Top of Mind Thursday – August 11, 2022: The Best Laid Plans

On Tuesday, I flew across the country to attend the wedding of a close family friend.

But yesterday, I started feeling unwell. By today, I had a full-fledged fever to go with body achiness. I’ve tested negative for COVID twice, but that doesn’t mean this isn’t COVID–we just don’t know yet.

Here’s the thing: I’ve stayed ultra-cautious for 2.5 years. It’s not clear where I could have picked this up. I stay masked whenever I’m out among people, and I was masked through the flight and in the airports on either end. Still, my seatmate on the flight wasn’t masked. The flight attendants weren’t masked. The chiropractor I saw on the weekend wasn’t masked either.

With four shots of vaccine, if this is COVID, it should be mild. But it’s still not going to be a lot of fun. The current variant does not seem to be susceptible to the vaccines, and it’s highly contagious. At the same time, today, the CDC lifted many of its recommendations for isolating with COVID.

Why? Because the public is tired of the virus. We’re tired of having to adjust our lives for this virus. We’re tired of not being able to control where we can go, who we can see, what we can do, etc. We don’t want to listen to the medical providers or government agencies because we don’t like what they’re telling us.

But just because we’re done with the virus doesn’t mean the virus is done with us. And deciding something’s no longer important or relevant doesn’t mean it goes away.

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