Strengthening our Social “Muscles”

People have been asking if I am seeing people with COVID symptoms in the medical office and the answer is: “Not regularly.” That may well change as counts are going up in many places, but in general it is not the coronavirus itself that has needed a lot of medical attention, but all of the challenges around it. It is hard to think of a recent medical visit that has not been strongly influenced by living in this time of COVID.

What are we learning from living in this time? Well, if we become sick with COVID, then our immune system will be challenged to decide: what is me and what is not me? Viruses infect our cells. They need our cells to replicate and that process continues until we develop enough “knowledge” to recognize what does not belong to us (the virus) and that it should be removed. We have to burrow deep into ourselves to fight a viral infection. Once that process is completed we will have established new immunity against that process. In that particular area, with that particular virus, we now know where to draw the line of “self” and “not-self.” Antibody resistance means we have worked through a particular pathway of encounter, and it will be easier to mark the line of self/not-self if we need to go that same way in the future.