So, you're at the grocery store on Saturday morning, in the check-out line, and perusing the gossipy mags and debating a chocolate bar, and the air you exhale is quietly raining down on a little boy standing in line a foot in front of you. But you're fine, so what's the worry? Where's the story?
He goes to school on Monday and learns some and plays some, and, by the afternoon, is coughing a bit. The windows are closed to keep out the rain, and the HEPA is turned off because it's too damn loud. So every exhale adds a virus to the air that all the other kids and teachers breath in. He's unwittingly hotboxing the classroom.
Like a third of all cases, you never felt sick. Why should you have to wear a mask when you're clearly well??
The boy was fine until he wasn't, but it was just a couple weeks of endurable hell. No biggie.
But another classmate he didn't really know, who tried to keep her mask on despite being the only one, had a mild case. It was kind to her, it seems. But it was doing a sneaky, underhanded number on her system. Then, the following month, she got strep. She went from a bit of a fever, to burning up, to we can't save her in just a few hours. Her parents had CR boxes in the house and had been able to avoid getting sick from their daughter's original illness, but they were no match for the hospital emergency department full of people coughing, and retching and babies crying and mothers wailing as their own wee one grew listless in their arms. And the ER doctor working with them, right in their face, had a bit of a sniffle.
Now her mom, while grieving her only child, has to care for her dad with Long Covid, feed him, bathe him, and help him get back and forth to the bathroom every day for the rest of their lives.
So that's why people say things that sound so mean and awful and alarmist like,
"Chances are, if you got Covid and were in public, you've killed someone.
