Okay, let's talk about bubble-doubling. For those of you who are at average risk from COVID-19: how are you approaching the un-hunkering process? The questions that are most on my mind tonight: how are you making decisions about spending time with people from other households? If you haven't been seeing your parents, are you going to visit them sometime soon? Will you give them a hug? Will you sit across the table from them? If your kids have been isolated from their friends, how are you going to ease them back into contact with people outside the family? I am willing to accept some risk to allow people to be together again, because humans need community and Zoom is an utterly inadequate substitute. How much risk? That's the kazillion dollar question.
Please also tell me: how are you modifying your decision-making as businesses open back up? Under what circumstances will you go to a restaurant? Which non-essential errands will you indulge in? I have to say, I love the idea of nice browsy trips to the yarn shop (almost certainly safe: good-sized space, never crowded) and to the garden store (probably riskier but hard to assess: mostly outside in the sun (good), much more likely to be busy (bad)).
There is some disagreement among the adults in the family about how to handle bubble expansion. Let's suppose that Adult A wants to invite dear friends over for a barbecue, but Adult B says "I don't like it because they provide childcare for those neighbors who are always having people over." The specifics have been modified but the core idea is the same: people have been making all kinds of decisions during the lockdown, and those decisions will have unpredictable consequences. What's the best way forward? What are you doing in your family, and why, and how are you feeling about it?
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