Body counts

I’m sitting on a roof catching the sun while I still can. It’s a quiet afternoon, as quiet as it can be near downtown. I’d just gotten off the phone with a friend in the throes of a COVID-19 infection. Total people I know who’ve contracted the infection: eight and counting. Total people I know who’ve died from COVID-19: one.

I remember sitting in on a meeting in July, right after one of my relatives died of COVID-19. Folks on the call were talking about how the California government was overreacting to the precautions we were taking to try to mitigate its spread, that all things considered, it was more important to maintain our regular lives than to live in fear of catching the illness, that all in all, COVID-19 wasn’t really as bad as our public health agencies were making it seem. I had to excuse myself from the rest of that call.

It’s easy to take a self-centered approach to all of this. It’s easy to say, hey, well I’m not affected and I don’t know anyone else who’s gotten it, so why should I be worried? I don’t think we should be living in fear. They are right about one thing—that we can’t live in fear, at least not for too much or too long. Fear, while at times compelling us to redirect our motivations and actions, also blocks us from moving with clear intention.

I consider myself rather cautious, especially because I live in close quarters with my neighbors and my parents are vulnerable to severe disease. I’ve come to accept that at some point I’ll contract it too, regardless of how careful I am. Yet, I, too, no matter how outwardly healthy I appear, live with a pre-existing condition that renders me vulnerable, but I’ll get to that if the time comes.

I wonder what those same folks in July are saying now. In the US alone, we’ve surpassed 254,000 deaths. In Los Angeles County—almost 7,400 to date.

I think I’ll paint today.