Saturday, November 14, 2020

Ounce of Prevention, Pound of Cure

I can’t tell you the number of times over the past six months when I heard people say some version of...You just wait, as soon as the election is over, you won’t hear a peep about COVID. People who say things like this are the kind of people for whom every complicated societal problem is a conspiracy foisted on the country by a confederacy of shadows. The thinking behind this claim was the notion that the only reason that COVID was being reported on in the press was because the press thought it a perfect cudgel with which to beat Donald Trump. As soon as Joe Biden won, reporting on a glorified flu would no longer serve any political purpose therefore, it would immediately disappear from the national conversation...




So, in 2020 even conspiracy theories can have off days.

I live in Virginia and we have been relatively fortunate where COVID is concerned. While my views of our governor remain that he is a colossal ass, generally speaking, his handling of this crisis has been B+ A-. Our numbers compared to most other states are great. And yesterday he reimposed restrictions on some gatherings etc.. Fine. COVID is real, it’s killing people, and it’s spreading. But, forget all of that for a moment. Set aside the potential for death that comes with a global pandemic. What I want to know is...how does all of this effect ME?? In 2020 thats all that matters, right?

For starters, COVID has cancelled my Thanksgiving. It’s complicated, but there will be no big feast at my house this year. Patrick and Sarah understandably aren’t comfortable driving nine hours to spend an afternoon crammed into a house with 18 people they haven’t seen in a year. Fortunately, Kaitlin and Jon just bought a house down in Columbia, South Carolina. The moving truck will show up at their place on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Pam and I will be there for most of the week helping them pack up and moving them into their beautiful new home. There will be lots of masks, lots of social distancing, and no Thanksgiving dinner. 

Last night we FaceTimed with our Nashville kids about Christmas Plans. That will be another fiasco, it appears. All of us desperately want to be together for Christmas. But when your family is separated by long distances during pandemics, it’s not easy. We are in the process of figuring it out. I am confident that we will somehow, someway work it out. It will most likely only be the six of us, an odd experience for someone like me from so large and gregarious a family. As a father, I’m not sure I have ever wanted to see my kids more than I do now. It has been hard during 2020 to have them living so far away, beyond me reach. Like probably every other father out there I have had to overcome an irrational desire to herd them up and bring them all home where I can protect them. But the truth is...I can’t protect them. That’s what I hate the most about COVID.

I hear stories about friends who are going forward full throttle with holiday plans, COVID be damned, convinced that it’s all just a huge misunderstanding at best or a conspiracy to make slaves of us all at worst. Ok... I wish them well. For me an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Besides, its 2020 and I’m not feeling very lucky.


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