In the first half of March, my wife became a Work-from-Home-Mom. Her employer was quick to respond to the COVID-19 threat by allowing anyone who could work from home to do so, and soon after mandated that. We've now been social-distancing for over a month. Here's what that's primarily consisted of:
- We cancelled all travel plans through the summer.
- When we started, we took a couple of trips to the local park to walk our dog, but gave up due to other people not respecting the six foot minimum, forcing us to drive our stroller through mud to avoid them. Since then I've been taking the dog to an empty parking lot after dark to get exercise.
- We've been ordering our groceries for pick up or delivery, and limiting our trips to once a week, loading up with as much stuff as possible in a single trip. We did curbside pickup at Home Depot once and went to several restaurants to get curbside pickup, but have since largely shifted to delivery for food and ship-to-home for everything else. My wife made one trip to the local post office to drop off a package, and one trip to the bank to cash a check.
- Out of total desperation because of insufficient baby supplies - I have been into Wal-Mart twice since this began, and my wife has gone in there once. Both times I was in the store I used self-checkout to limit face-to-face interactions, but it was busy, and few people aside from the employees were taking any protective measures.
- My wife made masks for us out of pillow cases, and we've been wearing them since the CDC said to. Even before that, though, we were not only washing our hands thoroughly after such trips, but also throwing our clothes directly into the wash with disinfecting detergent, disinfecting our phones, wallets, etc., and showering.
- We had someone come out to test our water; they were supposed to follow social distancing recommendations, but didn't. I took the baby, left the room, and refused to interact with the man. My wife hurried him off as quickly as possible.
The fact that other people in our area haven't been taking this seriously isn't too surprising. We live in a fairly small backwoods town in Eastern Tennessee, hours away from the hardest hit cities in our state. Even now, our state health website reports only 16 cases of COVID-19 in our county, and only one fatality.
Over the course of this seemingly interminable bottle episode, my wife has experienced tightness in her chest, and I've experienced some symptoms easily connectable to spring yard work. We've both been fatigued, which is attributable to first year parenthood. We've both had intestinal discomfort, likewise easily attributable to our current delivery-heavy diet, and I had a low fever that lasted no more than a couple of hours and never returned. Our 8.5 month old infant has had no unusual symptoms beyond clinginess and irregular sleep. He's been playing hard and eating well.
When drive-through testing was offered last Wednesday to anyone with symptoms, we stayed in, as neither of us considered ourselves to be 'symptomatic'. When it turned out few people in our county attended the drive-through testing, we were told it was open to asymptomatic people. We made an appointment for Friday, to help the state develop a more accurate account of the virus's spread. It sucked, but once we got through the line, it was over quick. Tonight (Sunday), I got an unexpected call - turns out, I tested positive.
I have COVID-19, and I had no real reason at all to think that I did, nor would anyone interacting with me. Every symptom I might have had was fleeting to the point of potentially being the result of error, or easily explained away as normal discomfort and inconvenience. We're still waiting to find out what the situation is for my wife. It's phenomenally unlikely she doesn't have it, but I think that they now have so many positive cases, they can't spare the time to call people who tested negative.
I effectively have a concealed weapon that kills randomly and requires no permit to carry. I could 100% walk into one of those 'Operation Gridlock' or 'ReOpen Tennessee' rallies being planned, and breathe on every maskless person there; no one would have any reason to question my presence, and those military-style AR-15s they'd brought to protect themselves would do jack all to help them. When I think about the fact that all the people there will be protesting the sacrifices their neighbors have been making to protect society as a whole, I find it tempting - after all, they've been warned of the danger and showed up anyway, so would it really be my fault if some of them got sick? If some of them died?
Yes, it would.
And even if it weren't my responsibility to protect them from their own stupidity, there's no telling how many of the people at the rally would become asymptomatic carriers just like I am, and spread the disease to their family, friends, and neighbors.
So, rather than engage in lazy bioterrorism, I'm going to stay home for another 14 days, check my temperature obsessively, and hope that I continue to be as fortunate as I have been so far. I hope the rest of you who can stay home will continue to do so. However, for those of you who are planning to protest the necessary closures in our state, I hope you will ask yourself some questions:
How many asymptomatic carriers in your area will have been tested?
How many of the people in your area would believe the test if it came back positive?
How many of those who do accept the test results, would choose to show up at your rallies anyway? How many would think that their right to assemble outweighs the risk they pose to you? How many would think that they're furthering some survival of the fittest philosophy? How many would believe that God will protect you and your family if you're worthy of God's love (and not give a damn about you if you aren't)? How many people out there would show up and infect you, just because they are total assholes?
Think carefully about those questions, and then ask yourself again, how badly do you really want to go play rebel-without-a-brain with your dumbass friends?
