Unvaccinated people with COVID are depleting a medicine I need. Now my health is at risk. | Opinion

I have a disease with a rather grandiose name: giant cell arteritis. It sounds like my cells are bigger than yours, but that’s not quite it. The veins in my head are inflamed; no one knows why and no one can cure it. An autoimmune disease that just showed up in March, my illness announced itself with brain-crushing headaches and fatigue. My bad luck.

Fortunately, there is a drug called tocilizumab (brand name Actemra) that can prevent me from going blind, having an aneurysm, or worse (all are endemic to my disease).

My medicine was supposed to arrive via UPS the day before Thanksgiving: refrigerated packaging, lots of Styrofoam. Normally I plan my day around the delivery, but I got lost in Thanksgiving detail and didn’t notice the nondelivery until the day after Thanksgiving.

I contacted the specialty pharmacy and my worst fear had been realized: The drug I need, already in short supply, is now out of stock and it is unclear when I will have access to it again.

Actemra is an interleukin-6 blocker that reduces inflammation; it’s a powerful medicine for 18 million rheumatoid arthritis patients worldwide, and for folks with my disease. I’ve been taking Actemra for five months. Except for being severely immunosuppressed, so far so good, until last summer when the first fears of a shortage arose. Actemra is effective in treating critically ill COVID-19 patients who need ventilation. For this, the FDA gave Actemra emergency use authorization and my troubles began.

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Certainly, in much of the world, there aren’t enough anti-COVID-19 drugs to go around; I don’t begrudge those countries using Actemra however they must. My vexation is domestic: In this country, it’s primarily Americans who didn’t vaccinate who are causing this Actemra shortage, putting folks like me in grave danger. Had these people done what most Americans have done to avoid COVID-19, it’s likely they wouldn’t have needed Actemra at all.

The Associated Press reports that “hospitalization rates among unvaccinated adults are 17 times higher than among those fully vaccinated.” For some, the choice to not get vaccinated is about “freedom.” But how does the pursuit of “freedom” allow you to take medicine away from people like me, who could go blind, or worse?

Let it be noted that freedom isn’t the absence of individual accountability. Rather, our responsibilities to others circumscribe our freedoms, setting a perimeter around them. If good fences make good neighbors, a sense of social responsibility allows people of different values and opinions the space to prosper (however a person defines that — there’s a freedom worth discussing).

It’s one thing to have a difference of opinion about politics — government for good vs. less government is good, etc. But my health has been threatened directly by people who are either bedeviled by false information or are unwilling to consider the complexities of a rapidly evolving virus, and therefore don’t take COVID-19 seriously enough. This is tricky stuff, no doubt; it behooves most of us to listen to those who understand it best.

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Put another way: sit down, shut up, and Fauci this.

What to do? My doctor may decide to put me on corticosteroids (which come with a range of problems) or might stretch out my Actemra injections, based on availability. Perhaps there are other options open to me that I haven’t heard of yet.

Be that as it may, those who ignore the scientific realities of COVID-19 risk the lives of others; how does some romanticized idea of freedom give this anti-vax/freedom gang any such right? And how dare these Republican politicians — from Donald Trump to the governors of Texas and Florida and on down to all the others — reenforce an unscientific approach to fighting a pandemic? It’s a stain on the Republican Party that won’t wash out anytime soon.

For now, it’s a waiting game as to when the medicine I need shows up at my front door. That will be a happy day; I’d be happier still if the millions of Americans who haven’t yet gotten vaccinated would — finally — just do it.

Dave Webb, who lives in northern California, recently retired after a career in the performing arts, primarily in marketing and programming.