The stars burn clean
Oct. 2nd, 2020 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brin_bellway[cw: illness, politics]
Fifteen minutes before his shift was due to end, a co-worker--the one who seems to genuinely give a shit about safety--took an order from a maskless customer.
(We get a trickle of them these days, one every couple hours or so. The franchise owner won't let us kick them out or demand they mask up, won't even let us tell them they can only come in maskless if they're picking up a pre-order (which would minimise in-restaurant time and speech).)
He shook his head to me after the customer left, complained about how some people *still* don't wear masks.
I thought about it for a few moments.
I told him the International Space Station would be visible overhead that night. It'll rise at 8:16 PM in the southwest, set six minutes later in the northeast. Looks like a bright star, moves like a slow airplane. It's pretty neat, and (unlike me) you'll be off duty by then. You might like to see it.
---
I didn't used to *need* much divergence between the customer-service persona and the me beneath. I was genuinely happy to work there, so I didn't need to fake it.
Now I get things like this:
Maskless customer: *finishes paying*
External cashier!me, chirpily: "Have a good day!"
Internal me: May you burn in the fires of Gehenna like the garbage you are.
---
The original mask law ended September 30th. The Region of Waterloo government eventually came to their senses enough to add an extension until May 31st, but I worry a lot of people don't know that.
---
On the bright side, if nobody can see your mouth you don't need to keep a monitoring subroutine up checking if you're smiling enough. I have resting resignation face and--when people can see my mouth--need to keep a small smile up at pretty much all times just to look neutral.
---
I've never really tried to move *downward* in the amount of background sanitation I do in my life. I've moved *upward* a few times as I learn more or take on higher-risk lifestyles, but I've never really had *cause* to move down.
It occurs to me that I don't actually know if I can. It could be a ratchet.
---
I've now been given cause to move down.
We understand COVID-19 better now, and increasingly the evidence is coming out against fomite transmission. The world where fomite transmission of COVID-19 is ever material (so to speak) and this world look quite different.
I've decided on an initial compromise: I'll shower after my *first* shift this week so that my hair won't be stringy by the last shift (especially with the shampoo tolerance my hair's oil glands have built up over the last few months), but not after the others. I'll wash my clothes in the laundry, wash my mask and glasses in the sink, wash my hands up to the elbows, probably disinfect my wristwatch, but I won't go so far as to wash my hair.
It feels weird to try to move *downward* when--not counting nursing homes--local caseloads are the worst they've ever been. But changing lifestyle risk isn't the only reason to change your behaviour.
---
(well, maybe not *actually* the worst they've ever been: tests are rationed a *lot* less than they were in the spring)
---
(Some people said "you can stop quarantining your packages now". That's bullshit. I *always* quarantined my packages, and the germs I was trying to protect myself against in 2019 still exist.
People who've started cultivating caution in what they touch and when should keep most of it up: it will serve them well in a great many of their endeavours, just not their endeavours to avoid catching COVID-19. It's certainly served me well.)
---
Not all compromises trend the same direction over time.
I gave up on getting hold of surgical masks, but Mom--out of the blue--offered to let me start dipping into the emergency box she managed to get her hands on this summer.
She offered this *before* I decided to stop showering after every shift, and perhaps that helped the decision. A me with a surgical mask and unwashed hair is safer than a me with a cloth mask and a full decon.
---
Dose matters, perhaps sometimes too much.
The flipside of "most [COVID-19 cases that are contracted in spite of heavy use of masks] are so mild the patient doesn't even notice unless they happen to get tested at the right time" is "if you *do* manage to contract COVID-19 in spite of heavy use of masks, you probably won't know to quarantine".
I have a great many of the hallmarks of "the sort of person who, conditional on contracting COVID-19, becomes a carrier". There is a very good chance that the first symptoms of *my* illness will be in *others*, in the family members who didn't know not to breathe my air, the people I didn't know to protect.
---
But then, a sufficiently cautious person, in an environment that has been dragged far enough into caution, can sometimes make a dose *so* small as to be below the infection threshold.
(I *also* have many of the hallmarks of "the sort of person who has a relatively high infection threshold".)
---
One last thing, a postscript from after this post percolated but before it was written down:
I looked at an acquaintance's Mastodon this morning and found them talking about Trump having COVID-19 now.
I know I'm supposed to be worried, supposed to be thinking about all the ways this could go wrong. But I was never much good at having emotions about big sweeping things in the world, and I'm certainly too burnt out for it now.
'Well,' I thought, '*this* is going to be interesting.'
"Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others", said the posts weaving their way through Mastodon in boost after boost, and I have, I sure have. It's not exactly a *safe* distance--Mars seems like a nice safe distance right now--but at least I'm not watching this mess play out from the inside.
When people talk about the potential collapse and fragmentation of the United States, all I can muster up the energy to think is that perhaps I won't need the guts to renounce my citizenship and close those doors forever. Perhaps the choice to "give up my passport", as the standard Indian English metonym goes (as my Indian co-workers always frame it when they ask if I'm still a U.S. citizen, or talk about whether they're going to stop being Indian citizens), will be made for me, my passport invalidated by the nonexistence of the country that issued it.
---
(Although I suppose at least one of America's descendants--the one that gets New Jersey, perhaps--would likely try to claim me. Maybe I'll let them. *Maybe*.)
