Katey

“Mere despair never tells the whole human story, as much as despair would like to insist otherwise. Hopelessness has the insidious talent of explaining everything: the reason X or Y sucks is that everything sucks, the reason you’re miserable is because misery is the correct response to the world as we find it, and so on. I am prone to despair, and so I know its powerful voice; it just doesn’t happen to be true. Here’s the truth as I see it: Vicious cycles are common. Injustice and unfairness permeate every aspect of human life. But virtuous cycles are also possible.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Covid-19 displaced tuberculosis as the world’s deadliest infectious disease from 2020 through 2022, but in 2023, TB regained the status it has held for most of what we know of human history. Killing 1,250,000 people, TB once again became our deadliest infection.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“For me, anyway, this way of understanding chronic illness—as being of the world but also not permitted by circumstances or the social order to be entirely with the world—is a sentiment applied from within rather than from without, a way of thinking about the limits and opportunities of disability that acknowledges difference and loss without othering or romanticizing. It’s not trustful or loving or soothing or mild. It’s true.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection

“Stigma is a way of saying, “You deserved to have this happen,” but implied within the stigma is also, “And I don’t deserve it, so I don’t need to worry about it happening to me.” This can become a kind of double burden for the sick: In addition to living with the physical and psychological challenges of illness, there is the additional challenge of having one’s humanity discounted.”
― John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection