I was perturbed by my potential exposure to Covid last weekend when I spent an hour in close proximity, albeit outdoors but maskless, with my gardener E when I learned at the end of the hour that he wasn't vaccinated. With the highly transmissible and deadly (to the unvaccinated) Delta strain sweeping the country and the world, and breakthrough cases on the rise, I felt vulnerable again, just as I felt for most of 2020 and in January and February and I didn't like the feeling one bit.
I worked so hard last winter to try to beg borrow or steal a shot and protect myself and others, and now that shots are easy to get (you can literally get a shot anyway anytime anywhere practically), why wouldn't anyone, everyone go get a shot? It protects us all. Could I get infected and be a carrier, although asymptomatic, and possibly infect others?
I have been doing a modified version of self quarantining since the weekend, wearing a mask whenever I'm around people, indoors or out. I had been not wearing a mask when talking with people outside but I'm through with that for now and I will be asking people regularly if they're vaccinated. I always wear a mask in stores anyway, where I live it's just what most everyone does as protection for others because, apparently, there are a lot of total jerks out there who aren't vaccinated for mostly selfish and ridiculous reasons.
I attended an outdoor Episcopal service on Sunday at a church I go to only occasionally, usually only once a year, so the folks there don't know me. It was an intimate service, very pleasant, set on a playground type cement floor outside in a small hollow down some steps from the front door leading to a basement entrance. There were 18 folks there for the hour-long service and besides being an outsider I was set apart because I was the only one who wore a mask. I feel like we're at the entrance again to a dark, forbidding tunnel again that recently had been brightly lit except that the lazy or scared or ignorant or conspiratorial unvaccinated people have doused the lights.
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