Ready or not — and just days after Dallas County again reported a record 10 coronavirus deaths — we all are about to get the chance to stick our toes into the water of whatever passes for post-quarantine normalcy.
Unlike the dug-in folks who claim with absolute certainty that Gov. Greg Abbott’s plan to reopen Texas is (take your pick) government’s return to its senses or the beginning of the end for mankind, I am deeply conflicted about the changes that go into effect Friday.
Neither of those extremes is practical: In one, we make ourselves sick and die; in the other, we wreck the economy and the way we live. We can’t afford to do either.
In the same spirit of my “don’t panic, but don’t deny” message — written when we were just becoming aware of the pandemic in early March — I believe middle ground exists between “completely wide open” and “absolutely shut down” as we seek to exit crisis mode.
It may indeed be too soon to come out of our respective bear caves. But a whole lot of folks can’t afford to keep living this way indefinitely: People are losing their minds and their jobs — and many are on the verge of expelling their kids from home-school.
While I am one of the lucky ones able to mostly continue sheltering in place, my fervent hope is that those who do venture out will do so very, very cautiously.
I worry that too many people will take this gradual one-step, two-step reopening process as license to rush headlong into their lives as they used to be. We cannot afford that — any more than we can afford any more political pie fights.
The human desire to declare “It’s Over. Crisis Averted. The End” is entirely understandable, but this pandemic won’t work that way. We have no idea how long before this killer virus — with its shape-shifting symptoms and complications — is truly in our rearview mirror.
My best suggestion is that we remember the lecture our parents gave us when they dropped the keys to the car in our sweaty-with-anticipation 16-year-old hands: OK, I’m trusting you to drive the car now, but that means you must be on your best behavior.
The pandemic dangers were easier to navigate before the authorities returned those keys to us.
Giving people permission to emerge for more than just the mandatory grocery or big-box run is a tricky risk. Policing the loosened-up new normal is virtually impossible. The honor system is our best hope.
More exposure requires taking extra care in following all those tediously mundane but potentially lifesaving rules: washing your hands properly, wearing a mask, keeping your hands off your face, following the 6-foot social-distancing rule and other posted safety guidelines.
At this moment in the pandemic, perhaps we also owe ourselves a measure of congratulations. For all the focus on people who have done the wrong thing — NextDoor’s outing of rule-breaking neighbors or social media posts of big parties at parks — look at how many of us have done the right thing.
Those actions you took might not have been necessary to save your life, but they may have saved someone else’s.
I can’t prove it. And nobody is handing out trophies for it. But as big a pain as this has been, in the aggregate, most of us have abided by the medical experts’ best advice for keeping the death toll low.
So as more doors begin to open, I’m putting my faith in you to not drive the progress against this pandemic into a ditch.
Those who rally under the “panic porn” flag and point to open hospital beds as evidence that the shelter-in-place order was unnecessary will never change their minds. But three cheers for the rest of us, willing to follow the “flatten the curve” advice as an article of faith.
Compare it to those pesky TSA regulations we endure to get on an airplane (well, back when we wanted to board a plane). The government has assured us for years that those rules have saved us from another 9/11. You can choose whether to believe that statement, but in practical terms, the airport security changes seem to have done the job.
The shelter-in-place effort has worked in much the same way.
Texas’ much-heralded reopening probably won’t change the daily routine for many residents anytime soon, especially the most senior among us and those with underlying health conditions. Even when we can stroll through NorthPark Center and get our hair cut, l don’t expect life to feel like the old normal for a long, long time — if ever.
I confess that the uncertainty and unfamiliarity of these times occasionally pushes me into the quicksand of grief over losing that pre-coronavirus world. Especially after yet another night of troublesome pandemic-themed nightmares — it seems we are all having them — I’m reminded that COVID-19 is not only an epidemiological crisis, but a psychological one as well.
Perhaps you haven’t experienced anything approaching a tragedy — neither the death of a loved one to the virus or the loss of a job with no hope of getting rehired. But we’ve all suffered blows to our routines and anticipated milestones — high school or college graduation, a lovingly planned wedding, an overseas fellowship, a debut book — that are not inconsequential.
There’s also an ambiguous grief: the loss of social connections, personal freedoms and the sense of safety. Even after all these weeks, when I think of my work colleagues — even when I’m communicating with them — I still imagine them all there in the newsroom and me the only one isolated at home.
In the early weeks of the pandemic, I joked with North Texans whom I interviewed — many of whom I’ve had to connect with over the phone rather than in person — that when this is all over, I will throw a party so all of us can meet one another.
This many columns later, I’m not sure I could afford the rental for a big enough venue.
I let myself be sad like this for a bit, but then I snap back to the fact that this pandemic is an unprecedented experience for almost all of us and it’s way early to make pronouncements about what the future will or won’t resemble.
By biological standards, COVID-19 is like five minutes old — and our desire to know everything about it by this time last Tuesday is not going to be satisfied.
We have no choice but to continue to learn to tolerate — and, heaven forbid, even embrace — uncertainty. If that’s a new muscle folks develop, that’s good for us all in the long run.
So regardless of how you venture from your cave in these coming days, don’t be a jackwagon. Be a good Texan, one who overprotects, but doesn’t overreact.
