The covid-19 crisis has certainly upended things. Our old world went away around the time we got back from a March cruise, one of the last to go out and come back infection free. Since then, pandemic avoidance went from being weird to rote. I don’t know how to leave the house anymore without putting on a mask. It seems unnatural not to.
Of course, a lot of people are still getting covid-19 with 200,000 of us dead from it and rising steadily. This is mostly due to the fact that they can’t avoid exposure easily, but also because a lot of people are morons, refuse to wear masks and attend events like a massive South Dakota bikers rally which is estimated to cause 250,000 new covid-19 cases. With a 3% fatality rate, that’s 7500 people right there, mostly people who didn’t go to the rally but caught it from someone who attended the rally. Our idiot president of course continues to cheer on these morons.
I thought my 55+ community would be especially vulnerable to getting the disease, but I was wrong. First, we’re almost all white. Second, we are probably disproportionately rich-ish. Some of us have second homes and RVs. In any event, our kids are gone and social isolation is not that big a deal. Community parties are out but we can chat in the street or at the mail kiosk from a safe social distance. The older the resident is though, the less I see them outside, and their masks look especially high quality and taut. So, no fatalities here, thank goodness.
In general, we’ve been lucky. Massachusetts was one of the worst hit states when the pandemic began. Now we are one of the best states to avoid getting covid-19. It hit hard but our governor and mayors quickly did sensible stuff. Our county still gets dozens of new covid-19 infections every week, but fatalities are now rare. Some of the college students have returned to Smith, U Mass Amherst and the rest, but most are tele-educating from afar.
I still see a lot of unmasked people on my daily walks, despite the prominent signs even on the trails saying masks are required. About a third aren’t wearing masks but no one seems to be getting cited by the police. The rest of us either keep them on, or like me (I sheepily confess) don them when I’m in fifty feet or so of someone walking toward me. Being retired, to the extent I work, I work from home. I can understand why people working in the public would not want to wear one. I am glad for any opportunity to doff my mask.
So, I see the likelihood of me getting covid-19 to be miniscule. We’re used to not doing anything in public. If it is, it’s outdoors. There’s a grill run from a trailer along the side of the road a few miles from here. You can eat outdoors on their metal tables, properly socially distanced, and we have twice so far. It’s hardly fine dining, but it’s going to a restaurant, sort of, and beggars can’t be choosing.
At home, no one gets in or out of our house without masks on, except us. This has one downside though: no one comes to visit us. And really there’s nowhere for us to go either. Life is safe but more than a little bit boring.
And while millions are struggling to get by, or simply aren’t getting by, we are swimming in money. This is in part because we have fewer places to spend it. Also, my work from home business is going very well. I’ve had a couple of long term, commercial rate paying contracts. The work is generally engaging and really unnecessary, as we don’t need the money. It does however stave off boredom. It’s nice to be paid well to move bits around the Internet. Meanwhile the pension keeps getting deposited monthly. With no mortgage or debt of any kind, we could live much more expansively if we had some place to spend the money.
And that’s a problem. I actually want to spend money but can’t find anything to spend it on. This has resulted in us donating more to charity, but it’s monetary donations. Volunteering has stopped, although it may restart soon. Our house is just five years old so it doesn’t need much. I did find one thing to spend money on: having someone come in and put in a duct to the outside for our stove. We might put a bathroom in upstairs, but as that would be a project spanning weeks, it’s too dangerous right now with contractors.
Vacations are theoretically possible but virtually impossible. Our daughter hopes to drive up and visit us in November, but it may not be legal for her to do so. She’d have to quarantine before or after coming, and since she works as a 911 operator, she can’t do that from home. The alternative is to get a negative covid-19 test shortly before coming up. Legally she would need to report her arrival to the State of Massachusetts. Violations cost up to $500/day. She’s a hermit by nature but even so we’d be a little leery to have her simply because if she did pass covid-19 onto us, we would be particularly at risk.
So, there’s a lot of killing time around here. Innumerable days seems to pass by. We can’t tell weekdays from weekends except by looking at the date on the newspaper. We’re both introverted, but we also know we need more social interaction than we are getting. Maybe that’s why I’m walking in the afternoon. It’s sort of social to say hello passing strangers on a trail or sidewalk.
Of course, we all want what we can’t have. For many Republicans who swallowed the Trump Kool-Aid, they don’t seem to care enough to remain socially isolated and wear masks when not. Maybe for an extreme extrovert, the risks of infection are worth it.
I want what I can’t have: another cruise, or a fancy trip to Europe and normally we would just go ahead and do it, particularly with all this money we have amassed from cooling our heels for six months. It’s gotten such that with rising markets I’m thinking when we do travel again, maybe we’ll just fly business class. But right now, international travel is almost impossible, and visiting most states requires a host of protocols and conditions that make it more hassle than it is worth. So, you take comfort where you can.
Like going to the Best Buy. I went to the one in Holyoke a few weeks ago. The salesmen wore masks and kept a physical distance. In the past they would have been all over me, but the Best Buy looked sad and they happily let me fend for myself. Their shelves were half empty. I found what I was looking for, but the activity still cheered me up. It was a small, diminished example of something I used to take for granted, but is now so rare it feels like a treat.
Meanwhile, time to keep hunkering down and pass another day.
Occam's Razor 