When my neighbors and colleagues and I had to leave our jobs, when we had to stay home, when our favorite activities were canceled, when we became afraid to greet our neighbors, when we became afraid to walk through our neighborhood, when our favorite restaurants closed, when we could only see and hear our friends, our coworkers, our grown children at a technological remove— when all this happened, a few things that we all knew came into sharp focus.  

His voice was serious and stern. “You can’t visit, mom,” my son said. “I’m a vector.” In fact, he’s a doctor working at a big-city hospital, and while not on the immediate front lines in terms of direct contact with COVID-19 patients, he is very involved in the logistics related to the ventilators in the ICUs. Walking the common halls and entering the secure isolation areas daily puts him at risk not only for contracting the virus himself but also for transmitting it unknowingly. He could be asymptomatic but test positive for the virus. He absolutely would not consider putting his seventy-year-old parents in danger.

So… no visiting. Not him, not his wife, not his two teenaged children.