I want you to think about a small, persistent annoyance in your life.

Think of something you deal with every day. You could do without it, but you’re used to it and you feel resigned to it.

Maybe it’s your insomnia. Maybe it’s your tinnitus.

Maybe it’s a nagging ache in your knee many years after an injury, or just the sludgy, stuffy veneer of your seasonal allergies. If you really think about it, you’re never quite comfortable.

Your life might have a before and an after — before the injury, before long COVID, before you somehow lost the ability to sleep — or maybe it’s less clear, but you know that dwelling on the before or just dwelling on perfect normalcy could get precariously sad, so you don’t. You function around the lingering problem.

Now I want you to imagine that a solution becomes available.

Maybe it’s a medication. Imagine that it works wonderfully for you and makes your body’s persistent problem go away.

You’ve weighed any risks and benefits, and the prescription was a private matter between you and your doctor. You’re privately satisfied.

In fact, you’re feeling relieved and joyous and so, so grateful.

You can sleep through the night. Or you can breathe through your nose. Or the ache in your knee is just gone — completely gone.

You can’t imagine going back to the old state. How did you manage to live that way? How on earth were you used to that?

Now imagine that people think you should not have your medication. These people have never met you.

You’re a regular person who has never even gotten a speeding ticket and wouldn’t even recline your seat on a flight. You just want to take your medication in peace.

How infuriating is it that people who have never met you want to stop you from doing this?

How infuriated would you be if bored, careless, fear-mongering strangers decided to make your private matter into a political one?

How infuriated would you be if people who have never met you insisted that you must have some agenda other than simply feeling okay?

How infuriated would you be if your private relief was repeatedly threatened and obstructed by obtuse, unempathetic strangers?

How infuriated would you be if said strangers — or even people you know — said insistently, while your worthiness of baseline comfort is publicly and ignorantly and repeatedly debated,

“but it’s not like that!”