I'm posting this late because I didn't post it when it was fresh, but it makes points about the US health care system and generally callous society. It was written November 24 in a hotel room on my way to Delaware. I did manage to travel almost entirely without human contact. I saw fewer people than I do in a normal week at home, because I was not at my job.
The Covid-19 pandemic rages across the country. Absolutely every public health expert says to stay home and seal up your pod. So what am I doing? I'm driving almost 500 miles to visit my wife where she works for the school year.
I believe public health experts. Living under recommended isolation hasn't been very different from how I normally live. That probably gives me an advantage over the habitually gregarious. But everyday life has still become intensely stressful for anyone who cares about beating this illness.
Contagious illness needs contact to spread. Some pathogens can hitch on inanimate objects to create contact without person-to-person proximity. Think of food borne illnesses and noroviruses. Covid-19 spreads more easily when people are close enough together for long enough to spread respiratory droplets and particles from one to another. It can also spread from surfaces, but we're told that is a minor concern compared to transmission through shared air. Even so, a frequently touched surface like a gas pump nozzle on the busiest travel weekend of the year could infect dozens, especially if its viral load is augmented by numerous infected people glomming onto it in the course of a busy day.
So what the hell am I doing out here? I'm one of the good guys: I masked up fairly early, I avoid group activities, I shop quickly and efficiently and get the hell out of the grocery store. I believe the doctors who say we should take precautions, and the health care providers from nurses on down who warn us that they are getting overloaded, and some of them are dying because people who could be careful haven't been.
The decision to travel was not made lightly or easily. Its roots go back to the late 1990s, when a woman pulled me out of relationship retirement. She was smart and funny and talented and liked what I like and we clicked. We wouldn't find out for a few years that she's also incurably ill.
Isn't that just like something out of a melodramatic movie? Grumpy guy has decided that love is not for him. Old friend shows up and friendship blossoms into love. That's Hallmark enough. The sickness just bumps it up to "oh please" level of cornball tear jerking.
Because we live in America, she's had to go where she can find work that provides insurance. Because it's America, the insurance won't cover the kidney transplant that would give her the best odds to extend her life more than a few years. But at least it covers a lot of the preliminaries and maybe the dialysis until she can no longer work and therefore loses the insurance coverage. Life is cheap, people. Most of us are not worth investing in.
Her numbers are getting worse. The job she took is in a town where she doesn't know anyone, and the pandemic precautions make it very hard for her to get to know anyone. She'd rather be home, but home proved quite infertile for her career. She faces everything by herself while I maintain our home as best I can. A couple of months ago when she asked if I would consider coming down for Thanksgiving I did not hesitate. And I hate traveling at Thanksgiving, especially down through the East Coast Megalopolis, even when a deadly disease isn't rampaging unchecked.
I suppose if I was worth a shit I would make enough money to support us both and keep us together in one place or another.
