by Craig Colby
“How many people are we allowed to have over for Thanksgiving? I’m going to have about 21 in my house.” This question was asked on a video conference of hockey families in early October as we discussed how, and if, our 12-year-old children would be able to play hockey this season.
I asked “Is anyone concerned about the pandemic?”
“No” said one father immediately. No one disagreed.
Parents were open to having our kids wear masks designed for athletes while they played, but I was the only one driving that part of the discussion. Others talked about making sure the players development wasn’t compromised.
Two weeks after Canadian Thanksgiving, there was a rise in cases, including in the neighbourhood schools. A classmate of my 12-year-old son caught the coronavirus so my son had to self-isolate before he was tested. His test was negative. Fortunately, the masking and distancing in the classroom is working. Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people not following the medical community’s recommendations.
How do I know? Because it’s seven weeks later and the province has instituted a 28-day lockdown, closing indoor seating at restaurants and shutting down barbershops, salons, and other small stores. Some of those businesses won’t survive. Reflecting on the conversation with the other hockey parents, it’s not hard to see why we’re in this situation.
It Could Get Worse
Now, we’re heading into Thanksgiving in the United States and soon Christmas will be here. People want to get together, and many will, recommendations be damned. They’re thinking about how inconvenient the restrictions are and how much we deserve some family time. They’re thinking about the wrong thing.
They should be thinking about death.
The CDC just released a report about a wedding in Maine on August 7th that 55 people attended, five people more than was allowed in the state at the time. According to reports, people’s temperatures were checked on the way in, but masks were not worn, and physical distancing was not observed. 27 of the 55 guests caught the virus. The infection then spread to 177 people, 7 of whom died. Now, these numbers may not be accurate. Because a guest list for the wedding wasn’t provided, the tracing was incomplete. These numbers are likely conservative.
We Don’t Know Who Is Safe
I recently produced an interview with Dr. Anthony Fauci for the World Congress of Science and Factual Producers. We asked what surprised him about COVID-19. He said it’s that one person can get it and be completely unaffected. Another person can get it and die. They don’t know why.
People of any age can die from this disease. Canadian government data from November 20, 2020 shows that 24 people under 30 died from COVID-19. 89 people between 30 and 49 died. That’s a fairly small percentage of the 10,933 deaths from the November 20 data, but that won’t be any comfort to the people burying a loved one, regardless of their age. Six of the deaths from the Maine wedding came at a long-term care facility that was infected by the parent of someone who attended the wedding. That wedding killed six people who not only didn’t attend the wedding, it’s unlikely they’d ever heard of it.
It can happen to you, no matter how old you are, or if you attended a super spreader event.
I thought of the hockey parents. They are kind, educated, and articulate. We love spending time with them. So why aren’t they as concerned as I am? I don’t know all of their personal stories, but I may have more experience with sickness and death than they do. I know what it’s like when it happens to you.
So if you’re considering organizing a big gathering for American Thanksgiving or Christmas, I want to tell you what it’s like when extreme illness or death happens to you.
When It Happened To Me
Clare, a friend of mine from high school who had started teaching, died in a car accident when she was 25. I can still see one of her students walking to the front of the church in his hockey jacket to lay a flower on her casket.
John, one of my dearest friends, lost his 12-year-old daughter when she fell off a horse and it stepped on her. What stays with me from that funeral is John saying that when he got the call, his first thought was that he couldn’t remember if he’d told her he loved her that morning.
Dave, my best friend, died when he was 42, leaving behind two sons, 8 and 10 years old. The oldest sat on my lap crying as I read him the obituary we’d written. Even harder than that was watching him next to his father’s open casket, not wanting to leave because he knew he’d never see his father again. Only the minister had the courage to tell the boy it was time to go. I couldn’t do it. That memory destroys me.
Shane, my oldest son, was 14 when a sinus infection seeped into his brain. I watched as he lost movement in his right side and didn’t recognize me. I looked into his eyes and saw him falling away. I didn’t know if I’d ever see my boy again. Fortunately, he recovered fully.
That’s what it’s like when it happens to you. That’s what thousands of people are experiencing every day right now because of their own carelessness or the carelessness of others.
And it can happen to you.
Or, because this virus is such a relentlessly efficient spreader, it can happen to someone else because of you.
The End Is In Sight
What frustrates me most is that the end is in sight. Two vaccines are on the horizon that are more than 90% effective at protecting people from this killer virus. That level of protection was more than the researchers had hoped for. Dr. Fauci was giddy when he talked to us about it. He said if this was a movie, science would be the cavalry coming over the hill. And the cavalry is coming. We just have to hang on a little while longer.
Yeah, it’s been a tough year. We’ve all suffered because of the pandemic. We deserve to be together. I’m sure the bride and groom at that Maine wedding thought they deserved their big day too. But no one deserved to die because of it.
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Craig Colby is a television executive producer, producer, director, writer and story editor. He runs a storytelling consulting and production service for businesses. He can be reached at craig@colbyvision.net.