Stranded

 So, I got into a discussion this week at my friend's birthday party.  We all met at an outdoor restaurant and somehow got onto the discussion of masks and the prevention of covid via masking.  I know not to get onto this topic because, while I am willing to wear a mask, I know that most people don't agree with me on the effectiveness of masking.  I just don't think they are that effective.  I also feel like they are probably doing more damage than good, damage that we don't quite realize is there.  So, I kept quiet until....we got onto the topic of how relieved we will be when we are able to stop masking.  I just couldn't help but comment that I believe, because of mentality of making it just a little better and our safetyism (sp?) ideology, we will never quit masking even after covid is over.  They just couldn't believe that I believed that way and then of course we got onto the difference between masking during covid vs. the difference of masking all the time.  And of course, *sigh*, at that point I couldn't not share my perspective of the ineffectiveness of the mask.  Well, you know how that went.  Not so well.  My friend, whose birthday it was, made me laugh by sending this meme and reminding me:

Not that we argued.  We didn't.  Just in the end, no one saw my viewpoint which I guess is fine.  They then proceeded to tell me that when the hospitals are full, it is my fault if I don't mask because they are full of Covid patients who wouldn't normally be there if I had just masked (which can't be proved) and now someone died of a heart attack because they didn't have an ICU bed. I wasn't prepared for a discussion like that.  When I got home, I wondered what it was that so bothered me about masking that I didn't express myself well and I wrote the following short excerpt entitled The problem with the idea that if we don't wear masks we are harming others:

I've been thinking all night about why mask mandates don't sit right with me.  Again, I am not against masking smartly, in the right situation at the right time.  I read a headline on CNN the other day that stated Covid-19 testing:  Here's why you can be contagious but still test negative.  Granted, the article went on to discuss the incubation period of the disease and what we can truly do to not spread Covid-19 during the Thanksgiving break but I felt like the headline was in and of itself misleading and manipulative.  Of course, it was only one headline but one headline on a well read news site.  So, we've gone from symptomatic spread, to asymptomatic spread to healthy spread, this idea that you can spread it when you don't even have it (be contagious while testing negative).  This seems to me to be an ideology that states by virtue of existing I am a threat to all those around me.  It weaponizes human existence when taken to the extreme.  It automatically takes another human, masked or not, and makes them an enemy to my existence (me against them) or me an enemy to theirs, through no other action simply other than existing.  This ideology is dangerous.  It makes us not interact with each other for fear of contracting the virus and it further divides us as a people.  I see it used very much in the same way as the carbon footprint argument.  Just the other day I had a patient in the chair that felt threatened by all those having too many children because of their carbon footprint.  Let's take that one step further...now what about my children's viral load that can kill you?  Again, it makes me an enemy and threat to you.  Should I just stop existing?  This is the biggest unintended consequence I see from all this.

I felt better after I wrote that and sent it to some of my friends to hear them challenge me or add to this.  I had to further explain myself to one friend saying that I didn't really believe in conspiracy theories to annihilate the human race but rather this idea that we are at war with each other for survival.  I, by virtue of existing, am weaponized by my humanity (being a constant vector of disease).

Then, to my complete surprise, the danger that can arise with this ideology actually occurred within my own family!  Riley and Ben signed up for a wrestling tournament this past weekend in Farmington, Utah.  I know that I was sending them into a cesspool of disease but the reality is that kids don't really seem to be affected adversely by Covid.  So, since my children haven't been wrestling, and I felt like they needed the outlet, and being realistic that this may be the only wrestling tournament they get to attend, I sent my boys to the wrestling tournament with friends.  Early Friday morning, I had found a funny meme on Ben's instagram feed and sent it to the boys to make them laugh.

It's a hilarious meme because this is what the football players give as an excuse when they don't want to be on the wrestling team.  I knew it would make the boys laugh.  Then I asked them in a text how things were going.  They texted me back that things were okay but that Riley had been coughing and that the friend who was driving them there was getting really mad.  I texted back and told Riley not to cough, that people are really sensitive about coughing, that people will think he is sick and then they will freak out.  Then, I asked if my friend was really mad.  My kids texted back, yes.  Not more than two seconds later, I got a text from my friend saying that Riley seemed sick and was coughing a lot.  I texted him back that he hadn't been exposed to Covid and I wasn't really concerned about it.  He texted back asking me to call him.  When he texted me that I was about to text the boys and ask them, sarcastically, if he wanted me to drive 7 hours there and back to pick them up.  Well, when I got the phone call this is exactly what he wanted me to do.  He was afraid that if Riley was sick he would get everyone else sick and then they wouldn't be able to work or play or anything and that my other friends were furious with me.  I was flabbergasted.  I didn't know what to say, so I said okay and made arrangements for my boys to sleep elsewhere and figured out transportation arrangements to get them back to Durango.  

So, this exact scenario that I spoke about earlier, happened.  My boys were a threat to their health, their living, their life and because of that, they weren't allowed to be by them any longer.  Anyway, I hope you can see the ridiculousness of this all. First of all, they drove up there with all of them so if they were to be exposed, and Riley was sick, the exposure had happened.  Second of all they were going to a wrestling tournament in Utah where Covid is rampant and where no one was required to test negative for Covid before entering so they all had a HUGE risk exposure at the wrestling tournament.  Third of all, if it was me, and my kid's friend was sick, even with Covid, I would have brought them home.  

So yeah, my kids were stranded in Utah because one of them may have had a cold.  When they arrived home the day after, no symptoms were exhibited.