Lingering Thoughts About the Virus
By Charles E. Kraus
The conventions are over. The virus continues.
Did I? Should I? If I. An endless loop of pandemic thoughts play in my head.
I'm wondering If during one of my few, essential outings, someone, somewhere -- by some fluke, by an alignment of circumstances, caused just enough airborne virus to penetrate my procedures, my protective gear, my good intentions. I'm feeling fine. Now. But that lingering thought says -- How will today's activities effect me tomorrow? Was I asymptomatic when the family came calling? Were they? Everybody is back home seemingly doing well. Today. But tomorrow? Did I give them something? Or receive pandemic particles bound for my already shaky old lungs?
I'm constantly weighing odds and outcomes.
My wife and I are seniors. These days we conduct most of our lives over the internet. Or call in our orders. But, they never get it right. Dumb substitutions. Choices we wouldn't make if shopping on our own. Didn't they see that I specified low fat? My wife wants to go to Safeway in person, just this one time. Or to Trader Joes during senior hours. Maybe I should go? Maybe not.
I go. I'm cautious. Am I foolish?
First time I've visited a grocery store in months. I'm impressed with the glass panels between customers and cashiers. And the very responsible cliental, everyone keeping their distance. I take a squirt of sanitizer as I leave, and after rubbing it on my hands and the cart handle, I use the excess to coat the coins I've received at check out. Pushing the cart through the parking lot, I am trying to decide when it's appropriate to remove my mask.
Now comes the lingering after thought. Did I catch anything? Will I know tomorrow? Next week? When do I declare this a safe and successful outing?
Visit a store, see your kids, go to a doctor's appointment or just bring an Amazon package into your kitchen and wipe it down with alcohol. The next thing you know, you are suffering from the thought, if not the virus. Did some portion of now set in motion a catastrophic event? Is something, anything I'm doing at the moment, going to become part of a process that leads to my becoming a Covid 19 statistic? The prospect does cross my mind.
Novel corona virus is stealth. Until it isn't. You seem to be OK. You might be fine. Probably that's the case. But tomorrow, or next week might finding you forming a different conclusion. Life takes place every day. What you do tomorrow may have consequences further down the road. What you do in two days, in four, at any point in the near future, could possibly prove deadly. Before long. Or not.
Like I said, an endless paranoid loop of pandemic maybe plays and plays in my head.
Charles E. Kraus is the author of "You'll Never Work Again In Teaneck, NJ."
