I used to have a postcard that said, “I have AIDS. Please hug me. I can’t make you sick.” This is what it looked like: https://www.zazzle.com/i_have_aids_please_hug_me_hiv_aids_posters-228770239096166330 It struck me how lonely it must be for someone suffering from an illness that caused people to avoid them, to not want to touch them, to not want to show them physical affection for fear of catching what they had. I’ve been thinking about that epidemic again recently because of the novel coronavirus, which comes with its own fear, ignorance, and hope. You’ll find no answers here about what works, but a few gripes about what doesn’t, so I apologize in advance, as I know it’s best not to offer criticism without a solution.
It’s a largely invisible virus. I could write that I’ve never had it, but that might not be true. I might just not know I’ve had it. Isn’t that fun? It’s made us afraid of literally everyone. It’s made us fear ourselves. My husband and I didn’t go see his parents over the summer because they are over 70 and therefore high-risk . . . and also, they live in New York, which presents its own visiting challenges. But now we’re at a point where they are having trouble coming to us and we have trouble getting to them and we wonder – we really contemplate – if we’ll see this important family of ours again before they die. That is not to be underestimated, and I know we aren’t alone.
I have a friend whose father was in a facility for dementia. Isolation (because COVID spreads like wildfire in nursing homes and the like and visitors are kept out) + confusion caused him to deteriorate rapidly. He asked his family what he did wrong because they didn’t visit him anymore. I almost cry every time I remember that question. I know this is not an isolated incident. I’ve heard of people visiting through windows, through Zoom/Skype/what-have-you, and not at all. The facility kept my friend’s father safe from COVID and he died of loneliness.
The introverts seem to be thriving from the lack of social interaction. The extroverts (one of them is writing this post) are deteriorating. The negative social impact of COVID gets so little attention because me longing for hugs is so much less important than whether my touch might lead to someone literally dying. I get it. Probably every person who’s died by suicide since COVID got it, too. They saw the reality of no end in sight to a virus we can’t control. I don’t know why they decided to die – loneliness, job loss, addiction, fear, death of someone close to them, all of those things and more? People will keep trying, arguing, blaming, and maybe this vaccine will work better than the flu vaccine. Someone told me he knows someone who already got a vaccine shot. Maybe we’re close. Maybe I’ll get used to seeing half of most people’s faces and not touching anyone except the one person I live with (some people don’t even have that) and being called a selfish killer if I want to indulge in the life I used to know once in a while. The difference between COVID and the postcard I referenced at the beginning of this blog is that you don’t catch HIV or AIDS from hugging someone and you might catch COVID from being within 6’ of someone, much less hugging them.
Another difference is that when HIV and AIDS happened, society as we knew it wasn’t threatened. Businesses weren’t closed or asked to reduce their capacity to keep others away from people who might have this unknown virus and not even know it yet while exposure and transmission were figured out. Alcohol sales weren’t stopped because people might get drunk and forget to have safe sex. I think dealing with a global pandemic is difficult enough without also adjusting to the destruction of normalcy and worrying about whether we will lose our jobs and be able to find cleaning supplies and toilet paper on top of it. I think there are so many branches of worry from COVID that we can barely comprehend, process, and tolerate them all. Or, maybe that’s just me.
I gave a friend a birthday card this month that said something like, “Doctors say if we stop drinking and smoking and eat right, we’ll live longer. In fact, it might feel like forever.” Get it? Time flies when you’re having fun. The moments crawl by when you’re not. We make our choices. We assess our risks. The problem with COVID, again, is that I assess that in November of the year in which we discovered COVID, I have either dodged it for months or am asymptomatic. Lucky me! But it isn’t fair for me to decide I can expose others because I’m unaffected, since some of those people could die or live with post-effects of COVID. Also not fair is eliminating key portions of the life I have built and loved, and eliminating some people’s livelihoods, in an attempt to prevent the spread of a virus that I’m fairly certain cannot be contained.
So, what’s the solution? To voluntarily isolate everyone who doesn’t want to be exposed? How do they generate income? Do we have enough people who are willing to be exposed to continue to work and deliver supplies?
I haven’t missed a day of work due to coronavirus. I go to the grocery store because if I don’t, someone has to bring me groceries. Some stores make me bag my own groceries (because I still use my own bags – a pandemic is no time to forget about the environment, people!) and some have one-way aisles, and some don’t. I’ll discuss inconsistency later.
I go to restaurants because I very much want those businesses to survive (and I (used to) enjoy dining out). I wear masks and judge people who wear them incorrectly even while questioning if they are the great solution they’re promoted to be. I wash my hands. I use hand sanitizer. I get my temperature taken and answer COVID Qs. I try to avoid strangers and I shop online more than I used to because that seems like a better idea for everyone except the person who has to bring me things.
Inconsistent policies don’t work – people see double standards and nonsense and quit listening, especially if they are looking for an excuse not to comply – and a lot of people are.
Yesterday’s Executive Order in NC said that people must wear Face Coverings while exercising if they are outdoors and within 6′ of someone who does not reside in the exercising person’s household or indoors and not within their own home, but professional or collegiate athletes are exempt from this requirement until they are not strenuously exercising or when they are recovering from recent exercise. I’m not in great shape. Working out is challenging enough for me these days without trying to breathe hard through a mask. Wearing a mask just to run errands seems to make me extra dehydrated. Why can’t I have the strenuous exercise exemption? Is it because my exercise doesn’t lead to any financial gain?
Also in NC, ABC (liquor) stores were labeled “essential” from day one, but bars – not breweries, not wineries, not restaurants – just “bars” – have really fought to reopen, and now businesses cannot serve alcohol after something like 11pm. I also saw that Pennsylvania is banning alcohol sales tomorrow as some kind of Thanksgiving deterrent.
Across the world, international and domestic travel has been uninterrupted to my knowledge (save for some select US cities/states that I believe prevented access for a bit). How do you demonstrate to people that a global pandemic is severe and serious and must be contained by them staying home while allowing them to get on a plane and go . . . anywhere?
Back to the birthday card I gave my friend: there is no joy for me in living to be 100 and spending the next decades socially distant from everyone I love, unable to form any new, meaningful relationships, watching businesses close, nowhere to go but home and work (where I now also must wear a mask if I exit my private office, since the vast amount of hours I spend here still doesn’t count as living with these folks). The masks are the least of it, to me, because so many people have been wearing them since the beginning nearly incessantly at their jobs. Heroes don’t wear capes anymore: they wear masks.
Perhaps my frustration comes from the solutions being offered creating a world I don’t want to live in.
I am not suicidal, so don’t get the wrong idea by this post. I’m lonely, I’m angry, I’m frustrated, and I’m looking for a great solution where apparently none can be found.
And when I look for solutions . . . when I look for peace . . . when I look for change . . . when I have few options . . . I write . . .