Americans presumed Covid-19 infections peaked around the third week of April 2020. By mid-May, the country had reduced the rate of infection to nearly half that. It was looking hopeful. The precautions taken, including the lockdowns of the economy, the quarantines, the home schooling of millions of children, the lack of funerals or weddings or most formerly-taken-for-granted gatherings of American life, seemed to have resulted in a significant flattening of the curve.
If only we could’ve kept our noses to the grindstone a little longer. Say, twice as long. If Americans had been willing to continue the quarantine protocols for four months instead of two, that pause, crushing as it might have been economically to families and businesses, might’ve saved a lot more lives. Unfortunately, because of premature reopening in many states, in mid-June infection rates nearly doubled to those of April. All those sacrifices Americans were forced to make became invalid. Americans were just too impatient, undisciplined, and most of all, didn’t like being told what to do, particularly by local seats in power in their respective states.
It was despairing, in watching anti-maskers roar about their liberty infringements, when all the while those masks seemed to be arbitrary things for deniers. They apparently weren’t effective enough to keep germs and viruses out, yet somehow managed to prevent adequate oxygen from entering those same flapping pie holes. It seemed likely that few of those Corona deniers had the slightest idea on what actually produced carbon dioxide in their systems, or how N95 protective membranes actually worked.
I was holed up with my wife since late March in quarantine. She was an at-risk candidate for the novel coronavirus, as she has Type 2 diabetes. She was young, exercised regularly, and followed a steadfast keto diet. We weren’t too worried. But we adhered to CDC recommended protocols more stringently than nearly all of our family and friends. We just didn’t want her to take a risk. The virus was so volatile and affected each individual so differently. It was already becoming evident the virus was more air-based than the World Health Organization and the CDC determined. At the time, I wondered if the virus was predisposed to certain genetics. Of course, now we know it most certainly was, and the evidence then showed that its effects were a crap shoot for every human on the planet.
We went out for drives with the dogs, to remote areas with not a single human around. We occasionally cruised around town; yes, initially we were among those weirdos with masks on inside the car - some micro-particle or respiratory droplet could come in through a cracked window or an air vent from the unmasked dude standing on the corner about to use the crosswalk, or a passing bicyclist, who the hell knew with that fucking bug? Mostly we stuck to rural areas when we were out at all. I walked the dogs occasionally at night, masked up, when the streets and sidewalks were deserted. If anyone came along, I crossed the street to the other side.
We had our groceries delivered by Instacart college kid drivers looking to make extra dough during the pandemic. I tipped them well. It didn’t matter if they were younger than I was, they were taking risks for me and my girl and I was overtly grateful. Most of our needed supplies came delivered by Amazon drivers. Like many of you, we sterilized all our packages and pieces of mail with quarantine de-tox time in the garage, bleach sprays, the microwave, whatever. It all felt totally paranoid.
Perhaps some of our brethren thought we were overdoing it. I didn’t care. I couldn’t take the chance with my girl. I didn’t care what people think, but I did care if they were unable to properly empathize about their potential effects on others. Liberty is not defined by a refusal to exercise concern for fellow citizens. True freedom requires sacrifice of our desires for a greater good. A lack of forethought in how the virus might’ve spread or how it might mutate down the line was no excuse for pushing the envelope too early.
We all became better cooks, did we not? How many loaves of bread did you bake? How many new ways did you prepare those chicken breasts? How many cans of Chef Boyardee did your family consume? Like you, there was only so much kitchen time we could stand, so yes, patronizing a few fast-food drive-throughs happened, wherein we were completely masked and gloved while in the car, even sterilized the food wrappers and bags as best we could with diluted bleach spray upon returning home. Never has picking up In n’ Out been such a pain in the ass.
I’m just kidding, obviously. I know how many people struggled to feed their families at that time. I was lucky enough to have resources that could sustain me and mine for a few months of unemployed quarantine.
Naturally, we all took pandemic risks according to what we thought we needed to do for ourselves and our families. I took a fair share myself.
We had a couple of sick dogs during the lockdowns. One of them required a fairly major surgery that couldn’t be put off any longer or she’d have succumbed to the nasty, malignant growth eating away at her. Veterinarians were another unsung hero force of the pandemic. They and their staff were of course essential workers.
Our dogs are family, same as yours, I expect. I hope, anyway, otherwise you ought not to have animals in your home. The procedure did in fact prolong Tara’s life, though as you will learn, not as long as we’d wished. We hoped it would give her another year. It did not. But still, it was worth the risk. Yet there were pandemic protocols to be followed, including wearing masks as we dropped her off, much as the masked staff who retrieved her from the parking lot. There was no entry allowed inside the facility. Updates on the surgery were relayed over cell phones, a lot of hand wringing and stressing in the car outside. Losing our furry girl wasn’t an option if we could do something about it, so we took that risk, same as others were taking risks, though I daresay saving my dog’s life was not nearly the same risk as wanting to shop at Macy’s.
