Just in case that needed saying which I personally never thought it would. Like, when I was a kid, sure, being in your 20s sounded ancient, but all jokes aside, it was an age of strength and virility and all that. Yet, as I look around myself, that's not what I'm seeing.
I was just texting with a friend who's sick. Again. It's been a week, I think, since she recovered from another illness, pretty serious, was laid up for about 10 days or so. And this friend is my age. That's not normal. You certainly don't think of 25-year-olds as jumping from illness to illness.
I've been talking to another friend who's a bit older, she's 34, and she also has been seriously sick on and off for the past 2-3 years. And just now, she's been laid up in bed with bad fever for like 5 days? That's nuts.
My cousin, 27, was sick for like a month around New Year's, and like seriously ill. It wasn't a normal case of the flu, or just the popular cold, you know? Took a heavy round of antibiotics to get her out of that.
And I keep thinking, this isn't normal. Like, it's not what you expect from someone in their 20s who has no other comorbidities ah, that word again. Not overweight, people who exercise, people who eat fairly well and are active, and have no prior conditions. I mean, this is the sort of dialogue I used to hear from my grandma, who was pushing 90 at the time. Every day, something else hurting.
But from a 20 or 30 year old? Seems sick to me. Wrong.
Obviously, one can't help consider that the one thing these people have in common is the Covid vaccine (and me as a friend. Hey, maybe I'm the problem.). Meanwhile, I don't know that many people who weren't vaxxed of a similar age, sadly, yet everyone I do know, I can't remember the last time they mentioned illness?
Personally, the last time I had a bad-ish flu (or maybe it was Covid, who knows...) was December '22. I don't remember being sick since then. And no, I don't mean the common cold, I had that some 3 months ago? But obviously not at this level.
And to be fair, it's normal (I think) to occasionally get a bad case of the flu or even a very bad cold that keeps you in bed and makes you sick all over. But when every illness you get is major, and gets you down, and renders you useless for some days? That's not normal.
Recover-ing?
Talking to one of my sick friends, I said something along the lines that maybe the body's still recovering from the pandemic. I was trying to be nice and hopeful, though in truth, I'm not sure how much recovery there's gonna be. Technically, you should be getting weaker as you advance in age. You should be stronger and less prone to illness at 25 than you are at 40, right? So if their young years are spent like this, when exactly are they gonna recover? When they're supposed to be getting weaker?
Doubt that.
Are these people slated to go through life with weak immunity? Premature death? More prone to ailment? Given the sheer scale of the unknown at play here (we have never been in a situation like this before, which is mind-boggling), we can't know.
And what does that mean for our future? I'm aware this is gonna sound kinda Hitler-esque here, but these are people with seemingly affected genetic code and squandered immunity. I think it's a fair assumption that the children of these young people may also be more prone to viruses and illnesses, right? I mean, normally, back in the olden times, if you had two weak parents with weak immune systems and a host of maladies, the offspring were also more prone to such.
One of my vaxxed friends was baffled when I told her that for me, vaccination was a dating criterion, and I did wonder for a long time if I was being absurd. If the efforts to polarize us had got to me. Then again, as someone who definitely wants kids, and am screening any potential or early relationship for that potential, it seems a fair aspect to consider to me.
Alas, it's too early to know how the children of the vaxxed will do and feel. Too early to tell if that sort of concern is baseless and crazy, or just in a way. And much as I may be an idealist, I can't help thinking that, while we may "move on" from the divisive pandemic years, there might be in our midst aspects and points of strife we'll never move past, as a society.
