https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-68555051
Paul Alexander worked as a lawyer and lived for decades in a metal cylinder which breathed for him.
Ain't that a bitch. One virus took his body. Another took his life.
Both are preventable through safe, effective, and widely available vaccines. Vaccinate yourselves and your children, friends.
Currently COVID-19 is not preventable through vaccination on its own, especially not at the currently recommended once-per-year schedule, because they don’t last anywhere near that long.
It is not preventable to get down with it, but the vaccines reduce its effects so much that even people with chronic breathing illnesses or organ transplants can handle it like a moderate flu. Mileage will vary from person to person, of course.
Your direct point stands, but it is still a huge win for pro-vaccination.
The COVID vaccine doesn't prevent you from getting COVID. It just mitigates the symptoms. You can still get it and spread it.
If anybody wonders how, it's because vaccination means the immune system reduces viral load, so you spread much less virus and thus others exposed have a better chance of avoiding infection.
I'm aware of that but the comment I replied to says the virus is preventable. You really think I understand how the vaccine works but not what people die from or did you just need to make a degrading comment?
I feel like this guy alone undercuts the whole meritocracy narrative quite a bit. I know the defenders of that worldview would go "okay, but except for all the exceptions...", but in a lot of ways it's just a more extreme version of the stuff that puts people in normal poverty.
Also, vaccinate your damn kids, everyone.
Send this story to every anti vaxxer and ask if this is what they want their kids to suffer this.
I have a wall right here if I need to bang my head against something. I don't know, maybe somebody else reading has the gift of convincing irrational people of things, but I do not.
I brought it up partly just to vent, and partly for any fence sitters that might be lurking and hadn't made the connection.
Have you ever tried screaming at clouds, much safer and sometimes the clouds will flip you off in return.
I probably didn't make it obvious, but I was talking in the general sense of "everyone should do this". My bad...
Ah, okay. I'm still not sure if that would accomplish anything, though. They need deprogramming or something, not more yelling at.
They’ve already decided they don’t care for the suffering of other people’s children, the step to not caring about their own isn’t a far one.
Most people are wired to care about people that are familiar to them, instinctively, so I actually think it is a big step. Antivaxxers, as far as I can tell, genuinely believe the conspiracy theories and snake oil salesmen.
A classic case of success against all the odds, to manage to become a lawyer at all is a challenge let alone when you live in an iron lung. It's an argument for people saying that no matter who you are in society you can succeed and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.
Oooh, I see. Thanks.
I was missing this part:
and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.
Yup. Through no fault of his own, the dude spent his entire life lying motionless. Where's the merit in that story?
It's not really helpful on it's own in a debate, because you'll 100% get "okay, but normal people" back, and it takes way too long to unravel how there's not actually a hard distinction between various degrees of disadvantage. You're better off with a mini Gish gallop, since there's no shortage of examples, and your opponent will be too embarrassed to say the African children were lazy directly.
You could also use actual hard numbers if your talking to an audience savvy enough and with enough attention span to get that. That's a rare audience, though.
Oooh, I see. Thanks.
I was missing this part:
and that (therefore) society isn't racist/classiest etc.
Mr Alexander was a far stronger man than I could ever be. 70 years in an iron lung? I would be begging for release within a year or two max.
I'm guessing it's a bit easier if you start as a kid. It's just what life is like to some degree. Still, can you imagine how much FOMO you would have, literally confined to a barrel? Puberty must have been extra weird for him.
Puberty must have been extra weird for him.
He was paralyzed from the neck down. Puberty was probably mostly a squeaky voice and inconvenient growth spurt.
I mean, to be direct about it, desire comes from the brain. The poor dude just didn't have a body to then be horny with. Also, genitals operate on a slightly different circuit, so they often can remain functional even if voluntary things have been knocked out.
Agreed on it probably being easier if it's something you're used to and not actively in pain.
Not everyone gets a lot of FOMO, so I could imagine that might also not be much, though.
I mean, maybe you just mean frustration/sadness that he can't do as much as other people, or to do specific things he wants to do. And I could imagine that could be just incredibly tough. Like all sorts of people with severe, debilitating conditions. But FOMO is kinda a different (more childish) thing than that.
He apparently did regain the ability to breathe a little bit and would leave the iron lung for short periods of time
Imagine if you find out that normal humans could breathe underwater, and there 100 billion people living underwater. Us 8 billion people unable to live underwater are the "iron lung kids".
The all say "imagine not being able to 'fly' underwater, or not riding a gigantic squid - I would kill myself to end my misery!"
What would you respond to that? I'd be like "eh, must be nice, but I've lived above water all my life. It makes no difference to me."
Others said there’s video of him up and walking a few years back, so I think you might be wrong here.
Literally the very beginning of the linked article:
Paul Alexander contracted polio in 1952 when he was six, leaving him paralysed from the neck down.
The disease left him unable to breathe independently, leading doctors to place him in the metal cylinder, where he would spend the rest of his life.
He later regained some very limited mobility, allowing him to leave the iron lung for very short periods; but I doubt that includes the fine motor control needed for a typical controller. You could possibly design something he could use to an extent, but it's certainly not as easy as just toss him in there with an xbox controller.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The disease left him unable to breathe independently, leading doctors to place him in the metal cylinder, where he would spend the rest of his life.
"Paul Alexander, 'The Man in the Iron Lung', passed away yesterday," a post on a fundraising website said.
His brother, Phillip Alexander, remembered him as a "welcoming, warm person", with a "big smile" that instantly put people at ease.
Phillip said he admired how self-sufficient his brother was, even as he dealt with an illness that stopped him performing daily tasks such as feeding himself.
Paul's health deteriorated in recent weeks and the brothers spent his final days together, sharing pints of ice cream.
After years, Alexander eventually learned to breathe by himself so that he was able to leave the lung for short periods of time.
The original article contains 583 words, the summary contains 133 words. Saved 77%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
The worst part is that if you're stuck in that situation and want to get out of it via suicide, you literally can't. Now he's finally free.
He was able to leave the contraption for short periods of time. He was able to breathe on his own, but not well and would become fatigued quickly. He wasn't as stuck as it seems.
Didn't he choose this? There are modern replacements for the iron lung, when he was still able enough to get out of it he could've switched I think.