Livre d'Or

The risk factors are pretty clearly proximity and duration of interaction with someone infected. My understanding is that reliable tests for active infection and antibodies still aren't widely available where you are—is that right? Until they are, you have to assume everyone's infected and that's very restrictive. Once you're able to know your own immune status as well as your own and other people's active infection status, it will make a huge difference to the social part because your risk assessment and protective measures can be so much more specific. If it makes a difference to your mindset, you can think of whatever measures you decide to take now as temporary things that you'll revisit once accurate testing becomes available to you and everyone in your social group.

Now that we've had positive antibody and negative active infection tests, our calculations are mostly about keeping other people safe. We still don't go to stores or ride public transit, because an additional person in an enclosed space makes social distancing harder for everyone else. We wear masks when we go out and swerve to keep our distance from other passersby because those are good social habits to encourage and normalize. We're hiring a nanny but only interviewing candidates who live within walking distance, because we don't want to ask anyone to put themselves at risk by riding the subway to us every day. (Or cycling, which is quite risky on city streets even with reduced traffic.)

We have had two visits from friends, both of whom drove to see us. We're obviously not planning to throw a party for my birthday in two weeks, but we could plausibly have friends over one at a time: we're no risk to them and they're no risk to us, and if we space them out they're not a risk to one another. It still feels weird, though, in a slippery-slope way. I don't think anyone in our circle wants to be in the habit of paying social calls.

My mother's doctor approved me visiting her but says I still shouldn't hug her or go into her house, because she (78, sturdy but with an autoimmune condition) and her husband (93, frail, every pre-existing condition you could name) are so high-risk that it simply isn't worth even the microscopic chance of me somehow conveying active virus to them. They're well out of walking distance for me, so I'd have to go by cab/Lyft and could just conceivably pick up something on my clothes. I think Mom and I might try meeting in a park, putting on brand new plastic ponchos, and standing back to back so we can lean on each other; less absurdly, we could put on clean gloves and hold hands. Human contact is so vitally necessary, and at some point people find ways to make it happen.

We considered buying a car—Hertz is going bankrupt and selling off its fleet for very good prices, and we could get my ideal car for probably about $10k cash—but I just couldn't make myself do it. We'd hardly use it and it would be a huge hassle to park and maintain and there are other things we'd like to spend $10k on. Cycling and transit aren't options for reasons given above. So for now we're staying within walking distance from home, which for J and me is about a 3-mile radius (when my lungs are happy, which they still occasionally aren't) and for X is about a 1-mile radius. And mostly, to be honest, we're still staying indoors, because we're in the habit of it now.