I Hate To Tell You...

Over the pandemic, we've gotten better at giving and receiving.

You hear the news and your heart sinks. The last thing you want to do is inform people that you or a close contact has Covid and they may possibly be affected.

People have told me the hardest part of getting Covid was telling people they exposed them. Being the harbinger and/or victim has always sucked, like when the messengers delivering bad news got shot, or during the Black Death, when the dead, afflicted, and even healthy members of households were padlocked in, a red cross drawn on the door, and they were abandoned to their sad fate by fleeing neighbors.

No one wants to get sick. But according to CDC statistics, most of us have either had Covid, or will.

I have been exposed three times. Three times people I have been in close contact with tested positive the same or very next day, and three times I’ve sent out a flurry of apologetic texts. Three times I waited, dreading the responses.

In fact, that third time was four days ago.

When the pandemic began, I lived in terror of getting and/or spreading it. The vaccine made me chill (a least a tad) the fuck out, because chances were I wasn’t going to die or kill anyone.

Four days ago when I texted loved ones, the first thing everyone asked was how the person who’d contracted Covid was doing. No finger-pointing or judgement. Their default was concern, not blame. Such a considerate evolution is vital to finding our way back to each other.

The nature of successful viruses is their ability to spread, both when we let our guard down and even when we are being careful. But the nature of humanity at its best is compassion, and thankfully the end result is neither bullet nor padlock, but that hopeful light at the end of what has been a very long tunnel.