I’ll tell you this story as it was told to me.
Years ago, my dad was digging a hole in the front yard so he could plant a tree. His neighbor, a man named Ben who I remember as being perpetually clad in overalls and a gray T-shirt, pulled up in his pickup truck, rolled down his window, and said, “What are you up to?”
“You’re looking at it.”
Ben threw open the truck’s passenger-side door and said, “Get in.”
Our old neighbor took my dad to donate blood. Apparently it was something Ben did with regularity, every eight weeks or so, as the guidelines go. That was how my dad learned he was O-, the universal donor. That was why the refrigerator in my childhood home was covered in Lifeblood magnets.
I’m O- too, so I donate with regularity. The phlebotomists tell me that donating a double-red is better, easier to transport, especially with my blood type, so I can’t go quite as often as Ben. But I do make a point of showing up whenever they call to remind me I’m eligible again. I don’t write this to pat myself on the back — donating is quite literally the easiest thing I can do for my community. Heck, I do it lying down!
I bring this up because the Red Cross just announced that they are “experiencing the worst blood shortage in over a decade. The dangerously low blood supply levels have forced some hospitals to defer patients from major surgery, including organ transplants.” With the Omicron variant spreading rapidly, blood supplies at a historic low, and nurses and doctors fleeing the overstrained healthcare system, now would be a horrible time to wreck your car, have a heart attack, or have your appendix burst. Drive safely, folks.
It seems to me that now would be a good time for the Food and Drug Administration to revise their guidelines about the three-month deferral for donations by men who have sex with men.
But that’s not up to me. The best I can do is donate when they call me, and take whatever steps I can not to prolong this pandemic. (You knew I was going to mention the pandemic, right?) Because, according to the Red Cross, the pandemic has placed quite a strain on their donor recruitment efforts. Young people at high school and college blood drives make up a large percentage of donors, and it’s hard to pull the blood-mobile up to a virtual classroom. As the Red Cross reports on its website, there has been a 62 percent drop in college and high school blood drives due to the pandemic. Student donors accounted for approximately 25 percent of donors in 2019, but accounted for just 10 percent during the pandemic. What’s more, there has been a 10 percent drop in donations overall since March 2020.
So yes, I can and do donate when Vitalant’s number pops up on my phone, but my double-red donation is, pardon the pun, a drop in the bucket. Just as my choice to get vaccinated and boosted and to continue to wear a mask in public is hardly going to end the pandemic.
While I encourage anyone who is eligible to go donate blood — or to get vaccinated if you haven’t yet — I also recognize the need for a larger organizing framework to guide solutions to these problems. Or at least to address the pandemic, which will, in a roundabout way, help solve the blood shortage. There will always be bad actors, people who resist restrictions designed to help the community. So the question is, do we cater to them, or do we do what’s necessary to protect the people who need our help? Put it another way, if you’re of the mind that Covid will always be with us, will be endemic, do you think the current state of things is a livable status quo?
Am I calling on my individual readers to consider possible solutions for a structural problem? Why, yes, it does appear that way.
Do I recognize the irony in that?
Also yes.