Covid Virgins

Should Bill and I continue to guard our Covid virginity like medieval maidens? Do we stay in the tower? 

I am wracked with cognitive dissonance. One minute, I think, “I am going to die, and take Bill with me!” And then I go, “I should just enjoy my life.” 

I am jealous of my friends’ trips and family parties. Oh, those beaming smiles on FaceBook! I disapprove that they are possibly fueling the pandemic. I miss connecting with my family and friends. Is my suffering even necessary? For months, I hesitated to see my stylist to cut my Rapunzel-length hair. This is crazy-making.

For some, the pandemic is over. And why not? There have been five rounds of vaccines. Even if they got Covid, it would be like the flu or a cold, right? 

Unless they died. Covid killed over 350,000 people in 2022. That’s equal to the entire population of St. Louis City. Four out of five of those deaths were in my “65 and over” age group.  

Unless they got long Covid – one estimate is that 15% of people who get Covid suffer lingering ill effects, including death. (The first time I heard of “long-haul Covid,” I thought that Covid was raging through the trucking community.)

Unless some new variant pops up. Each new infection allows the virus to make billions of copies of itself. You get a variant when there’s not a perfect copy. The current variant sweeping across the country is XBB.1.5, the most transmissible subvariant that has been detected yet.

I thought it might help to know how Americans behaved at the end of the “Spanish” flu pandemic a hundred years ago. In that spirit, I read Blood and Ink: The Scandalous Jazz Age Double Murder that Hooked America on True Crime. The author is Vanity Fair writer Joe Pompeo. It was published just this fall.

The salient point for me was not the murder of the adulterously involved Reverend Edward Hall and Mrs. Eleanor Mills. Nor was it that their bodies were posed under a crabapple tree. Nor was my interest the tabloid sensation that the murders caused.

I picked this book because the murders happened in September 1922, four years into the flu epidemic. Influenza peaked in waves due to mutations, just as we suffered with Covid’s Delta and Omicron variants. How did people’s behavior change four years after the start of influenza, even though that virus was still causing illness? 

And the answer? According to Blood and Ink, “Those who survived were eager to let loose.” Which they did! The flappers, Jazz Age swingers, bootleggers, tabloid press hustlers, and mobs of murder gawkers paid not a whit of attention to the risk of catching influenza. 

The consequence of a society ignoring an epidemic was, not surprisingly, thousands of deaths. The government gave up on social-distance restrictions, and the newspapers buried the death reports in the back pages. Not getting sick became a personal responsibility. Sounds familiar. 

Was this book useful? Actually, it helped me a lot. It seems we pay lip service to caring about infections, but our behavior reveals that we are creatures of short-term gratification. I imagine we always have been. 

In the same way today, no one needs to be ocean-cruising, pub-crawling, or cheering the Blues on with their 15,000 best friends. How about birthdays, anniversaries, weddings, graduations? Needs or wants? And what’s with not bothering to get a booster? 

These get-togethers have had consequences. Many holiday events were cancelled because someone caught Covid. My grandson Edin’s Covid infection made them miss Hannukah with their other grandparents. Just this week, attendees at the Golden Globe Awards – Jamie Lee Curtis, Michelle Pfeiffer, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, among others – have tested Covid positive. They will miss award shows down the road, such as the Critics’ Choice. 

I miss impromptu invites to visitors to stay for dinner. I miss sharing rides. I miss eating in restaurants. St. Louis doesn’t have the weather for year-round al fresco dining. In one way, I feel left out, inhospitable, and unreasonable. 

At the same time, I really don’t want to share the air in a car with anybody. I don’t want someone’s saliva to inadvertently fly my way while eating and drinking. I don’t want to feel my dancing partner’s breath. 

What distresses me the most is that, despite batting the words around, few are “following the science.” Science would call for being fully vaccinated and boosted. Science would call for having large gatherings outdoors. Science would call for masking indoors. 

Most importantly, following the science means acting according to the fluctuating Covid statistics. I have tried to do that. 

I relaxed my isolation right after I got the initial vaccines. I visited our son Greg in Madison, Wisconsin. Then, Delta struck, and I locked down again. When Delta subsided, I drove to Charlottesville to visit son Alex and family. Then, the Omicron tsunami of the 2021-2022 winter landed. When infections hit one million new cases on January 18, 2022, I became a hermit again. 

Is anyone else looking at the CDC stats? The post-holiday Covid infection and death rate bump is for real. 

What worries me is the non-scientific approach many have taken to gauge their behavior:

I didn’t get sick flying, so flying has to be ok. 

I didn’t get sick from that concert, so concerts are okay.

 I’ve eaten in that diner, so dining indoors must be ok. 

I didn’t get sick going to this or that gathering, so it must be okay. 

This is not Science! This is being lucky.

I understand the dilemma. Even for me, if the infection/hospitalization/death rate goes up, do I give up my weekly, scheduled tennis game? It’s really hard to put the mask back on after taking a sip or bite. It’s the Covid equivalent of “mission creep.” We give ourselves permission to do more and more, regardless of changing circumstances.

Currently, I dance only with Bill, go to the Symphony and opera, buy groceries, vote, attend funerals and walk into the golf clubhouse – with my mask on. Bill and I continue striving to keep our Covid virginity!

Reading Blood and Ink, I learned that people a century ago didn’t “ease out” of the influenza pandemic. They ran full tilt in pursuit of their desires. 

As with all my friends who are catching up on three years of Carnival cruises. 

Tell me: What Covid precautions are you taking at this point?