I have tried to line up at the place in Brooklyn Center a couple times since early November, but the freakiest thing happened: There were dozens upon dozens of people who lined up to get in. Up until early November there was no line whatsoever. I could just walk through the opening doors and wait for at most a minute if there were a couple families ahead of me in order to get my test and be sent to a table. These lines were what I thought this testing center would look like when I first started going here, in late November 2020. I was so freaked out I wouldn't get in that I was relieved when I made an online appointment. I then get there and see no one else was there, and I thought why did I ever stress over getting an appointment. Well, shit, I made one a couple days ago for after work today, because it seems to be a necessity now.
What I don't get is the sudden interest -- maybe I should call it a crush -- of people who out of the blue wanted a test as of a month ago. I have two theories. First, the last time I got in there, I saw that the vast space (it used to be an event center) had carved out an area for rapid testing. I was given a choice of the "regular" spit test (something I had hated when the clinics no longer would accept walk-in appointments for nasal swab tests) or the rapid test, whereby you wait in this cordoned-off area until a nurse or lab tech or practitioner or temp calls you into this tent, whereby you, well, get a nasal swab, which is the kind of test I had preferred until the clinics no longer accepted walk-ins like me. Is it possible that a bunch of people just don't like spitting into a tube, and once word got out that these nose tests were available at Brooklyn Center, all those people jumped at the chance to get tested without the annoyance of expectorating?
That might be a stretch. I lean toward my other theory -- mandates at public workplaces, private companies and schools began in November, and those anti-vaxxer pricks who don't want to lose their jobs or homeschool their kids had to provide the alternative, which is a negative test. Now that they have to show proof they and their children are COVID-free, they had no choice but to go get tested. If that is the case, then I can see why everybody's going to the testing center. Moreover, however, if the crowd mainly consists of anti-vaxxers, well ... I think the chances go up that more than one of those selfish idiots is carrying the coronavirus. And if you go into a packed indoor area, well, that just reintroduces the paranoid fear -- and the irony -- that I had of testing at such a venue when I went to this place the first few times: That going to get tested in the hopes you test negative for the virus brings you face-to-face with people who are carrying and might give you the virus while you're there.
Well, I've tested negative at least a dozen times when going to this testing site. Let's hope the safety measures are still as robust today as they have been.
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