I am "in jail" with my mom, who will turn 90 soon. Thankfully, I can work from home. The most human contact I have is during pick ups of food from restaurants. Our little church can hold 120-130 people but on any given Sunday only draws 12 people. It was down until late June. When it came back I had a front row seat to people who don't understand how to be safe. Lots of improper mask use, which turned out to be Kabuki theater anyway since they would all go out to eat together afterwards (including the pastor, who didn't get it anymore than they did). When I notified the congregation that the Conference had put out a call for churches in counties experiencing the summer surge to return to quarantine, they didn't do anything. Kept going. I wasn't willing to make mom stop going, but we would arrive early enough to sit well away from others. The Superintendent finally found out that we were still meeting (the only church in his district to do so) and thankfully put pressure on our pastor to shut down again.
The thing I have learned during this time is that people are simply not engineered for pandemics. Unless you are a hypochondriac, or super good at THE FLOOR IS LAVA, you're going to do something that defies a strict protocol. I'm a stickler for staying the heck away from people and find myself taking chances that make me feel uncomfortable.
I learned early on that it isn't useful to bitch at other people. People are going to do what they want. I just have to take care of me and mine. If I was on my own I might very well take more chances and go out to eat at restaurants and meet up with my friends in person.
There are at least three components to this pandemic: physical health, financial health, and mental health. The first two are often pitted against each other, debilitating the third.
People in the film industry have been VERY OUT OF WORK and it's been rough because the state was overwhelmed by the volume of unemployment claims. Some have yet to receive the first dollar of assistance. Things are beginning to come back slowly, and strangely, with levels of access, pods, multiple tests throughout the week. Such a strange new world.
I'm programming the pirate pubcrawl to be virtual this year, which should be interesting.
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