Have reached the point of this pandemic where I have serious ethical qualms about going home for winter break, despite quarantine & test & masks & everything else I can think of to make it safer. Hell.
Okay. More or less canceled Christmas.
I mean, I am not canceling my flights until the last minute just in case SOMETHING somehow makes this safe, but the plan is now to not go home for winter break at all.
I'm not even angry at people being irresponsible individually. This kind of thing only works if the government not only regulates properly, but has earned enough trust among citizens to get the buy-in.
I'm just very sad.
Haven't seen my spouse, or my housemate in Texas, or my cats, since late August. Now not sure when I can see them again. Spring break, if I'm very lucky. (If we even have spring break. I don't know.)
Hell and damnation.
Anyway, I suspect I still would've done the selfish thing and gone home anyway if not for watching health care workers--the ones I know, the ones I don't--slowly breaking down over what's been done to them. What's continuing to happen to them. What will happen this year yet.
Maybe I could've ignored the disappointment my friends would have in me. Maybe I could convince myself that I was never a link in a chain of infection. I've been very careful! Testing, quarantine, masking, washing hands. No eating out. No parties. Nothing.
But I can't be part of making things worse for those people who are on the front lines.
They're not 'heroes', they're PEOPLE, doing their best in a job that wasn't supposed to be like this, was never expected to be like THIS when they signed up for it.
I have students missing class because so many nurses are out sick they need to take extra shifts. I have friends who are ill because despite all the precautions at work in hospitals and clinics, people in the community were less careful, around them, just ONCE.
I just can't do that to them. It's real to me in a way that numbers about the sick and dying aren't.
I know this is an argument from emotion. The numbers are the facts.
The health care workers who are collapsing and angry, that's fact too, but the emotion gets me.
Anyway. Apparently that was my line to move from 'be very careful' to 'no matter how much you want to, you cannot justify it.'
Deep down, we're all anxious monkeys. Sometimes we gotta feel a thing before we can believe it properly.
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I've been saying this in various replies, but might as well stop repeating and put it here, for my tiny audience of (let me check) 1086 people, of which I assume about 500 are bots.
So, Thanksgiving last year. In the ER.
I woke up with abdominal pain. Thought it was unexpectedly untimely cramps, but it was relentless and horrible. I canceled plans to meet up with friends. Could barely take the dog to the patio. Friends online convinced me to go to the ER. (I took a rideshare.)
The ER was, unexpectedly, nearly empty. Staff had me checked in at the desk (with a handy vomit bag, which I had to use before finishing my paperwork) within five minutes, in a bed within ten. They said it's like that; Thanksgiving is always either empty or overwhelmed.
God, do I feel up to watching the live stream for tonight's announcement? I'm not sure. Maybe if they spend at least 50% less time on talking up Minnesotan virtues before giving the facts.
Okay, I'll watch it, but while playing Hades. I can pause whenever it's important.
Ah, they're using the term "paused" for a bunch of things that need to be, uh, not done to reduce the number of people dying. So there's that.
No in-person dining, gyms, sports, theaters. Personal gatherings, parties, receptions. Inside and outside.