Summer 2021 was a time in the middle of the pandemic where many folks who could and wanted to get their COVID-19 vaccination for protection, were able to. With a direct line of communication to the Multnomah County Public Health Department and the Oregon Health Authority, community members were able to remind folks of our severely ill, at-risk, and homebound community members who were unable to leave their homes in order to get vaccinated. Specific teams were assigned to help alleviate these issues, although no 211 staff understood how this was supposed to work nor that a team even existed to problem solve these issues.
All this said, for some of us that were very high risk for COVID-19 complications, due to anaphylaxis to excipients such as Polyethylene glycol (PEG), Polypropylene glycol (PG), Polysorbate 80, and other ubiquitous ethoxylated excipients, the risk of dying from anaphylaxis to the COVID-19 vaccines was a somewhat greater, and more immediate risk than dying from COVID-19. The issue, however, was that these same excipients that could cause anaphylaxis from vaccine administration were and also are in all of the available COVID-19 prophylaxis and COVID-19 therapeutics, except IV Remdesivir. Although the FDA had approved IV Remdesivir’s use in the outpatient setting, there were zero hospitals and clinics in the entire state of Oregon that were equipped to provide IV Remdesivir to patients in the outpatient setting. Allergist/Immunologists couldn’t even access the vaccine for their clinics to give to these patients in smaller doses to test their tolerance.
During the extreme heat waves that occurred in July 2021, cooling centers were opened. For those unable to vaccinate for protection, unable to access COVID-19 prophylaxis, and unable to access safe-for-them COVID-19 therapeutics should they become infected with COVID-19, going to a community cooling center to escape the heat, was not a safe option… even when the temperatures got up to 105 degrees F inside the home. Trying to access cooling equipment being on OHP Open Card was impossible as there was not a program, like the CCO’s had, for patients to access cooling equipment, even during one of our deadliest heat waves in history.
This writing is what came out of this experience.
July 2021
Dozens of people died from the heat last week.
The case manager apologized and said there was nothing they could do. It was either a public cooling center and the real possibility of COVID-19 or nothing. Choose. There might be a program that might help you access an air conditioner, but you have the wrong insurance. There is nothing for you. I’m sorry.
Sometimes, oftentimes, it feels useless spending every ounce of energy you have fighting insurance companies, fighting poverty, fighting the racism and ableism that permeates the air, the same air giving life.
When it comes down to it, no one really cares whether a person lives or dies, well, until they’re dead. Then we hear the honorifics, the should haves; but really, if we cared, we wouldn’t build institutions whose job it is to grind people down. To say no until folks just die.
There is no happy ending.
It’s only drudgery, the drudgery of plodding through cold muck in a dark, black cave. The same cave so many before you trudged through before, are trudging through with you now, but within their own solitude, into infinity.
Maybe it’s only when you briefly brush elbows, millions of times, that enough friction is created to produce heat, a brief glimmer of light.
Maybe these sparks produce a fire so large so as to burn it all down. All of these stifling systems that suck the oxygen out of every room in every clinic in every hospital in every region – they suck the oxygen out of each cell who composes its own part in the symphony that sings an organism into being. Maybe through destructive fire, and only through that, the phoenix might be reborn.
But that would spell hope. And we all know that hope is the traitor, the knife in one’s back. Besides, fire requires oxygen. So no fire. No phoenix. No rebirth.
Dozens of people died in the heat last week.
