Today my sister-in-law threw a big graduation party for her son. Many of our family members, including my octogenarian MIL, were planning to go to the party and presumably did. The party was supposed to be outdoors and carefully catered. We don’t know how big the invitation list was, or how many people ultimately went, but we could tell just from knowing the people involved that it would be a larger number than we would consider safe. So we did not go.
My nephew is a great kid. He deserved a big party. And yes, outdoors is safer than indoors. But still, was it worth the risk?
I don’t think so. I know that there are some who would consider my level of social isolation to be extreme, but most of the people I know are doing roughly the same thing. They physically distance themselves from other people as much as possible, and excepting necessary excursions and outdoor exercise, they stay home. And it’s important that we do this, because spreading the virus is so obviously bad. Everyone who catches the virus makes more of the virus. More virus equals more danger for everyone, and every case of COVID-19 means a longer time before we can all go back to normal.
So what really pisses me off is people who don’t take the virus seriously, and people who do not wear masks, and people who are so eager to get back to normal that they do things like go to parties even though they shouldn’t. They are creating more risk for all of us. They are the fuel that keeps this pandemic going.
Odds are that everyone who went to the party will be fine, and I hope they will be. But honestly I am angry at my sister-in-law for inviting people to take that risk, and I’m angry at everyone who accepted the invitation. Once this pandemic is over, we can have parties every day if we want to. But if we lose someone we love, we can never get them back. It’s not worth the risk.