COVID keeps creeping closer in our community. So far, we’ve considered ourselves very lucky here in Vermont (even if we might have also been grumbling a bit about the governor’s mandates).
In the past few weeks, two young adults in our friend group have come down with it. One was away at college. The other was here in our little town. Happily, neither of them seems very ill, and we expect full recoveries. The harder part is figuring out who needs to be notified… how long someone has to be quarantined… and how to handle any possible exposures in their work places.
One of the mothers shared something with me today that strikes me as very typical of our state. The Health Department asked her if they had food.
Isn’t that an infinitely practical question? You don’t want family members going out, of course, but they all still need to eat. Instead of assuming that the COVID-affected household would have a way to get groceries, the health department asked them.
Perhaps it is a fairly strange silver lining to find, but there it is. I am grateful to live in a state with a health department that worries about contact tracing, COVID testing, workplace compliance, the health of the diagnosed individual… and the way they are all going to get food.