Scary Covid Halloween

Halloween made me wistful this year. I had to avoid the germy kiddies with the porch lights off, plus no front room lights, so essentially I hid in the dark in the back bedroom.

I look at graphs and see how close we are to getting out of all this nonsense.

Here's the graph for the whole US - you can see Delta show up at the end of May

Then I look at just my area for last week and think, "I would have to drive 20 minutes and knock on just the right door to get infected."

Of course, that's just the reported cases. All those empty grey patches are filled with people sniffing in and coughing out the virus with no ill effects, either because they're vaccinated or because they're in denial. 

I thanked the host of our work Zoom party for giving me a chance to acknowledge Halloween -- even though I hate Halloween (strangers plus children plus greed, as you know), so I don't know why I feel so wistful. I worry that I am neglecting almost all of my friendships, and when retirement hits I'll have very few avenues for making new relationships, so if I continue on this path things will be bleak. Then again, I am given to understand that if we can avoid any other variants we might be out of it in the spring. Good lord, wouldn't that be wonderful?

I think the faux Halloween "fear" just didn't sit right when I pile it on top of real fear.

Comments

[KC]

Relationship-wise, "coffee" over Zoom can be fun (not as good as in-person, yes, but non-infectious and also not having to road-trip to be proximate); you do have to do more work to maintain most relationships in pandemic/shut-in mode, though.

Hobbies and trivia nights and such may help with making friends after retirement?

Agreed that we just don't really need plastic "scary" when things are as they are; maybe some people find it cathartic, but eh.

Some people did clever things with candy chutes to do socially-distanced trick-or-treating, but it's an endeavor. We put a "help yourselves" box out on our porch with a pumpkin and called it a day. Or rather a night. But that's not helping train the kids for Correct Halloween Behavior (although I'd note that no one took all the treats! which is nice! we are not fully in anti-socialized mode even with everything that has happened, apparently?).

[TheQueen]

KC - I thought aboutt a porch box too late. They would have had to make do with Russell Stouffer sugar-free caramels, and they would have been suspicious.

[Alice]

For us, the map circles only show "outbreaks," and our state loosened its definition of an outbreak in some settings last spring. I go by the county data I can see at my state's website and also at Covidactnow. Our case count is almost exactly as bad as it was this time last year, plus the county's ICUs have been showing 100% full for more than a month.

So we did Halloween with my kid at home for the second year running, did not decorate, and did not get trick-or-treaters. It's not the worst thing in the world. I just wish that the circumstances were different. The virus levels didn't have to be this bad, yet here we are.

[TheQueen]

Alice - I think that sounds nice. I think your child will remember this Halloween more than all the others.