Everyone is taking the pandemic seriously

Accompanying the deadly pandemic, at least in the US, has been another pathogen with an equally powerful potential to poison the populace: pandemic tension. (Please forgive me, for I have alliterated)

This is the tension one feels when a friend or family member is “not taking the pandemic seriously,” and as a result, they cannot see each other as frequently, or at all. The person who has been judged as not taking the pandemic seriously may feel offended and misunderstood. And the person judging them may feel outraged that the other is risking lives for frivolous reasons.

It can be quite serious in co-living situations, where co-habitants have differing ideas on what is safe, such that everyone all of the sudden dreads being in their own home.

If you want to find out what’s safe to do in the United States, you can consult one of 3,523 different sources, do your own analysis, and synthesize some conclusions. Also, conveniently, if you don’t like the fact that there is a pandemic, there are at least as many sources (including, until recently, the President of the United States) , who would agree with you and tell you that it wasn’t a big deal.

This has caused precautionary behavior to exist on a similar spectrum of “slob” and “neat freak,” as in my previous post, where everyone could be technically correct.

“But, Emily! Surely people who don’t wear masks aren’t correct!”

No, of course they’re not. Just like in a cleaning the stove situation, where there are actual oil globlets that can be observed and must be cleaned up in order for it to be clean, the virus is real, and there are actual things that you can do in order to make it less happy and spready.

We just don’t have one itemized list of exactly what those are, tailored for our unique situations. One is a key word there. It would be better if there were just one. Instead, we have to make decisions about things that “feel” safe, which is always a bad idea, because feelings may or may not correlate to the actual presence of danger.

There should be some kind of official Dear Abbey, but for coronavirus things. The information should be the most accurate, and legally-binding. And it should let me do all of the things that I want. (Just kidding)