And Then A Tree Fell Down
I don't know that I could have admitted it to myself, but I just wanted it all to go away. And there, in New Orleans, for a few days, it seemed like it had.
-Alexis C. Madrigal, co-founder, the COVID Tracking Project, in The Atlantic, 11/9/21
Torrential rain again and predictable flash flooding last Friday. I got caught trying to make it from the gym to my car. It wasn't as though I hadn't checked my weather app numerous times before leaving the house and was taken by surprise. I was not surprised.
Why do we do this to ourselves? What was preventing me from accepting the facts? I was determined to slice in a work out to my busy day, so I just kept on going. Had I checked if we had enough water stored, or replaced the batteries in the flashlights, or stocked up on candles? I had not.
The psychologists call this denial, a refusal to accept imminent danger and/or a way of coping with endemic danger. But even the word endemic is challenging. COVID is already endemic. When and how will we accept this? Double vaccinated, Alexis Madrigal, who has been writing about COVID since the pandemic began, decided to risk a trip to a friend's wedding in New Orleans. He came home sick, upending his family's life for several weeks. Does it matter that he wasn't very sick? Not really, he explains in The Atlantic article. Unwittingly, unintentionally, he'd taken a calculated risk and endangered his elderly relatives and his still unvaccinated children.
How does a calculated risk work? I know, for example, that if the dead tree across the road is not taken down, if I don't report it to the town out of laziness or disregard, it will fall on the wires just outside our house. There'll be a power outage, as there was after the torrential rain and high winds last Friday, and then we'll have to deal with that immediate calamity having denied that it might happen.
In addition to denial, a fatalism sets in: Okay, bring it on, I'll get sick. But I'm not going to take any more precautions. Get moving, get back into the flow of life. Winter is coming, it's getting dark so early, we have to get out, see friends and family, all those postponed hugs.
Last night I went to the theater on the SUNY New Paltz campus for the first time since COVID hit. Strict protocols were in place—vaccine and mask mandate—and the audience was sparse. Even the student actors were masked, tested weekly during rehearsal. I felt safe, or safe enough, and so pleased to be at a live performance again. Tomorrow I'm taking a 90-minute bus ride into the city to meet a cousin visiting from Seattle. There is no way I wouldn't do this for her, and for me. What will it feel like at Port Authority after so many months avoiding what many have called "the armpit of New York?" Will I be able to use the bathroom there? Will I be able to walk on the streets of the city without my mask? Should I?
I think our minds and hearts trick us at times, tell us all is okay when it is not yet okay and may never be entirely okay. A fatalism sets in and we cocoon ourselves in a fugue state. Then reality pierces our well-being: COVID is endemic, too many people are still unvaccinated, Dr. Fauci warns there may be more variants, and we have to live with COVID now, and still, and for the foreseeable future. Will it get easier? I hope so.