(Pandemic Diary - day 154)

From my journal: 30 July 2020 (Thursday)

First, I’ll say it was a good day, a good visit, and I’m very glad we went.

Second, I’ll say that I basically failed with our disease mitigation stance. It didn’t start that way, but as the day went on, my guard went down, and my adherence to good practice got shaky.

It was a gradual process, as things got more crowded on the deck in the evening, as we sat closer together and the breeze faded away, making our proximity riskier. Of course there was alcohol involved in lowering my defenses. And of course we were the only ones showing any real concern about contagion in the first place, so it wasn’t hard to let things slip that way and go with the flow.

Anyway, by evening on that deck, a photo of us would have fit nicely with the photos we look at and criticize (“look how close those people are, and not a mask in site”), shaking our heads at their ignorance.

Yes, we’re hypocrites.

But this is a game of odds, and messing up once doesn’t necessarily doom your efforts, and it doesn’t mean we should give up. There’s a reasonable chance that we made it through the engagement without infection, and each day is a clean slate and a fresh start.

I guess the main lessons are that it’s hard to sustain protection efforts, that it gets harder the longer you try, and that peer pressure is powerful.

There’s also an empathy lesson.

If it’s hard for us to do this, even with our knowledge and resolve, then it’s hard for other people to do it, too. When we see them failing at it, it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re dumb or malicious.

They might be trying and coming up short, just as we did.