Am I crazy?
#1. I have a group of ladies I've known for many years through exercise classes. We have been getting together regularly for lunch, until March with the shutdown. We've been trying to figure out a way to get together, even if in small groups. I'm meeting a few on Thursday at a park in the center of the county. We'll get takeout and chat. Sounds good, right? The woman who organized it only invited 4 or 5 of us.
Another lunch lady just texted the entire 15 strong group saying, how about if we meet at my place next week?
I'm thinking WTF? She lives in a mobile home. There's no distancing possible. Plus, who knows where or how they shop, etc., etc.
I thought, 'I'll be interested to see how one friend responds. She is a retired HC worker.'
But, she is the first to reply: Great! I'll bring blah blah blah. WTF?
Then several others chime in: Yay, I'll bring this or that.
I offered my regrets and said I couldn't make it but wished them all well.
Sidebar: most of these women are solid Trumpkins or apolitical. There are a few Democrats or Democrat-leaners in the group. We do not talk politics.
#2. A good friend texted an invite to meet them at a local watering hole recently for a get together to celebrate her birthday. I, of course, said thanks, but we'll wait to celebrate when things are safer.
Then I see posts on Facebook about the get together. Her whole, extended family, kids, step kids, their girlfriends, her elderly mother. Other mutual friends. It was a big crowd in a small place - well over the 25% occupancy rule we have here.
This group is all solid Trump haters and several of them are scientists or nurses. SO and I were gobsmacked.
I just don't get it. Reasonable people have apparently decided that this whole thing is over.
= new reply since forum marked as read
The day before I got sick, I ran three miles, walked 10 more, then raced up the stairs to my fifth-floor apartment as always, slinging laundry with me as I went. The next day, April 17, I became one of the thousands of New Yorkers to fall ill with Covid-19. I haven’t felt the same since. If you live in New York City, you know what this virus can do. In just under two months, an estimated 24,000 New Yorkers have died. That’s more than twice the number of people we lost to homicide over the past 20 years.
Now I worry for Americans elsewhere. When I see photographs of crowds packing into a newly reopened big-box store in Arkansas or scores of people jammed into a Colorado restaurant without masks, it’s clear too many Americans still don’t grasp the power of this disease. The second day I was sick, I woke up to what felt like hot tar buried deep in my chest. I could not get a deep breath unless I was on all fours. I’m healthy. I’m a runner. I’m 33 years old.
In the emergency room an hour later, I sat on a hospital bed, alone and terrified, my finger hooked to a pulse-oxygen machine. To my right lay a man who could barely speak but coughed constantly. To my left was an older man who said that he had been sick for a month and had a pacemaker. He kept apologizing to the doctors for making so much trouble, and thanking them for taking such good care of him. I can’t stop thinking about him even now.
Finally, Dr. Audrey Tan walked toward me, her kind eyes meeting mine from behind a mask, goggles and a face shield. “Any asthma?” she asked. “Do you smoke? Any pre-existing conditions?” “No, no, none,” I replied. Dr. Tan smiled, then shook her head, almost imperceptibly. “I wish I could do something for you,” she said.
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