Ms. Brenda

My neighbor and I had a discussion yesterday about what we should do about the contact our children are having in the back yards of ours and other families on our street.  Should we keep them apart?   Is the risk acceptable because these children have been together every day for weeks and far before social distancing was a thing?   And what types of things would cause us to change our rules?

Yes, these children have been together for weeks, every day after school and all throughout the weekend.   The statement, "if one of them has it, we all have it" is valid at a fixed point in time.   We're not in complete social isolation though.   Today I took my dog to the groomers and the children to the Chiropractor.   The groomer had twenty-seven dogs today and the chiropractor's office could have had over a hundred patients.   

That's a lot of hands that touched things we could have touched that might be infected.   This means if no one else left their house at all today, my children could have contact with over a hundred people from the two stop day we had—and they could infect all their uninfected friends on the trampoline. 

And that's just our errand of the day.   We know we weren't the only ones who went out today.  There's something to be said about small group sizes.   It's true and it's not.  We touched the door handle to get into both the groomer's and Chiropractor's office today.   Those doors were touched by those other hundred-odd people.   It didn't take a group gathering to possibly infect us.   Group gatherings on and around our trampoline, for instance, can also pass germs along, but so can serial contact.

And all that means is I don't know the answer of how we'll evolve our protection plan for our family, but also for the people we don't know.   My neighbor and I were talking about our duty yesterday and that there must be a balance from extreme isolation to blatant disregard for people's health.   She said, "I mean how would we feel if we got sweet Ms. Brenda infected at the grocery store?" 

I knew exactly who she meant.   Brenda has worked in our neighborhood grocery store for years.   She's close to retirement age and has always worked at the checkout line.   She touches people's things all day long.   She has no chance of social distancing with her job.   

My friend's comment struck a chord though, we all like Ms. Brenda—how would we feel if we got her sick and she died.   We have daily talks as neighbors on what we should do.   Six feet away from each other.   The good news is no one is judgemental of others based on their choices.  It's a nice neighborhood in that way. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl Seeing Germs Lesson:  I had my children watch (or listen) to Mark Rober's video on how germs spread.   They were both fascinated with how easily germs can be passed on and what we can do to prevent contaminating others.   It helped them understand in part why we're all so worried about COVID-19 Coronavirus