Excellent read and important points, thanks so much.

May I add some perspective?

Just a few years ago, my resting pulse rate and BP would have rivaled yours. I was a Boston-qualified marathoner training for a triathlon and aspiring to ultramarathons.

I ran nearly every day of the week for pleasure. I rode my bicycle to work and rode it to the beach after work to swim.

Then, through no fault of my own (if illness can ever be said to owe to “fault”), a chronic illness snatched away my ability to run, bike, and swim. I no longer have the pulse rate of an athletic teenager that I was blessed with even into my mid fifties. I’m 60 now, and less fit and healthy than the average 60 year old. I’m not obese, but I have other co-morbidities that qualify me to go to the head of the line for vaccines and antivirals.

Does that make me weak?

Yes, I have less energy to work than I used to. But I still pump out work to the best of my ability. I lack energy, but I find accomodations and get shit done anyway.

I’m not weak, I’m strong. I’m stronger than people who don’t have to cope with my challenges.

That makes the “undeserving” narrative, the “weakness” narrative, really rankle with me, as I’m sure it must with you.

When we get to a point as a people that we’re seriously debating who “deserves” to thrive, you know something is terribly off kilter, terribly morally wrong with the narrative.

Just look at how I felt it necessary to tout my past as a serious amateur athlete. I should not have had to write those sentences.