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How is the coronavirus pandemic affecting your life right now? Tell us about your experiences, feelings, and thoughts.

I wrote earlier that I had cut off some of my conservative friends early in the 45 Regime. One of them was particularly hard to let go of. At the time, it wasn't so much that person themself, as it was their scary, threatening, racist reactionary other friends who I didn't want learning too much about my other loved ones or me. I had indications over the last few years that, now that all their remaining friends were reactionaries, this friend had become more like them. And I can be cold, here, because even if I were completely alone in the world, I would still draw the line somewhat short of hanging out with Nazi and Klan sympathizers. Last weekend I found out this old ex-friend had died recently after a few weeks of battling COVID. That hit me pretty badly. Like, maybe if I had stayed in their orbit, I could have been that lone voice of reason that might have prevented them from taking risks with this pandemic. Because I found footage on social media once I went hunting for it that, no, this person was not being particularly careful. Normally, I can be pretty cold-blooded and say, "This person was an adult who chose the side that sympathizes with genocidists and disregards sound pandemic science. They did it to themselves. Don't waste energy on feeling bad about this." But right now, I just remember the friend I once had. Work is hard, still overtime and probably will remain so for months. In spite of many more tests run last week, my county's percent positive was at nearly 10%. Last week, because nobody in the few places I must go into is wearing a mask, including children who can't possibly have been vaccinated yet, I started wearing a mask at work again, even though I don't have to since I'm vaccinated. (We still have a lot of other pandemic rules in effect.) There's just too much chance that I could wind up an asymptomatic carrier of one of these more-contagious variants, and masking back up settles that anxiety. I double-mask and disinfect if I have to go anywhere besides work, because people are acting like this thing's over, even though it clearly is not.