After weeks of lockdowns from the coronavirus, death projections are finally being revised downward. We may be approaching the domestic apex of the pandemic sooner than expected, meaning we can hope for a limited reopening of parts of the economy within weeks, not months. But this will require a vast societal shift on an individual level in how we perceive personal safety and hygiene.
To put it bluntly, we are an unhealthy people. Our habits are horribly conditioned to stop disease transmission, much less one that’s highly contagious and can be fatal. Case in point: our sexually transmitted disease epidemic. We discovered penicillin, one of the first cures for gonorrhea, nearly a century ago. It’s a disease with an easy cure and a cheap test, yet the country has seen a 63% increase in cases since 2014, only increasing its antibiotic resistance.
And why? Because we are strangely averse to testing and proactive medical care. According to a Babylon Health study of 9,000 people, a staggering 37% of people with multiple sexual partners have never been tested for sexually transmitted diseases.
So consider: We have a disease with a single risk factor, sex with a new partner, and a perfect test and treatment regimen, yet more than half a million people still have a disease which, if ignored, could cause infertility and cancer.
The coronavirus is a disease far easier to contract — merely going to public places is enough to catch it. It also lacks a reliable and available testing regimen (tests have a false negative rate of 30%) and no cure. Do we think we’ll handle it much better in the long run?
We’ve already seen state governments crack down in vain as people continue to violate social distancing policies. The fact is, we need a massive paradigm shift as a society for how we view health. It shouldn’t take a pandemic to remind us to wash our hands continuously throughout the day or not to breathe down strangers’ necks at the grocery store. It shouldn’t take a virus that disproportionately endangers people with preexisting conditions to reinforce the danger of our already ridiculously expensive and deadly obesity epidemic.
We need to reprioritize individuals taking preventative health measures and proactive medical screenings. On that second note, the Babylon survey found that it’s not just STD screenings — 1 in 4 people in the United States don’t even get routine, recommended general health checks. The average person consumes nearly three times the amount of sugar recommended by the American Heart Association. As a result, children are developing liver problems once suffered only by lifelong alcoholics and at record rates.
Just half of adults do at least 150 minutes of aerobic activity per week (for reference, that’s just 21 minutes of walking per day — you probably get that much if you have a dog). Less than a quarter do that along with adequate strength training twice per week.
It might not be unrelated that our rates of depression and anxiety are on the rise, and definitely not unrelated is the fact that more than 7 in 10 people are overweight or obese.
We have plenty of diseases with flawless screenings and treatment regimens, as well as clear guidelines and risk factors. We can’t stop those, and we can’t even care for ourselves. So what hope do we have of eradicating the coronavirus?
