Wait…What?

I consider nothing human is alien to me Photo: Villa Cimbrone, Ravello

Terence - 2nd century BC

Uh, do you know people who aren’t understanding what’s going on in the world? 

Not those backpackers who have been in the back country or people isolated on vacation in the Bahamas.  I’m talking about people who are living in their regular homes with access to news.  

I’m talking about the ones who know there’s a deadly, very contagious virus roaming the planet that has governments worldwide asking people to stay home because it is the only way to try to thwart contagion because we’re still trying to figure out how this virus works and without comprehensive testing, isolation is our only viable strategy of coming out of this physically alive.  

I’m talking about the ones who, despite knowing this, despite living where lockdown has been the law of the land for over a month now, still choose not to stay home. Who choose to gather for a 29th birthday. Who go for walks together just to get out of the house.  Who think, yeah well, we’re young, we’re healthy, so we’re ok, never thinking that their choices may impact people they don’t even know…

Are these people just stupid or just extremely selfish without any sense of moral responsibility?

Without comprehensive testing there is no way to tell who is a carrier of this virus other than those who have already fallen ill or those who for some reason have been able to be tested. Most of us won’t know if we are asymptomatic carriers of the virus.  Or even when we might become a carrier. This means at any given time when in proximity of others (and given that total isolation is impossible - we have to be out to get food and for other essential reasons) we are at risk of contaminating others or of being contaminated ourselves due to the existence of asymptomatic carriers. The virus hangs out in the air. That’s just fact at this point.  Masks and gloves should help.  They think.  But since we still don’t know a lot about this virus yet, the orders are to limit contact with others as much as is possible. That is what will keep everyone the safest.  And everyone is expected to understand this and do his or her part.

It’s called moral responsibility. 

Gathering with others who are not isolating means party time for the virus.  You can just see them rubbing those little suction cup hands of theirs together in anticipation.  Some of them get in to the gathering by hitching a ride on someone who unsuspectingly walked through a patch of air where it and its friends were hanging out (having come off another walker or supermarket shopper a couple of hours before).  Then at the gathering, everyone sharing food, drinks, laughs, the viruses have a choice of many to choose from as new hosts.  Once inside a new host, the virus uses that body to multiply.  Maybe that host will get sick in time.  Maybe not.  Everyone there at the gathering, after all, isn’t that old, and everyone is pretty healthy.  But getting sick isn’t really what the virus is after.  It just wants to multiply as much as possible.  So riding around on an asymptomatic person, hey… that’s about the best the virus can ask for in this world void of comprehensive testing.  It can just continue its covert operation of multiplying and then sending its stealth bombing offspring out into the air to hopefully land on another unsuspecting host.

Once the gathering is over and the virus has had its own private party without anyone knowing, the gatherers continue their not-so-stay-at-home life and the virus realizes that it has hit the jackpot with this crowd.  Offspring are able to eventually spread to other hosts. The party continues because we’re not living in total isolation.  Somewhere down the line of the unsuspecting contagion may even be an elderly grandmother whose age means her immune system just isn’t that strong. She does get sick. Bummer for the virus who landed on her as the host, because, well, that body died pretty quickly and didn’t allow for much time for the virus to use the host’s body to multiply.  Mission thwarted. Damn. 

Grandma, who is also someone’s mother, dies in the hospital. Alone. Without any loved one to hold her hand.  Without any family or friend being able to say goodbye. Or being able to say thank you. If she’s lucky, there might be a small funeral that a few family members can attend in hazmat suits. The rest of the family and friends will have to attend via a zoom video chat on a computer. 

I’m being a bit dramatic, you say? Maybe.  But this scenario is very possible.  Maybe even probable. 

What is dramatic to me is recognizing how different people’s values are.  Different from mine anyway. But I should know that. Not that I’m necessarily right (though I’d like to be). But I’m human, part of a very flawed species that seems might be going the way of the virus sooner than we think. Unless maybe there’s a vaccine for ignorance and moral irresponsibility?

Those leisurely walks, the supposedly innocent get-togethers, the disregard for laws stipulating rules to keep us all - US ALL - as safe as possible? That just paves the way for the unwanted gift that keeps on giving.  

It can start with a 29th birthday gathering.

It can end with a funeral on zoom. 

Party over. 

Thanks.  Thanks a lot.