Would it help if we could itemize every lost or misbegotten soul,
Enter every name in vellum registry?
Would it summarize my life to list every object
I have touched with these two hands?
-Campbell McGrath from "The Mercy Supermarket"
Dedicated to the one million who have died from Covid, and to the friends, family, colleagues. spouses and significant others they have left behind.
It's been almost a month since I wrote a "Virus Without Borders" post, but yesterday my small town in upstate New York went on emergency alert. Numbers are up, masks are strongly suggested, and restaurants and bars will be allowed to set up outside tables in the coming weeks without special permits.
So here we are again, or still. Meanwhile, the long Covid cases accumulate, nearly 7 million Americans in all, including me, and research projects are underway. All this, my readers will undoubtedly already know. I am reiterating it here as a prelude to the ongoing discussion about individual responsibility as I was faced with a moral dilemma this week when a friend called to ask if an anti-vaxxer friend of hers, who finally caught Covid, and is still testing positive, should teach a weekly scheduled dance class in a local art center, a class which she attends.
I concede that protocols and instructions are confusing these days, but this was a no-brainer for me: Don't let me near that person, please. I don't want to get Covid again. And keep her away from others, if at all possible, until she tests negative. This is what I told my friend, who passed it along to her friend, who passed it along to her friend, and so on. It was just an opinion, my opinion, not a mandate, not a law, no enforcement possible.
I still had a moral conundrum, though. Now that I know there is a woman walking around town positive, going to work, and threatening to teach a class in a public space, what do I do? What can I do? If I do nothing, I am complicit. At least that is how it feels to me. So I called the Chief of Police for advice. He's a thoughtful and empathic man who grew up in the community and still lives here. At first he said that it was up to me whether or not I exposed myself to someone positive, which I had no intention of doing. And then he suggested a call to the Ulster County Department of Health, to what end I am not sure, perhaps for more advice. But that was the day everyone had gone home early because of a tornado watch. So, there was no answer. By the next morning, I'd slipped the knowledge of the super spreader person to the back of my mind and slowly, painstakingly, repotted my rescued basil plant. Someone had left it on the front lawn, maybe for the deer, I wasn't sure. It's doing well, which I can attribute to giving it lots of light, water and tender loving care. If only we could do the same for one another.