Relative Freedoms

 When I work with kids on test-taking strategies, it is invariably the group that finishes first that has the lowest scores. "What do you suppose you might have done to get another three or four questions correct?" I ask them. "Is it possible you could have done anything different?"

"No." 

I make a couple of observations, the kind that suggest that maybe the student might have worked a little longer or harder on their assessment.

Blank stare. 

This is the effort they had to extend on this task. Now can we please get back to the penguin math game?

This is what I am imagining about American's response to COVID. The celebration that accompanied a Florida judge's decision to toss out Federal mask mandates on airplanes. Representative Jim Jordan from Ohio tweeted, "Fauci lost. Freedom won." 

Okay, so let's examine: Doctor Anthony Fauci, who has been actively supporting any and all efforts of the healthcare community to keep America and the rest of the planet safe from COVID-19, lost? Ridding the skies of what many feel is unnecessary restrictions of their faces? That layer of protection that kept a group of strangers trapped in a metal cylinder flying through the air has been deemed no longer useful by a judge, not a doctor. From Florida? And then there's this whole grab bag called "freedom." It seems as though there are a lot of folks who like to pick and choose when it comes to freedoms. Freedom from masks? Check. Freedom from a global pandemic? Not so check. We just want to be done with this whole global pandemic nonsense. We want to get back to that penguin game. 

See, here's where I draw my comparison: It's about stamina. Like those elementary schoolers who cannot imagine spending another ten minutes on an assessment that could determine their grade for a week, a day or a semester, there is a segment of America that would like COVID-19 to just go away. It's getting in the way of our everyday life. Those of us who are still alive, anyway. Haven't we all suffered enough? I suppose the people best equipped to answer that question with any fidelity would be the ones who have lived through long COVID, perhaps with the addition or subtraction of a lung or two. Freedom from health seems like a pretty bad deal. Freedom from life? A little worse than that.

So will we have the stamina it takes to deal with the reality of a deadly disease past the point that it interferes with our ability to show off the cleft in our chins? Will we sacrifice the ground that we have made up by getting vaccinated so that we can get on an airplane without wearing a mask? 

But we still have to take off our shoes? Go figure.