The silent mugging

October was the month of scary things, when everyone loves getting frightened.
Somehow, though, one ghost has been and remains very unpopular. Beaten up on news, social media, during lectures, civil conversations, and shouting matches, the ghost of COVID is still stinking up the place. Many of us are reeling and really unsure if we should engage in the obvious need to settle the matter or walk away with our dignity.
We gobble up any new information but, even those who have been vaccinated remain reluctant to wander into crowds, remove masks amidst strangers, or get too close to anyone who isn’t wearing one. We bounce between the human need to socialize and the hesitation to move freely. It’s especially tough if loved ones are unvaccinated or compromised.
We can’t see who’s been vaccinated or not … and what about the vaccinations? We know: they’re highly effective and very reliable; may not be all powerful or last as long as we first thought; and that, even though they temper the variants, they don’t prevent them.
Chatterbox stated before that, like it or not, one person’s rights end where the next person’s rights begin. Some people are immune-compromised whether fighting a cold, have had an organ transplant, or are dealing with chemo-therapy. Everyone has the right to get into an elevator, onto a train, or answer a question in a supermarket without having to ask for proof of vaccination from those in spitting distance.
Very hesitant to socialize are those who need it most – parents of children too young to be vaccinated. A young relative of mine with an infant asked me yesterday, “When will this be over?” She had chosen not to attend a family reunion because she has a new baby. She had nursed him hoping to pass some of her immunity to him through the breast milk, which does help, but she felt it wasn’t enough. She attended mainly the outdoor part, then left.
This is what I told that young – and vaccinated – mother who has been isolating since her pregnancy: A great impediment to controlling this virus is one we never had, on this scale, with any other plague (and it is a plague, even though that seems to be an unpopular term), and that impediment is the people who deny the disease and defy the cure.

We are all left vulnerable to unknowingly mingling with people who may not only have refused the lifesaving vaccine, but who continue to comfortably chat up others without even feeling obligated to wear a mask.
We should be able to rely on common sense and the common respect for others to regain our freedom to return to a normal life. At the very least, they must refrain from close up, unmasked contact, at the very least, yet many remain defiant. Their implacability and refusal to act for the general good cannot be allowed to negate the efforts of those who used everything in the arsenal for the greater good.
Recently, I was quietly mugged by one such unmasked woman at the supermarket and I share in hopes of preventing it from happening to others. I rarely go shopping without a mask, but it was late and the store was virtually empty. A woman asked if I knew where the nuts were. In seconds, I was privy to why she needed them and to her medical history. When I found out she had been treated for COVID but refused the vaccine, I backed up slowly.
I am rarely bold, but finally I asked if she had gotten vaccinated anyway. That started a rant; she had not. I quietly whispered that, in order to continue to exercise her choice, but in consideration of others, perhaps, she should wear a mask. That launched another tirade. I reached into my purse, put on my mask, and backed up behind the cash register. Half protected is, at least, something, but I felt violated. Now, as she failed to protect me from her, I was bound to protect my loved ones from me.
COVID isn’t visible. Those who choose not to vaccinate themselves against a deadly plague, for now, are within their rights (that groaning you hear is coming from me), but their rights end where the next person’s begin. Moreover, their defiance delays America’s complete return to something like normal life. There oughta be a law: participate or isolate ... at least a mandatory mask up for anti-vaxxers. Anyway, that’s one opinion … and that one won’t hospitalize anyone.

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