JANUARY 10, MONDAY

I‘M CONFUSED, I‘M SCARED, I‘M BEWILDERED

Today‘s post is going to be a very short one and not a very profound one, more a confession and a way of facing my fears, than advice to anyone else. It is a meditation on what it is like to be in the middle of a bewildering pandemic, because that is what has weighed on my mind today and I can‘t think of anything else to write about.

I am 84 years old and know that most of the severe illness and deaths so far in the pandemic have happened to people over 65. I am almost twenty years over 65. I have mild diabetes. My blood glucose level this morning was 102 and yesterday it was 100. 100 is in the normal range. There is not arbitrary line. I have been in this range for years and until recently was comfortingly prediabetic. I am overweight. My mother was overweight when she died at 98, my brother was overweight when he died at 75. Overweight people are more likely to get severely sick. I really don‘t know what risk those three things-age, weight, diabetes-make me have and I don‘t want to think about it.

On the other hand, I am not working and interacting with people at work. I have a retirement income. I am not living in a house full of people. My family is not coming to visit me. Studies in China show that transmission happens mainly in the home. The second place of risk is public transportation: subway or bus. I am avoiding both of those while in Swannanoa.

I do know that in Greece where I knew almost no one except for Efi my landlady and Wolfgang, another lodger, and was outside most of the time I ran very little risk of getting Covid. I know that in Germany where Kathe‘s friends were so hospitable and we had many unmasked family dinners and nights of card playing with children and adults crowded around the table that I was in much more danger of catching Covid, even though every restaurant and store and church asked me to show my vaccination card and even though at the outdoor Christmas market I was required to wear a mask.

I know that the greatest danger that I have been in in. the United States is at the family Christmas at my son‘s house with the whole family there even though I was masked most of the time. And I know that the week in Rehoboth Beach with Todd‘s family and friends, even though we were mostly masked and tested, was a time when I was much more likely to contract Covid there than here alone in my house.

I know that all along by being vaccinated and boosted and being with careful people that I have been fairly safe.

Now I am about to travel again in two weeks. I know that I will know no one in Barcelona, Spain and Essouria, Morocco, and that I will almost all of the time either be in my room by myself, or masked up when I go out of the room, or walking the streets outdoors in the fresh air taking photographs. I will not do much sightseeing or visiting of museums. I will live in those places as a single old person in isolation as the other old people in those towns will be doing and be in no more risk than they are. I‘ve been told that airplanes are the safest form of transportation. All of us will be masked, all will have had a negative test, all will be vaccinated. I will comparatively safe while traveling.

But as with everyone, I am guessing, all of my calm reasoning doesn‘t take away my anxiety. I know I would be safest if I stayed in my house and didn‘t talk with anyone for the next three months. But I don‘t know how much risk I am running by venturing out very carefully.

Part of this fear is the fear of being sick in a strange place. Part of this fear is fear of strange places to begin with. But I also know that the greatest danger I have run in the last six months has been when I have been in the presence of people I really cared for. My greatest chance of getting sick is from a family member right here. That is how everyone I know who has Covid has gotten sick. I know I am in the most danger right here, but somehow right here seems safe.

But there is another side to this, not just for me but for everyone. There is great confusion on all of our parts about what the actual risks are and we are not very good about calculating risks in any case.

The greatest fears people had when I took students to Sri Lanka and India were disease and terrorists. And yet I knew that the chance of a random bomb blowing up under us was almost zero, and that the greatest chance of being infected with disease would come from someone in our group infecting the others. The greatest chance of something terrible happening was an accident of some sort such as slipping and falling or a traffic accident of some kind. But we didn‘t worry about ordinary things like that.

And I know that when I am calculating risk, for myself or others that I tend to believe what I want to believe. I believe what makes me feel better or what aligns with my resentments or supports the activities that I want to do. And I do like traveling and sitting here home with photos of Kathe around me is lonely and not much fun. So I make my judgments by what feels good to me.

I am in this way no different from the anti vaxxers who don‘t like the idea of being made to do something or who belong to a tribe that makes anti vaxxing a condition for belonging. In that case it just feels right that ivermectine will protect you and cure you. Or it makes sense that because some people who have been vaccinated and boosted still contract omnicron that vaccinations are not worth having.

In fact, I bet all of us are extremely uncertain about the best thing to do. It is just a time of tremendous uncertainty. But of course that can be used as an excuse to, to just ahead and plunger in.

So in the end I don‘t know what the right thing to do is, or the best thing for me to do is. I am, I‘m guessing, just like everyone else, bewildered and anxious and hoping that I am not fooling myself into doing things that are stupid. If I do get sick, which is likely, I can blame myself for being stupid, if I don‘t get sick, which is also likely, I‘ll think I did the right thing. Whether I get sick probably depends to a large degree (of course I don‘t know that either) on chance as does a great deal of what happens in life.