Cancer, COVID and Facebook
Monday, August 30, 2021
* Ana Rodriguez Soto
A few weeks ago, I saw a post on Facebook that really troubled me. So what else is new, right? But this one hit home.
It was a cartoon depicting a 1950s-looking mother talking to her son: “Mom, why isn’t there a cure for cancer?” the child asks. “Because, Jimmy, there is far more money to be made treating a disease for a lifetime rather than curing it in a day.”
Out of all the simplistic, idiotic memes that pass for wisdom on Facebook (and other social media platforms), this one got to me. I found it insulting to anyone who has had the misfortune of experiencing cancer: either surviving it or watching a loved one die of it.
I guess we were all just stupid to have gone to the doctor. Perhaps the person who created that cartoon could do the rest of us a favor and share his or her miraculous knowledge with the world?
To quote from the American Cancer Society, “Cancer is more than just one disease. There are many types of cancer.” Some grow quickly, others more slowly. Some affect the blood — leukemia, lymphoma, multiple myeloma — others manifest as solid tumors in organs such as the breast, the lungs, the prostate and the colon.
Even within the same types of cancer, there are differences. Just ask any woman who has had breast cancer: Was it triple negative? Estrogen receptive? Progestin receptive? HER2 positive? Her treatment will differ depending on the diagnosis.
Which means a one-shot, one-day cure for cancer may be impossible to achieve.
But of course, who needs experts when social media can give us the answer we want, and phrase it in the form of a cartoon or a meme? Or a quote Abe Lincoln posted on his wall?
Ignorance is bliss, they say. That must be why we spend so much time on social media, where we can find simple answers to complex questions and never bother our great minds with the rigors of logic — or thought itself.
Ironically, in this pandemic age, those much doubted and reviled medical experts have done just what my offending cartoon says they refuse to do: come up with a miraculous cure for a disease that, in a year and a half, has killed more than 620,000 Americans, and more than 4 million people worldwide.
They developed a vaccine. Actual prevention. With two shots – or even one – you can avoid becoming seriously ill with COVID-19 — or maybe even infected, if you wear a mask and don’t linger in crowded places where transmission is running rampant.
Ah, but there’s social media again, telling you COVID is a hoax (one the whole world seems to have fallen for, which makes me wonder if the hucksters live on another planet). Or it’s just the flu, no big deal. Take some vitamins or a concoction sold over the counter with who-knows-what ingredients and no FDA approval. Above all, avoid that “experimental” vaccine that the FDA has approved only on an emergency basis (Pfizer gained full approval last week), that “poison” that has been injected into 1.2 billion people worldwide (the vast majority still alive, but let’s not do that math).
I have wondered often during the past year: What if we substituted the word COVID with cancer? Cancer, too, afflicts the middle-aged and elderly more than the young. No one really knows why or how they “caught” it. With cancer, too, survival is random: Two women diagnosed with the same type of breast cancer might have very different outcomes.
Imagine if we discovered that cancer spreads through the air. (Some types of cervical cancer do originate with the HPV virus, for which science has produced a vaccine.) I think most of us would be double or triple-masking at that point, no objections raised.
And if the experts then announced they had developed a vaccine for cancer? Experimental, emergency approval or not, I’m pretty sure people would be lining up to get the shot. Because we know cancer. It is not a “novel” disease.
All of which is a roundabout way to say: Go to the source. On COVID or cancer, ask your doctor, not Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or TikTok. Above all, stop and think before you “share” that seemingly brilliant but simplistic meme.
Finally, get the COVID vaccine: that “cure-it-in-a-day” miracle those medical professionals developed, which is now being offered — for free — at a pharmacy or pop-up tent near you.
Comments from readers