It’s been another long break for Marc’s Terminal Illness. You might be asking, “What happened? What kind on consistency is once every five to six months? How do you expect to build an audience if you never actually write anything?” By You, I mean ME and my inner critic who is constantly asking these questions. The only way to silence him is to smother him with Lindor Chocolate Balls from a Costco-size bag. It doesn’t really silence him; it just gives him something else to focus on. “Look at you. You disgust me. Are you going to eat the whole bag? Yes, you are? Great I was just kidding. But you are really going to do it. You are a grotesque chocolate monster. Do you own any pants that fit you?”
As usual, my blog suffers neglect when I get in the rut of living life. A whole season has passed since I last wrote (maybe three?) and it all kind of blends together. Days on the road followed by days at home, swirling together through the holidays. A birthday. A pandemic surge, followed by a drop and then followed by another surge. There was a vacation in there. Otherwise, it seems like the wheel of life just keeps rolling, one month at a time, with very few moments to mark differentiation of time.
Not that nothing worth writing about has happened. There have been plenty of moments in the world of the airport that I live in that felt noteworthy at the time. As I scan through my digital notepad there a several entries that I am sure I could formulate a blog out of (and still might): I flew with an insane person who was convinced the company was purposely feeding him chicken that tasted like pork; I gave an impromptu lesson on aerodynamics and flap malfunctions to a concerned passenger while being cornered at a urinal; I landed at 4:30 AM in Newark, four hours late, to a war-like scene of people sleeping the middle of floors; I was mid-air when the mask mandate was lifted by court order…
Wait. Let me expand on that last entry because it directly leads to the present moment, at least in my mind. Why am I writing anything at all? Because at this moment, I have time to write. Why do I have time? Because after almost two years, I finally caught COVID (Well, I finally tested positive for COVID. No matter what you hear from “the man,” I will swear to my dying day that I had the OG Covid in December 2019, when COVID was still underground and playing dive bars. Me, and 50% of the pilots I flew with were hacking up lungs and swearing they had never coughed so hard). Why do I have I COVID? Because they lifted the mask mandate at airports!
Okay that is a bold statement. You could argue that the reason I have COVID is that this current version is extra-transmissible. Anecdotally, you might even say, “Yeah. Everyone I know has it.” In fact, everyone I know does have it or has had it recently. My brother-in-law. My mom. My mom’s boyfriend (okay, my mom has a boyfriend. I don’t want to talk about it. My mom didn’t get COVID from her boyfriend. Look, don’t bring it up again). All I know is that they lifted the mask mandate at airports, and everyone got COVID (When I say, “They,” I mean that one judge in Florida, who will go down either as a hero to personal liberty or a villain of public health. Only time will tell).
I understand. You could look at the above paragraph and say, “Marc, everyone you know has COVID and it is extra-transmissible, there is a reason you have COVID and it is not because they lifted the mask-mandate at airports. Also, your mom got COVID from close contact with her boyfriend.” Uhhhh, where do you live? I will find you and hunt you down like the dog you are if you mention my mom having a boyfriend again. About the other stuff, you would have a point, except that I didn’t have any contact with any of those people before I got COVID. So, I got it from somewhere else. My guess? The airport. Where all the maskless travelers are.
“Okay. Well, what about everywhere else they aren’t wearing a mask like: grocery stores, restaurants, and the gym? In fact, Marc, let’s be honest, you haven’t been wearing a mask in those places.” Yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought you might bring that up as an inconsistency in my logic. I can counter with solid reasoning on every count: People at the gym not wearing a mask? Those people are working out, they aren’t sick. Restaurants? Oh yeah, like people who are sick with COVID would feel like “eating out.” People at the grocery store? Those people are buying fruits, vegetables, and vitamins. Obviously, those people couldn’t be sick. “Marc everyone shops at the grocer…” Shhhh! Don’t overthink this.
Now people at the airport without masks? That’s a different story. It’s not that everyone at the airport who is no longer wearing a mask has COVID. It’s that before, the airport was a special place. You had to wear a mask. Sure, there happened to be the occasional outlier who was rebelling against the machine (I wrote about one in a recent post, okay not that recent). But most people were on board with the idea that at the airport and on airplanes you had to wear a mask. They might not have liked it, but they gave into the idea. “If I am travelling by air, I am going to have to wear a mask.”
Now what happened when the mask mandate was lifted? All the people who didn’t travel because they had to wear a mask when they travelled could now travel. Keep in mind, these are not the people who didn’t travel because they were afraid to travel during COVID and were extra cautious. These aren’t the people who muttered to themselves, “I hate wearing this stupid thing, but I want to get to Cancun, and I’m not letting a thing piece of cloth get between me and a beach.” These are the people who under the assumption that wearing a mask provided protection for everyone (I grant that it may have been a false assumption), refused to wear one because their own personal liberty was more important than the greater good. The kind of person who would not travel because his own personal liberty was more important than the group, is the same kind of person who WOULD travel because his own personal liberty was more important than the group. In other words, the kind of person who would travel with COVID (unlike those healthy vitamin shoppers at the grocery store). Anyway, it makes sense to me, but my brain is riddled with the aftereffects of COVID.
Of course, none of this makes actual sense. For most of this time, it has been easy to draw a line between my triple-vaxxed self and the dirty and tainted people who actually caught COVID, but now I am one of them. My true belief is that unfortunately, everyone is going to get it eventually, no matter if you are a “masker forever”, or a “burn down the mask factory” type of person. I even sat next to a PHD of infectious diseases on a deadhead flight, who smirked when I put my mask on. He said in a slight German accent, “You know, you can wear it if you like, but it doesn’t really do anything.” I questioned him with a “Oh yeah?” He replied, “Yes, they have done further studies. I actually am a professor of infectious diseases.” I nodded, “So I guess, you would know?” “Yes. Unfortunately, I think everyone will get this strain. I have three shots and my whole family got it.” “Great,” I replied. But with a little German glass is half full he said, “But, the good news is, this is the one to get. It wasn’t very bad at all.” I smiled and nodded and left my mask on. I thought, “Who knows maybe I’ll be one of the lucky ones?” And two weeks later I had COVID.
He was right though. This has been the one to get. Barely a cough. Barely sneeze. A little bit of runny nose. Maybe a headache for two days. This has been nothing compared to the OG COVID, I swear I head before anyone knew what COVID was. I lost half a lung with that SOB. I still may be one of the lucky ones though: COVID gave me some time off. I got all the weeding done I wanted to do. I read some dense books on investing that have been on my “To-do list” for a while, and I am writing a blog post for the first time in months. Dare I say, it’s like a COVacation? Heck, I may even get to cleaning off my desk. I am just kidding, that will have to wait until retirement (Sidenote: I also realize that I am pretty fortunate. I happen to work in an industry and for a company with a good paid sick-leave policy in place, so I didn’t have to worry about going to work sick to pay my mortgage. My brother-in-law, who works in food service, was forced to go to work, symptomatic, because of threats from his boss. It’s not really in the spirit of this blog, but if this whole pandemic has shown us anything, it’s that we need some major overhauls to public health, individual health care, and the social umbrella. You really shouldn’t have to work sick to make ends meet).
Anyway, thanks for reading! I hope you are one of the lucky ones. I hope to post again soon, but I am already feeling better, so it’s back to the grindstone. But who knows? They say there are a lot of reoccurrences. Maybe another COVacation is in the cards! Oh, and my mom is doing better as well, thanks for asking. We are still trying to figure out how she got COVID. It may be one of those mysteries that are never solved.
