Cautious or ridiculous?

I have a good friend, we’ll call him Norman who has asthma and refuses to meet up with people, or even walk around his neighborhood because he is afraid of catching the virus because he is super immunocompromised (his only affliction is asthma and it is very well controlled without medication). He said that he will not see ANYBODY until there is a vaccine, never mind the fact that that won’t be any time soon and could take several years.

I tell him that he is being ridiculous and that he can still live his life just as before, but with a few compromises like washing his hands more often or using hand sanitizer when he can’t wash and wearing a mask.

According to this article from Science Daily (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/07/200706094126.htm), Asthma does not appear to increase the risk for a person contracting COVID-19 or influence its severity, according to a team of researchers at Rutgers University.

“Older age and conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes and obesity are reported risk factors for the development and progression of COVID-19,” said Reynold A. Panettieri Jr., a pulmonary critical care physician and director of the Rutgers Institute for Translational Medicine and Science and co-author of a paper published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. “However, people with asthma — even those with diminished lung function who are being treated to manage asthmatic inflammation — seem to be no worse affected by SARS-CoV-2 than a non-asthmatic person. There is limited data as to why this is the case — if it is physiological or a result of the treatment to manage the inflammation.” The article goes on to say, “Asthma tends to be associated with far fewer other conditions than chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or cardiovascular disease. If SARS-CoV-2 is a disease that causes dysfunction in the cells that line blood vessels throughout the body, then diabetes, heart disease, obesity and other diseases associated with this condition may make people more susceptible to the virus than those who are asthmatic. However, older people with asthma who also have high blood pressure, diabetes or heart disease may have similar instances of COVID-19 as non-asthmatics with those conditions.”

I found another article from the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology (https://www.aaaai.org/conditions-and-treatments/library/asthma-library/covid-asthma) that has similar information.  “It is important to know that currently there is no evidence of increased infection rates in those with asthma. And although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that patients with moderate-severe asthma could be at greater risk for more severe disease, there are no published data to support this determination at this time.” 

This tells me that if an individual takes proper precautions, they will be as safe as anyone can be when living in close quarters in a major metropolitan area. So why then, does this individual believe that he will automatically not only get the virus, but get it so badly that he ends up in the hospital? Part of it is that he doesn’t read. He doesn’t follow current events, doesn’t follow the news, doesn’t have any social media presence and is a blind follower of Captain Pumpkin Peener and despite his being a college educated individual, seems opposed to learning new things or opening his mind to the world.

I tried to meet up with him over the summer and messaged him asking if I could see him before Christmas, but he will not see anyone until there is a vaccine. I am glad that he is no longer as big of a part of my life as he once was because ignorance is NOT bliss, it is just ignorance.