Page 112 - ShowSight - June 2020

TO BE or NOT TO BE
BY ANDREA BRADFORD
“To be, or not to be—that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune Or to take arms against a sea of troubles And by opposing end them.”
- Hamlet by Shakespeare
Everyone in our changed society seems to be suffering the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” We are worried about ourselves, our elderly family and friends, the fact that we are now considered elderly, and whether we will get sick and die or go broke and become homeless first. We are worried
about those who are working and exposed to the public, worried about those who are not able to work, worried about those who are homeschooling children for the first time, worried about those who are “locked in” by themselves and feeling very lost and lonely. We are worried about those who refuse to wear masks, whatever the reason, and worried about those who wear masks in situations that put themselves and others at risk.
We are worried about our dog sport events. We are worried about so many judges who are at higher risk of serious illness from COVID-19 because of their age or medical conditions. We are worried about our club members who work at shows for the same reasons. We are worried about exhibitors suing the clubs if they think they got infected at an event. We are worried about being able to choose the level of risk we are willing to accept versus being told what we must do. All this stress and worry is causing people to become angry and accusatory, which is not helping to do in COVID-19, and it’s not helping to bring together our community.
Taking out all of the emotion and most of the opinion, what do we know about the situation we find ourselves in with respect to COVID-19? We know that we were asked by the CDC to maintain a distance of six feet between people, not gather in groups of more than 10 and, more recently, to wear masks in public to diminish the spread of the disease. In many places there have been local government directives to shelter in place either for high risk populations or for everyone to flatten the curve of the disease spread. This was mandated to allow the medical systems an opportunity to gear up to handle the influx of ill individuals, as those who do become very ill are requiring extraordinary efforts to give them an opportunity to recover. It is not an illness to wish on anyone, but there is to date no indication that anyone who is not secluded for a very long period of time with no contact outside of the household will ever be able to avoid exposure to this virulent virus. By flattening the curve, we extend the usual time frame of a virus infecting the population and then subsiding; we do not keep anyone
110 | SHOWSIGHT MAGAZINE, JUNE 2020