A Socially Distant Thanksgiving

There’s a string of articles appearing online right now, saying that if you’re going to get together with family for Thanksgiving, then you all need to start quarantining . . . yesterday. I’ll be honest: I don’t think getting together with family who don’t live in your actual house is a good idea at this point, period. Denisa and I had been thinking about going down to Pennsylvania like we usually do, but in the end after discussing it with family, we all decided it just wasn’t for the best.

But what if everyone who was coming agreed to quarantine first? I don’t think that’s realistic. Working in a library and talking with public library directors across the state, I just know full well how mask usage and social distancing is being handled by different people. I would not want to rely on someone else’s definition of what “quarantine” means when it comes to this.

Now, I realize that there are many of you out there who disagree with me on this. There’s also probably a number of you thinking about getting together “just with close family,” somehow thinking that limiting it that much will be enough. However, all the research I’ve looked into on the subject indicates getting together in small groups for hours in the same indoor location is exactly the sort of setting for prime COVID spread. Sure, it might seem at first glance that if it’s just you getting together, it’s no big deal, but if you expand that “just a couple very close family members getting together” to a national level, then it becomes much more concerning.

So what will we be doing? Making Thanksgiving dinner on our own this year. Yes, it won’t be nearly as much fun as all the other Thanksgivings we’ve done, but this is one time when missing out on some fun seems worth it, when the cost if we do it another way is potentially infecting and killing our loved ones. Things are looking good for getting a vaccine more widely available in the spring. At this point, it seems to me the main goal shifts to getting through the winter in as good of shape as possible.

Kind of a downer, but I think it’s necessary this time.

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If you’d rather not sign up for Patreon, you can also support the site by clicking the MEMORY THIEF Amazon link on the right of the page. That will take you to Amazon, where you can buy my books or anything else. During that visit, a portion of your purchase will go to me. It won’t cost you anything extra.