Witness Journal: Sympathy
Sympathy is like a cold knife, it doesn’t burn, but it sure hurts. There’s a pang of it whenever someone you know gets exposed to Covid, a worse one if they get sick. Those might fade away once a negative test comes back or someone gets better, but then inevitably it happens again or to someone else and the little pang comes back. After more than a year those sympathy pains haven’t altogether vanished but they’ve certainly changed. When I hear someone I know, or I myself, have been exposed recently there’s less worry. Now I mostly just wait for the test results and save the worry for later. Mostly I’ve had that reaction when it’s friends or family around my age, at least the ones without asthma. The older the person gets, or more health issues they have, however, the more caution I use around them. For one thing if I’m waiting on routine test results and I know I’ve been shut up inside long enough to not have Covid I won’t go near them; in the same situation I don’t avoid going to my brother or sister’s houses or a friend’s apartment unless I or someone I’ve been in contact with has been exposed. It’s a strange little separation that feels wrong, even though I haven’t gotten it myself yet, and therefore can’t have spread it (knock on wood), and so good old confirmation bias tells me it’s working.
Image Link: https://www.valleycentral.com/news/local-news/fda-approves-covid-19-saliva-test-for-sale-on-amazon/
