By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
June 29, 2021
I like to think that I’ve been exceptionally careful during the pandemic for someone who does not work in the field of either health care or biological sciences. For more than a year, the only person I spent time with indoors without a mask was my parent. My in-person socializing was limited to one outdoor hike with a friend; I was masked for the entirety of the experience. I limited my shopping trips to grocery runs and the occasional visit to pick up necessities from a pharmacy or other store.
From a pandemic standpoint, the riskiest thing I did for frivolous reasons was visit an arcade to play pinball for a few hours in September 2020. This is a strange thing to say, and not because I happen to like pinball more than most people: Like many Americans, I’m probably at greater risk of dying from a car crash than I am of Covid-19. But I took pains to reduce my exposure to the novel coronavirus. Covid infection rates were relatively low that month, and the arcade I visited was in a county in New Jersey that had a particularly low incidence of the disease.
I’ve taken a few Covid-19 antibody tests, which indicate whether or not the subject has been exposed to the disease. These results are not definitive, but my tests in May 2020, December 2020 and March 2021 were negative. The one I took in April of this year was positive, but that was expected, as I got that test while donating blood shortly after my second vaccination.
My willingness to venture into public indoor areas began to change in early May, not quite two weeks after that second vaccination shot, when I flew to Colorado for a family event. I would have preferred to be fully vaccinated — that is, to have had a buffer of at least two weeks between my second shot and the trip — but I wasn’t willing to miss the get-together.
Again, I tried to reduce the risks. I double-masked for the entire outbound journey, including my time on the plane, in the airports and while waiting to pick up the rental car. As soon as I’d dropped my parental unit off at the place P.U. was staying, I checked into my hotel. I continued masking for the entire time I was in an indoor public space, which was basically only as long as it took to check in and transfer my luggage from my rental car to the hotel room.
The next day, I took a long walk in the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge; I also went shopping at a grocery store in the morning and a pharmacy in the evening. Otherwise, I kept myself to myself. Of course, I masked whenever I entered an indoor public space on that day.
I wound up keeping my face covered for nearly all the time I was around other people on the trip, excepting a few relatively brief occasions with my parent, my sibling and my sibling’s family. I ate several meals alone in my hotel room. On the morning of the return flight, I started off with one mask but ended up donning a second one while we were waiting at the Denver airport.
I got a number of diagnostic molecular tests before and after my trip. (Unlike the antibody tests mentioned above, diagnostic tests indicate whether the subject is infected with the novel coronavirus at the time of the assessment.) The nasal swab taken on May 2, just before I left North Carolina for my parent’s house, came back negative. So did the sample taken on May 5, the day before we flew to Colorado, and the one taken on May 15, after our return.
I’m fortunate to be able to spend time at my house or my parent’s house. It’s behavior I largely maintained in May, excepting of course that trip to Colorado and daily walks. But since Covid-19 vaccines are so effective, I’ve slowly been changing my habits.
In mid-May, I stopped wearing masks for my outdoor walks. Twice that month, I drove up to Middletown, N.Y., and played pinball at Rock Fantasy, which has a wonderful collection of tables. I masked the entire time I was at the venue. Toward the end of May, I went to my buddy’s house for a friendly poker game and a few drinks. It was my first visit to a residence other than mine or my parent’s since early 2020; these were my first alcoholic beverages in about 13 months. Unlike the other guests, I kept my mask on except for when I was actively drinking from my bottle of cider or beer.
On June 1, I went to a casino and briefly played in a $1-$3 poker cash game, with dismal results; I double-masked but removed my face coverings specifically in order to sip tea. That same day, I stayed a night with my friends in Northern Virginia and did not wear a mask in their home, another post-pandemic personal first. On the 2nd, we went out for lunch, and we stepped inside the restaurant to order. I hadn’t brought a mask, despite my speculation in May that I might carry masks and hand sanitizer with me for the rest of my life. Being indoors without a mask was not ideal, but I’d been vaccinated, and it seemed OK to do for a short span. (We ate on an outdoor patio.)
I went for yet another Covid-19 test on June 4, after getting back to Durham. It too was negative.
On the 17th, I visited the Durham establishment I call Pinball Oasis on this blog. I was not wearing a mask. I walked up to the bar, ordered a cider, took it outside to the patio and drank it. It felt strange. When I’d finished my glass, I put on a mask, went inside and played pinball badly for a couple of hours.
Normalcy: It’s something I could get used to, I suppose. But the rise of the delta variant has me re-evaluating my very gradual return to pre-pandemic behavior.
Since I’m fully vaccinated, I should be mostly protected against severe Covid cases. Even so, I’d prefer not to get the disease. Nor am I interested in spreading it to others. Studies have shown that vaccines are effective at blocking transmission by immunized individuals, but I’m not certain whether this finding still applies to delta.
This feels like a real case of one step forward, two steps back. For the moment, I think that I’m going to continue avoiding indoor public spaces, and I will cover my face when I do enter such areas.
MEMwrites 
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