Plenty of folks had to live out the awful necessities of standard health crisis issues on top of worrying about contracting Covid-19 while they were being treated in health care facilities or hospitals. Heart attacks, strokes, appendicitis, ongoing chemotherapy, life saving procedures, they were all bigger risks than before, with the potential for Covid infection while treatment was given. Even going to the dentist was dangerous. I had a toothache for the better part of two months in that early spring of 2020. I soldiered through it, it was so much a peril to get dental work done at that time, what with mouths needing to be open for extended periods.
The same was true for my girl, who had a pinched nerve in her right arm and normally would’ve hit the MRI machine to see if a rotator cuff was torn or not. She said it was tolerable, but I knew it was paining her and limiting her range of motion. But again, at that time…to sit inside a confined MRI machine within a busy radiology department, even masked, for half an hour? Sketchy.
I should addendum here that all those hyped up, precautionary measures I took that year, I did a lot less for myself. I did it to protect my girl. And you as well, anonymous stranger, maybe your genetics were less stalwart than you realized. I have a reasonably strong immune system and I had no real underlying conditions that I was aware of, other than being slightly overweight, so I was probably at less risk than others. Did I know that for sure? No, and you didn’t either. I realize this is how everybody thought, who hadn’t had it yet, or hadn’t lost someone to it yet, and how so many contracted the disease because they threw caution to the wind.
It was a conceit. You really didn’t want to be that guy in the ICU who regretted their prior stance after the fact. Asphyxiation or complications of pulmonary edema isn’t a fun way to go. I’ve seen it in person. It sucks. It’s a hard death.
As to the risks Black Lives Matter protesters took to express a needed moral improvement…in my redneck of the woods, we decided it was worth a socially distanced presence from our household to show solidarity for a movement we’ve supported for some time. My girl couldn’t go, for the reasons aforementioned, but we agreed I’d go for both of us.
I took that risk for a greater good, much as all the protestors did, though I didn’t march with the crowd. I met them, or rather, attended at a distance their most outer fringes, at the final destination of their march, a beach-front nexus popular with tourists and locals alike.
When the thousand plus strong crowd reached the beach, a local student activist by the name of Kyle Brown made a passionate speech on the injustices done to George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and many others. He spoke of the ongoing indifference to police brutalities. Then for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, the amount of time Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd’s neck, we all took a knee in silence.
Actually, in retrospect, I had never heard that sort of quietude, not in a public square kind of setting.
It was a profound stillness, such silent reverence and anguish at the same time. It was a scarce moment, especially in my hometown notoriously known for a dearth of BIPOC citizenry other than a middle-lower class Hispanic population. Solidarity manifested into real, tangible personification, full of magic, full of despair. It’s so often humanity strides that line. We walk a razor, humans. It was so beautiful. It was so dangerous.
I’m sure many others had heard that stillness before in their hearts, throughout the paths of their respective lives. It was new to me. I hadn’t a clue as to why, because I’ve been part of activist movements and marches and protests on a number of occasions, including several moments of silence to honor the fallen of one tragedy or another.
That one was different. It bordered a truth we almost had in our hands, a great and terrible revelation, a comprehensive touchstone just out of reach. Sometimes, humans can indeed come together when properly motivated. Nine times out of ten, that inspiration happens for one of two reasons: survival, or matters of the heart. The bleeding, fleshy, guts n’ glory heart of human hearts. As it stood in that ridiculous year, we were at a flashpoint where those two incentives almost went hand in hand.
I had to take the risk to show support, even a distanced support. We’d have been out there for every protest, given the zeitgeist of the world of 2020, fulfilling the need for necessary bodies to push change, but the pandemic limited our access and ability. My girl had to stay medically safe.
Though I participated at the edge of the crowd, kept a fair space between me and anyone else, at the expense of moving from spot to spot whenever someone would violate my personal six to ten foot rule, though I wore an N-95 mask under my bandanna for extra protection, I arrived home afterward and showered extensively, washed my clothes, and spent the next fourteen days on the couch away from our shared bed, eating and cooking and bathing and doing all our usual domestic deals separately.
It was worth it. Some things have to be heralded in the face of hazardous personal sacrifice. Most things worth fighting for require such efforts, pandemic or not. An attempt at moving the red line in the abolishing of systemic racism was one of them.Â
Having pedicures at the salon…was not.
*Compiled from June 13, 2020