“I have COVID”
Three words that garner a lot of attention
Two weeks ago my 70 year-old immunocompromised wife inadvertently handled a drone controller operated by two young men visiting our neighborhood. Out for her daily walk, Louise came across the friendly duo and proceeded to stand at close proximity while happily conversing and interacting with them for some 15 minutes.
On her return journey home, she was stricken with panic at suddenly remembering THE PANDEMIC! How could she have forgotten? We had spent the last five months following all the CDC guidelines for elderly, vulnerable folks like us. A bit on the compulsive side, Louise had carefully conformed to every suggestion while making sure I followed suit.
Now she unintentionally jeopardized it all for a few carefree moments of conversation — an increasingly precious commodity during months of isolation with a disabled (and generally uninspiring) husband. Once back home, Louise washed and gargled and supplemented and lamented and prayed.
But to no avail…
Within three days her symptoms started up. Headache, sore throat, coughing, feverishness, shooting pains, brain fog, and bone-weary fatigue headed the list. Kindly, she wore a mask around the house and disinfected surfaces to spare me her plight. But the virus scoffed at such feeble defenses, and easily overwhelmed the simplistic measures we had put in place.
Four days later I shared her symptoms, plus joint and muscle pain she never got. Since then, we’ve spent a lot of time fitfully napping in bed, mindlessly watching TV, and drifting into the kitchen for sustenance in a mostly silent atmosphere of mutual suffering. We managed one little spat: I wanted to talk about our shared symptoms and she didn’t, insisting it made her feel worse. She won. I sulked. The virus didn’t care.
Quirky neighbors
Although Louise and I apparently have what is technically classified as a mild case, the scale is heavily skewed by the fact that COVID-19 is hospitalizing and killing legions of people in our age and health categories. However, relentless onslaughts of feverish fatigue, headache with brain fog, and slouch-on-the-couch malaise is anything but “mild” — notwithstanding presidential pronouncements to the contrary.
Occasionally symptoms wane enough to feel hopeful that better days lie ahead, then come roaring back with discouraging fury. During the waning moments, Louise ventures out on a mini version of her regular neighborhood walk. Whenever she encounters a different neighbor she pronounces her diagnosis with masked voice. They give her plenty of berth. Ten feet has proven sufficient for most.
One night a lightning strike disrupted neighborhood phone service, blowing the cover right off our phone junction box. The next day two unsuspecting phone company techs showed up at the neighbor’s house to look into why the power surge fried their phone and modem despite surge protectors.
It wasn’t long before the fearless fixers unknowingly cut our cable service, prompting Louise to go out and inform them of the blunder. Busy but friendly, they greeted her and listened while she stated the problem, and… “Oh, by the way…I have COVID.” Quickly the mood shifted as the techs stepped back sporting looks of grave concern.
These incidences made me to realize that we had crossed a threshold of social acceptance. By declaring ourselves “COVID-positive,” we acquired the stigma of posing a serious threat to others. Previously, we were nondescript onlookers for whom the pandemic is little more than a nightly news item. Now we represent the threat up close and personal, with the potential to cause serious harm to anyone we meet.
It’s like being a loaded gun on legs. We now have the power, as it were, of life and death.
The power of proclamation
In Bible days, leprosy was a devastating and untreatable disease that ostracized its sufferers from family and society (it has yet to be completely eradicated). Lepers were inauspiciously forced from community life to live on its harsh and uncaring fringes.
The disease created great alarm because, beyond the physical damage that entailed disfigurement and eventual death, those who contracted it were loathed, feared, and meticulously avoided. Pain, poverty, and loneliness followed the appearance of leprosy’s patchy skin lesions.
Lepers were required by Mosaic Law to loudly declare “Unclean, unclean!” whenever anyone came near. The common notion was that they or their parents had sinned to cause the horrible illness. To touch a leper, even by mistake, was both physically and spiritually polluting, requiring sacrifices and ritual cleansing.
It is highly significant that Jesus not only touched lepers, but chose to treat them as worthwhile human beings. Doing so was to sin according to the Law (Leviticus 5:3). On at least one notable occasion, he outright healed ten of them in one fell swoop. Nine skipped away like freed prisoners, while only one returned to give thanks that his life sentence had been totally commuted.
Personal power
COVID has given Louise and me the power to go around spreading a killer virus, should we so choose. By our mere presence, we can scare the daylights out of people and threaten their lives, families, and livelihoods. Or, we can consciously choose to protect them one and all. And the best way to do that is to wear a mask and avoid close contact until we are well again.
Is there really a choice here? Who in their right mind would willfully choose to cause undo harm others? And yet, that is exactly what many Americans are still choosing to do by refusing to abide by CDC guidelines. They are willfully putting their own convenience and misanthropic notions of personal freedom over the health and well-being of others. The values that undergird that kind of thinking seem warped at best.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans and millions of people around the world exercise a moral choice every time they either put on or refuse to wear a mask in public. The young men who gave the virus to my wife also made that choice (though to be fair, it was she who initiated the contact). Although they never intended harm, a fair amount of suffering has ensued.
But that is exactly the way transmission generally occurs. People infect one another inadvertently, often by way of human carelessness. An unchecked cough here, a protestor’s shouted slogan there, and a line of transmission extends outward until some vulnerable individual contracts the virus and dies, vainly gasping for air.
COVID in our midst gives us all the power to choose life and health or illness and possible death for other human beings. It is a God-like power — one far too scary to leave in the hands of mere mortals too often driven by petty concerns and self-serving interests.
The power to bless
Throughout the course of each day, we are given the very same opportunity to bless or curse others. We possess the ability to lift others up or tear them down. With every human encounter we repeatedly, if unconsciously, make that important choice.
The words and actions we employ afford a near-magical power to set in motion extraordinary effects for good or ill. Just as Moses encouraged the Israelites to “choose life,” so should we encourage one another to do the same. It is our civic and moral duty, yet one for which we seem to need constant reminders.
Because we are alive, we possess the capacity to significantly impact the world we share. Whether that impact is positive or negative is entirely up to us as individuals. The power inherent in our words and actions are at least as far-reaching as any disease we might carry. They can make or break a life that, in turn, will do the same ad infinitum.
Each person we encounter represents a fork in life’s road. We have the power to choose the direction for both of us from that point onward. At the fork, the same important choice always repeats itself: love, encourage, and prosper others or selfishly disregard and tear them down.
Some degree of life or death hangs in the balance every time.
Armageddon may not arrive as destructive armies of evil intent mounted in fierce opposition to God and the establishment of righteousness. Rather, it may be a battle waged within each human heart over the choices we make, exponentially amplified to universal proportions by something as unexpected as a novel virus unleashing the next pandemic upon the earth.
Jim Rotholz, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist, ex-missionary/aid worker to Nepal and East Africa, and board chair for two non-profits. He has written three books on the convergence of faith and culture and is currently out to pasture in SW Virginia with Louise, his wise and talented wife of 40 years. More blathering at https://jmrotholz.wixsite.com/apilgrimsjournal.