Cytokine Storms
By Caleb S. Cage
“There’s a term doctors use to describe what happens to COVID-19 patients when their immune systems go into overdrive,” Megan Messerly explained in a piece published on March 28, 2021. “It’s called a cytokine storm.” When one of these storms happens, Messerly wrote, the body responds aggressively, so aggressively in fact that it even attacks healthy organs.
I think about Messerly’s reporting on the pandemic a lot. Not only do I reflect on her writing because the subject is something that I have spent much of the last 18 months working on, but also because of her profound commitment to getting the story right. And as much as I find myself thinking about all of Messerly’s remarkable reporting, more often than not, my mind goes back to her description of cytokine storms.
While a description of the body’s aggressive response to a terrible virus was fitting within the context of her story, it was deployed in this instance as a metaphor. Referring to the storm, Messerly wrote, “it’s not unlike the position Nevada has often found itself in over the last year.” Each measure intended to help protect Nevadans just seemed to generate more resistance.
We were one year into experiencing a global pandemic in Nevada, and a year into the division, distrust, and discord that came with it. Nevadans on all sides of the issue were reacting in ways that challenged public trust in longstanding institutions and even our ability to discuss and disagree with civility. Our body politic was storming, and we were tearing apart even the healthy parts of our fragile society.
Just because it was accurate, and it has stuck with me doesn’t mean that I liked it. Thinking about our broken discourse as a response to the virus we were trying to fight made me consider my role in it. How were our efforts to mitigate the spread of the virus feeding the aggressive responses? How would I view our actions if I were not a part of the response effort? What healthy tissue and organs were we killing through our effort to save lives and livelihoods in our state?
The article still stands up, just as all of Messerly’s reporting still does. Unfortunately, so does the reference to cytokine storms as a metaphor for our state. Our politics are still divided by actions and reactions with little hope for ending the cycles any time soon.
Messerly’s writing on the pandemic is incredible for so many reasons, not the least of which is her ability to simplify complex concepts. During a time of tremendous and prolonged uncertainty about the virus and how to mitigate it, her writing was how many of us throughout the state understood the latest news and thinking on the pandemic in real time. As important as her talents were in that effort, though, it was her use of a scientific term to explain the state of our civil society that clarified for me the real magnitude of the challenges we face.
Photo courtesy of Caleb S. Cage.
Caleb S. Cage is a writer living in Reno, Nevada. He led Nevada’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic until June of 2021, and he also serves on the Nevada Humanities Board of Trustees.