How Good It Feels to See the Elderly Neighbors Out Again
These days the elderly uncles and aunts in my building have come out one after another. Some look much frailer than before, but others remain robust. An over-80 woman in our building lives alone; yesterday I saw her push her bicycle out and ride off to buy groceries. In that moment I was truly happy for her. The several uncles and aunts I know are all still here, not one missing. When we met, I warmly greeted them. Most still look freshly recovered from serious illness, fragile.Beijing was one of the first first-tier cities to peak; reading media reports of elderly academicians and professors in Beijing passing away one after another was genuinely worrying for my own elderly neighbors. But now these recovered uncles and aunts have greatly comforted me—they pulled through, which means mortality was not terrifyingly high, and means our own parents will probably pull through too.Still, seeing them so fragile saddens me. We all have parents and worry our own elders will be like this. Who can cut off decades of family affection? How many would want their parents, in this wave, to die or suffer so?This is an exceptionally cruel era for the old, but we humans seem to have no choice. The virus grows ever more transmissible, beyond human power to stop. We owe the old an apology; today freedom was bought with the lives of many elders. Some of these elders are our own kin; we young people truly owe them an apology.I hope we soon find ways to help these frail elders recover their strength, and ways to rapidly ease their severe symptoms on reinfection. After all, in this wave we have accumulated treatment experience; if medicine pools its wisdom, perhaps future virus harm to the old can be reduced. Only thus can we keep our own parents and other people parents safe, letting them stay with us a while longer—family affection is always more precious than money.Intuitively, this wave overall mortality is not high. My mother-in-law village has about a thousand people and, up to now, no deaths. Our village of three thousand-plus has had four elderly deaths in December. Most villages back home have low mortality, similar to ours and my mother-in-law.By the international average, Omicron overall case fatality is about 0.19%—fewer than two deaths per thousand people. If a village has only two or three hundred people, by the average it may see not a single death. That means even if we cannot beat the average, things are not catastrophic.But a few villages in my county are severe, with mortality far above others. The most reasonable explanation is clusters of resistant-bacterial infection at their grassroots clinics—so many villagers got group IV drips that cross-infection was easy. For the frail old, a resistant-bug infection is one blow too many. The West has seen this; they walked the path, and now so are we.Coffins are hard to buy in my county now; prices have doubled and they are still unavailable—sad news. However low the mortality, multiplied by our population it still exceeds a million. Many of the dead are our kin; their voices and faces will never appear in our world again. It is a sorrowful thing.I am 43 now; in 17 years I will be 60, part of the 60-plus fragile group. Rapid population growth and climate change have made our world unsafe; all kinds of new pathogens will appear. Perhaps in my old age I will face what today elders face, and then I will know the panic they feel.Before the state lifted its controls, some people online fiercely opposed reopening; an acquaintance of mine was angered by that opposition. I urged her: those voices may come from the fragile. After reopening, their lives are at risk; for them it is a matter of life and death. We should understand and sympathize, protect them rather than confront them. Who will not grow old? Who does not want a few more years? Perspective matters most. The freedom young people want was bought at the cost of elderly lives.This wave moved me deeply. I have always loved everything about the life sciences; I used to long to return to university to systematically study biology, Western medicine and TCM and integrate all three. But I always felt I was no longer young and that such a dream was unrealistic, and that hope should be placed in the young.After this wave I will hesitate no longer. Once the peak passes, I will find a way back to university, studying systematically while continuing my research, work and writing. Even if, on the day I die, I have not mastered every field of the life sciences as I wished, I will have no regrets. For someone like me, the greatest joy in life is seeking knowledge; to die on the road of seeking knowledge is a worthy end.Also, I hope to spend my life doing medical research as a free person, joining no group or party. For someone who loves knowledge, losing the spirit of seeking facts means losing everything. Three years of pandemic saw too many intellectuals say things unworthy of them, collapsing the credibility of academia; it is heartbreaking. Only by aligning with no interest group can we keep independence and truth—the world needs a few wholly independent people.When I am old, my greatest wish is that medicine be more advanced and we be more powerful against disease. Then perhaps we will not have to suffer and panic as today uncles and aunts do.After this outbreak, the three years of COVID literature I read helped me greatly in clinical practice. That accumulation let me quickly find, in practice, effective ways to relieve the symptoms of COVID patients, protecting my family, protecting tens of thousands of patients, and helping me conquer my fear of this disease. This is what the ancients called "deep accumulation, slow release."Yesterday I video-called a relative back home; seeing me, she tearfully thanked me for saving her life. She had been severely ill for over ten days, bedridden and terrified. On learning this I prescribed two doses of Chaihu Guizhi Tang; after taking them she improved greatly and could finally get up and move.Medicine is the craft most worth passing down, because it concerns the greatest welfare of all people. I especially hope that one or two of my younger relatives will take up medicine, or that one or two of my students will genuinely become doctors. When I am old and failing and another plague comes, if one of them—young and vigorous—will also seriously read colleagues literature and actively seek solutions, then my own life may be saved too, and I may live a few more years in old age.