Masks away!
How easily we try to forget
Crowds and touristas are back! We are fulfilling a years’ long desire on my husband’s part to see the Edinburgh Tattoo and mine to see the Highland Games. We are also checking in on four different sets of old friends, three of them couples I have known as far back as 1979 (somehow it really can’t be-gulp-45 years), and the fourth a retired colleague whose wife wanted to buy a castle (and could afford it).
But the crowds at BWI, Keflavik, and Glasgow airports were not for the faint-hearted. We didn’t clear security in Iceland but the TSA in Baltimore and Border Control in Glasgow more than compensated in that category of “time-we-will-never-recover-in-our-lives”. There were no problems but oodles and oodles of people.
In an era of significant higher numbers of COVID cases, people do not seem to worry about those around them. We and perhaps 15% of the crowds masked but most people stood as closely together as possible sans protection. I completely understand why someone I spoke with before our Monday departure said a young woman in the office and her entire cadre of people over here on holiday are now schwacked by the virus. The transmission vectors are so apparent.
Cast back merely four years ago when we still thought COVID was transmissible on papers, surfaces or books. People would not eat indoors, much less sit in a boarding area without masks. International travel was almost impossible; even three years ago it was bloody difficult.
We truly become less frightened of what we see and hear repeatedly. That phenomenon explain a lot more than behavior and wishful thinking regarding the COVID virus where the increased risks of ignoring dangers appear negligible. It results from experiencing something so consistently we delude ourselves into thinking the demonstrable danger won’t happen to us. Far too often it does, then we wonder why. Actions create consequences so our occasional victimhood is self-delusional at times. Ah, the human mind!
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So, masks away for many while we don ours for the train to Fife this morning.
The rain of Scotland this summer is ubiquitous but the resulting flowers are so colorful.
Bring on the Edinburgh flower boxes and Fife gardens.
Be well and be safe. FIN