? I’ve always resented when corporations stage an annual public relations day, wooing you in and trying to come off as good guys by donating a day’s worth of sales from a “Smile cookie” or a Blizzard to a children’s charity. Just donate the money out of your own sense of corporate goodness and be done with it; don’t tie it in customer sales. As for my seemingly altruistic real estate guy, I could pass on him, donate $1800 to the AIDS charity and still come out ahead. (I do donate to the same charity but I don’t feel a need to divulge how much. As I’ve been trying to say—albeit in a bit of a ramble—that’s personal.) After too much hemming and hawing, I went with the other guy, a veritable real estate shark. Sell the damn condo so I can move on with a new chapter in life!

Turns out the move is a convenient way to end my relationship with another gay service provider, my dentist. I’ve been going to him, off and on, for a dozen years. I initially knew him from a gay sports league and, not having a dentist, he was a convenient choice. A good choice it seemed up until a few years ago. The walls of his office are adorned with stunning modern art paintings and a Zen kind of instrumental music is always streaming. Part art gallery, part spa, part Buddhist temple...with a new toothbrush as a parting gift! I was a low-maintenance patient, always getting praise and even an expression of awe for how well my teeth held up. (Sure, there was always a nudge about flossing more, a task I’ve always felt was about as much fun as cleaning the toilet bowl.)

But then my stellar teeth started to show cracks. Literally. Fractures in a couple of the back teeth. My greatest phobia came into play: needles. My phobia is well documented by psychiatrists. I know it’s illogical and my reaction is highly embarrassing but I’ve always felt intensely violated when jabbed with a needle. It’s traumatic for me and, unfortunately, often for the needle bearer as well. What is wrong with this guy and how did I get stuck with him? Sorry ‘bout that. I try to keep the adversarial relationship between the needle and me but there are always other casualties. My dentist’s approach seems to be that he can spring the needle on me without an advance warning.

SURPRISE!

Epic fail. Every time. I’m left with a rising sense of distrust and the entire Zen atmosphere is lost. Things got really bad at the beginning of December when he poked me with a needle three times in a fifteen-minute period. The freezing never took. By then, we both wanted to flee. He gave up and referred me to an oral surgeon. A needle in the arm that time as three nurses tried to distract me with inane chitchat (favorite “Friends” character...really?!) and I tried to fixate on the light snow falling outside.

It’s not just my dentist’s approach to needle stabbing that has me relinquishing my gay allegiance. I’m not sure he’s all that good at what he does. He struggled mightily a couple of years ago when removing my first cracked tooth. After a lot of huffing and puffing that would have impressed many a fairy tale wolf, he had to saw the tooth in half and extract it piece by piece. “You have deep roots,” he told me. Maybe so. By the end, I think he came close to dislocating his shoulder. For the past week, I have a temporary tooth in the spot where he’s putting in a bridge tomorrow evening. I’m not so sure the substitute tooth is supposed to be protruding into mouth, a strangely sharp edge slicing away at my tongue. Perhaps being gay and a halfway decent volleyball setter aren’t the qualifications I should be looking for in a dentist.

I want to support gay businesses. Maybe things will be better in Toronto. Seems that’s my becoming my great hope in a growing list of subject areas.