First off, I have to say that it's a damn miracle I didn't contract COVID-19 in the past 14 months. Between being required to physically report to work and my occasional trysts with strippers, I was resigned to getting the virus, especially during the two or three or four waves during the pandemic. While I was scared of it (mostly at the beginning) and believed coming down with it was a danger, I was not completely risk-averse to getting the 'Rona, not even close. And yet with the thousands of close, personal interactions I have had since All This began, I kept getting negative test after negative test. Maybe masks and physical distancing do work. Or, maybe I got lucky. More likely it was all of those things.
And yet I fear that this Day Of Freedom, coinciding with the recent declaration from the Center For Disease Control that all fully vaccinated people can go anywhere without a mask (which made Gov. Tim Walz decide to abruptly end Minnesota's mask mandate yesterday) is premature, if not reckless. I don't know exactly know how I came around to fearing this day. Back in the throes of the pandemic I was literally fantasizing about today, the day where I would be fully protected and now I could finally rip off my mask (and, if I were really perverted, other pieces of clothing). The facts, at least as I understand them, supports that idea, right? We are as protected from the coronavirus as we will ever be. Study after study has proven that inoculated individuals have a much lower chance of being infected with the coronavirus and have almost zero chance of dying from it. We have reached the light at the end of the tunnel. This is it. This is the payoff. This is the reason why we stayed home and stayed apart and practiced self-control for the last year-plus. This is why we have been good boys and girls -- this moment.
But this sudden American rumspringa gives me pause, and even though I don't have to wear masks anymore, I think I don't know how I can stop wearing one. For one thing, many in the scientific community think lifting these guidelines is way too premature. Also, I have to admit that I might be moving the goalposts a bit. Before I was thinking that once I was fully vaccinated, screw anyone who doesn't get a shot. What does the fate of some anti-vaxxer dumbass have to do with me if I've gotten the vaccine? But now I am persuaded by the belief that mass vaccinations is just another stage in Man being free from this. It's not enough that I get shot up; enough other people have to get shot up, and then we have to wait a couple weeks while this plague peters out and dies because herd immunity means that the coronavirus has fewer bodies into which they can pass, mutate and, in a worst-case scenario, find a way to beat the vaccine in a host who assumed he or she was immune from it. Only once cases have been driven down to single digits and there hasn't been a COVID-19 death in a month can we finally get rid of our masks and congregate en masse, loudly.
It's possible I'm being too cautious. The CDC, after all, is now stocked with smart people who care about Humanity. If they think it's safe to walk around sans mask, maybe the science backs up that claim. But I don't really know. And I hate that this war against a new enemy has bred in me a Stockholm Syndrome whereby things I did because I had to do them have become a part of my identity. In other words, a part of me is kind of pissed to be told that I do not have to wear a mask anymore. Who are you to tell me what to do with my body when I've been doing it this way for over a year? I'm wearing masks when posing for a portrait, dammit!
So, on a day which I once thought I would meet with a joy I haven't felt since my first handjob at a stripclub has become a day that I note the special occasion and shrug. I mean, I'm happy my Day Of Liberation is here. I just don't know if the day's all that it's cracked up to be.
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