Everyone I know, including myself, wishes COVID wasn’t an issue anymore.
I remain COVID-cautious — masking whenever I am with people outside of my immediate family, socializing almost exclusively outside, testing and using air filters if we are going to be in a group inside, etc. Most people I know, even those who were as cautious as I have been for the first three years or so, have moved on to acting like COVID isn’t a concern anymore. (My children are sweet, they mask when they are with me and they do sometimes mask in social gatherings but not all that often as far as I know.) Being COVID-cautious is exhausting and lonely. It’s also disappointing.
Why am I still masking everywhere? Of course, I’d like to not catch COVID again (I made a rare exception to my COVID cautious behavior last year and ended up getting it). And, as someone who lives with chronic diseases already I definitely don’t want to get long COVID. I won’t try to post data or statistics here trying to show how COVID-19 in general is still a serious threat—everyone knows how to Google—but long COVID is a heck of a chronic condition and I wouldn’t wish chronic illness on anyone.
Even more than these substantial personal concerns, I mask because I care about the most marginalized people in our communities. I mask because there are people who can not go places where people are not masking. I wear my mask most of the time even when I know it’s “low-risk,” because I want anyone who would be in a life or death situation if they got COVID (or any other respiratory illness, honestly) to know they are a part of our communities.
When my faith community gathers on Sunday mornings, almost no one is wearing a mask.* Because of this, I only attend via Zoom. Again, some of why I don’t attend in person is concern for my own health. But sitting in a room full of people in close quarters silently breathing together mostly unmasked for an hour fills me with deep grief and raging anger. How can these people not care about our disabled siblings? How can they be so callous? And, because these feelings of grief and anger well up more intensely when I am there in person, I’m not able to center in to worship. So I don’t attend. The same feelings flow when I am attending via Zoom, but I don’t want to lose my faith community entirely and I need that worship time.
Those of us who are still COVID cautious are few and far between. It is, as I mentioned, a lonely way to be. Of course I would love to visit with friends inside on a regular basis. But most of my friends aren’t masking anywhere, so the personal risk is too much. Of course I would love to attend Meeting for Worship every Sunday. But, as I mentioned, almost no one is masking and I can’t stomach being a part of a community so dismissive of immune compromised and disabled people.
It’s difficult to have conversations about this with friends, loved ones, and other people in my life because in agreeing to disagree about our “personal choices” or our “individual risk tolerance levels,” social lives remain not inclusive. In agreeing to disagree — in saying “it’s okay for you not to mask” — I am abandoning those among us who will be shut out from all social gatherings because of that agreement.
This situation is exhausting. It’s also unavoidable until more people start wanting to build inclusive communities for everyone.
* After a lot of pressure from me, and possibly from others, my faith community has been experimenting with “masks encouraged” Sundays once a month. I am so grateful for it, and I do attend in person on those Sundays whenever I can. But I’m still grieving and angry that these folks who claim to care so much about humanity seem perfectly comfortable telling our disabled and immune compromised siblings they don’t matter on other Sundays.