It is now four months since Carolina Meadows effectively
went into quarantine, and as you can well imagine we residents are growing
impatient with the constraints imposed on our normal lifestyle. At first, we
were told not to leave the premises save for medical appointments, after
returning from which we were to self quarantine for 14 days. As I think I
reported on this blog, after several months of this regime we were permitted to
drive off campus to pick up takeout from local restaurants, something that I
have done on five or six occasions, each time having the restaurant put the
food in the trunk of my car so that I did not have to get out of the car and
interact with anybody. More recently still, following the guidelines laid down
by Gov. Cooper, the constraints on us have been further relaxed.
Now if one thinks about it purely from the point of view of
the virus, none of this progressive relaxation makes any sense whatsoever. The
number of cases has been growing steadily in North Carolina, and Chatham County,
where we are located, is, I believe, the third or fourth of the 100 counties
with the highest per capita incidence of infection. We are all painfully aware
of the constraints on our activities and many of us feel extremely virtuous for
having abided so religiously to the guidelines laid down by the managers of
Carolina Meadows – even though, of course, these conscientious managers have no
way of enforcing their regulations on the 850 of us. But the virus does not
attend to our conscientiousness and pass over us like the angel of death in the
Bible. Since the virus is more widely present in Chatham County now than it was
four months ago we ought, strictly speaking, be more vigilant, not less.
This irrationality of response is intensified by the
politicization of the pandemic. No one I know would be so foolish as to say or
even consciously think that having the right politics is the second best thing
to being vaccinated, but I suspect there is a primitive preconscious sense that
our rectitude will be rewarded.
All of which means that it will be a long time before I see
Paris again, and in the interim, there will be a great deal of handwashing as
well as handwringing and a good deal of compulsive sanitizing of food
containers that enter the little protected world that Susan and I call our
apartment.
5 comments:
We've been confined for over 120 days now. We can only leave our homes twice a week with permission obtained online from the police to go food shopping, to a pharmacy, to a bank or to a doctor. No permissions granted to go for a walk. At times the police website to obtain the permission collapses and you cannot get a permission in advance.
Just today the authorities decided that in several wealthier municipalities (what people call "Santiago" is divided into many smaller municipalities each with their own mayor) people can now leave their homes at will during the week, although not on weekends.
Those wealthier municipalities have a lower Covid rate for obvious reasons: people live in homes with several bathrooms whereas many poor people rent rooms and share bathrooms with other families. People have cars and thus, do not use crowded public transportation. Everybody can afford alcohol gel and various germ-killing sprays which are now featured in supermarkets, etc. People have better diets and better access to health care if they get infected, etc.
So the poor and the middle class are screwed once again, since not only do they get sick and die in greater numbers, but they do not even have the basic liberty to take a walk when they please.
I do not live in one of the wealthier municipalities and I confess that I do take short daily walks without permission. 120 days without any exercise will atrophy your muscles at my age at least and getting outside is vital for my sanity. So as I used to say when I was a kid back in the 60's and smoked an illegal joint, fuck them!
Patient: Hey doc, when do you thing this pandemic will end?
Dr. Fauci: I don't know. I'm a doctor, not a politician.
--Dave F.
Bart Simpson: "I have to go back to school at the height of pandemic."
Homer Simpson's words of comfort: "The height of the pandemic so far."
S. Wallerstein: I like your attitude!
Christopher Mulvaney,
Thank you very much for your words of support. They mean a lot to me.
By the way, although it's probably not necessary, let me add that since the pandemia began, I have not left my apartment even to put the garbage in the garbage chute without a mask, in the street I try to keep a distance of 2 meters from other pedestrians and if needed, I walk in the street to maintain that separation and if I touch anything, I immediately apply alcohol gel, which I always have in my jacket pocket, to my hands.
Stay safe...
s. wallerstein,
I am a high-risk individual and, like yourself, have maintained a fairly strict quarantine protocol. My wife is the dean of academic affairs for the UNM Health Sciences Center so I am fortunate to be able to keep abreast of the latest statistics. Unfortunately, the numbers don't look good.
Stay healthy!
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