Staying sane during COVID is about making choices. A Sacramento Kings game was my test
The roar of a crowd sounds different when you’re in the middle of a COVID surge.
But I had bought these Kings tickets months ago, as a Christmas present for three friends, one of whom is far more interested in the plight of our sad home team than I ever will be. I couldn’t justify losing my money or precious time spent in their company, so even with statewide positive test rates pushing past 20%, we masked up and headed to the game.
Was it selfish? Yes. But after nearly two long years of this modern plague, sometimes we’ve had to make choices that preserve our sanity first and our health second.
But on this Wednesday night in January, I desperately wanted to be surrounded by these friends, enjoying our community together and grasping whatever crumbs of normalcy I could find in 2022.
The ethical price may have been high, but at least the tickets were cheap.
I am lucky that if I finally catch COVID — or when, if you listen to the experts — it will probably be a mild case. I’m fully vaccinated and recently boosted, and I gamely wore the branded Kings/Golden 1 Center mask handed to me upon entry. Every ticket holder also had to show proof of vaccination at the door, a painless process that provided some comfort despite the shadow of so many breakthrough infections. (We were also distanced from the vast majority of people there purely due to my atrocious taste in seats.)
In the coming weeks, I will tamp down my social interactions and stay away from my more vulnerable family members. I will do what I believe to be right and hope that it’s enough, just as I have since the beginning of this pandemic, and what I have expected others to do as well.
In time, the pandemic will become endemic — not gone, but no longer a threat to most of us. At some point, we will have to decide as a society what risks are tolerable and which are not. It’s clear that we do not currently agree. In the meantime, we will continue to grapple with questions of exposure, infection and our moral duty to one another.
Like a pendulum, we have swung from one extreme to another these past two years. We shut ourselves away, then flung open the doors too quickly, only to hide away again. The effect is one of exhaustion, frustration and uncertainty.
When I imagine previous generations surviving world wars, depressions and plagues, I imagine men and women sacrificing whatever they had to so that society could survive.
But now that I can count my generation among them, I often wonder if they were more like us? Blindly grasping for hope, routine and help in a world that offers little of any. This particular plague has not made us better people, but I don’t think prior generations were better people then, either. I think we all just do what we can, when we can and try to preserve a little of our sanity along the way, and hope that our choices are good, or benign at worst.
These are weighty topics to ponder at a basketball game. (And one we lost, no less.)
I don’t know whether I will suffer for choosing to attend the game. At the very least, I will do my best to make sure no one else suffers for it.
But for one happy night, I enjoyed the camaraderie and energy of a crowd. I cannot and will not regret it.
This story was originally published January 7, 2022 at 5:00 AM.