Fifteen minutes before his shift was due to end, a co-worker--the one who seems to genuinely give a shit about safety--took an order from a maskless customer.
(We get a trickle of them these days, one every couple hours or so. The franchise owner won't let us kick them out or demand they mask up, won't even let us tell them they can only come in maskless if they're picking up a pre-order (which would minimise in-restaurant time and speech).)
He shook his head to me after the customer left, complained about how some people *still* don't wear masks.
I thought about it for a few moments.
I told him the International Space Station would be visible overhead that night. It'll rise at 8:16 PM in the southwest, set six minutes later in the northeast. Looks like a bright star, moves like a slow airplane. It's pretty neat, and (unlike me) you'll be off duty by then. You might like to see it.
---
I didn't used to *need* much divergence between the customer-service persona and the me beneath. I was genuinely happy to work there, so I didn't need to fake it.
Now I get things like this:
Maskless customer: *finishes paying*
External cashier!me, chirpily: "Have a good day!"
Internal me: May you burn in the fires of Gehenna like the garbage you are.
---
The original mask law ended September 30th. The Region of Waterloo government eventually came to their senses enough to add an extension until May 31st, but I worry a lot of people don't know that.
---
On the bright side, if nobody can see your mouth you don't need to keep a monitoring subroutine up checking if you're smiling enough. I have resting resignation face and--when people can see my mouth--need to keep a small smile up at pretty much all times just to look neutral.
---
I've never really tried to move *downward* in the amount of background sanitation I do in my life. I've moved *upward* a few times as I learn more or take on higher-risk lifestyles, but I've never really had *cause* to move down.
It occurs to me that I don't actually know if I can. It could be a ratchet.
---
I've now been given cause to move down.
We understand COVID-19 better now, and increasingly the evidence is coming out against fomite transmission. The world where fomite transmission of COVID-19 is ever material (so to speak) and this world look quite different.
I've decided on an initial compromise: I'll shower after my *first* shift this week so that my hair won't be stringy by the last shift (especially with the shampoo tolerance my hair's oil glands have built up over the last few months), but not after the others. I'll wash my clothes in the laundry, wash my mask and glasses in the sink, wash my hands up to the elbows, probably disinfect my wristwatch, but I won't go so far as to wash my hair.
It feels weird to try to move *downward* when--not counting nursing homes--local caseloads are the worst they've ever been. But changing lifestyle risk isn't the only reason to change your behaviour.
---
(well, maybe not *actually* the worst they've ever been: tests are rationed a *lot* less than they were in the spring)
---
(Some people said "you can stop quarantining your packages now". That's bullshit. I *always* quarantined my packages, and the germs I was trying to protect myself against in 2019 still exist.
People who've started cultivating caution in what they touch and when should keep most of it up: it will serve them well in a great many of their endeavours, just not their endeavours to avoid catching COVID-19. It's certainly served me well.)
---
Not all compromises trend the same direction over time.
I gave up on getting hold of surgical masks, but Mom--out of the blue--offered to let me start dipping into the emergency box she managed to get her hands on this summer.
She offered this *before* I decided to stop showering after every shift, and perhaps that helped the decision. A me with a surgical mask and unwashed hair is safer than a me with a cloth mask and a full decon.
---
Dose matters, perhaps sometimes too much.
The flipside of "most [COVID-19 cases that are contracted in spite of heavy use of masks] are so mild the patient doesn't even notice unless they happen to get tested at the right time" is "if you *do* manage to contract COVID-19 in spite of heavy use of masks, you probably won't know to quarantine".
I have a great many of the hallmarks of "the sort of person who, conditional on contracting COVID-19, becomes a carrier". There is a very good chance that the first symptoms of *my* illness will be in *others*, in the family members who didn't know not to breathe my air, the people I didn't know to protect.
---
But then, a sufficiently cautious person, in an environment that has been dragged far enough into caution, can sometimes make a dose *so* small as to be below the infection threshold.
(I *also* have many of the hallmarks of "the sort of person who has a relatively high infection threshold".)
---
One last thing, a postscript from after this post percolated but before it was written down:
I looked at an acquaintance's Mastodon this morning and found them talking about Trump having COVID-19 now.
I know I'm supposed to be worried, supposed to be thinking about all the ways this could go wrong. But I was never much good at having emotions about big sweeping things in the world, and I'm certainly too burnt out for it now.
'Well,' I thought, '*this* is going to be interesting.'
"Put on your own oxygen mask before helping others", said the posts weaving their way through Mastodon in boost after boost, and I have, I sure have. It's not exactly a *safe* distance--Mars seems like a nice safe distance right now--but at least I'm not watching this mess play out from the inside.
When people talk about the potential collapse and fragmentation of the United States, all I can muster up the energy to think is that perhaps I won't need the guts to renounce my citizenship and close those doors forever. Perhaps the choice to "give up my passport", as the standard Indian English metonym goes (as my Indian co-workers always frame it when they ask if I'm still a U.S. citizen, or talk about whether they're going to stop being Indian citizens), will be made for me, my passport invalidated by the nonexistence of the country that issued it.
---
(Although I suppose at least one of America's descendants--the one that gets New Jersey, perhaps--would likely try to claim me. Maybe I'll let them. *Maybe*.)
