My Very Own Three-Card Monte

I grew up about a hundred miles north of NYC, in a mostly rural area dotted with small towns. When I was a kid, my family would make regular trips into "the city" for various things, mostly entertainments like Broadway shows, baseball games, and museums. Later, when I was a ne’er-do-well teenager,  I spent time in the city hanging out with friends — going to clubs, shopping the thrift stores, rummaging used book and record shops, copping a little weed (or something stronger), or just wandering around the streets to check out the action. Always, always, always in the 70s and 80s there were con men (and a few women) running street games of Three-Card Monte. They'd set up their quick-folding tables where the flow of pedestrian traffic brought plenty of suckers their way.

The players’ banter and jibes and the quickness of the easy game captivated passersby. It was a little thrilling, all the hustle. We didn't have street cons like that where I came from. The crowd would look on, always convinced we could track the money card (or the shell covering the pea) with our eyes. Sometimes we could. Sometimes we couldn't. The point was to make us BELIEVE we could win this oh-so-simple game, to get us to lay our money down based on that confidence. Of course it wouldn't have mattered what we'd tracked with our eyes, because sleight-of-hand always made sure the operator (who could disappear into the crowd as fast as his table clicked closed) was the real winner. My friends and I played only vicariously, not eager to part with our hard-earned restaurant tip money, but we watched lots of other folks lose their dough, and often their cool.

Now, I feel a little like I'm living in a Three-Card-Monte kind of world, in reverse. I don't want to find this particular money card, or this pea under the shell, not if it's coronavirus.

Here are the corona-con's distractions: Some people might be naturally immune. Some people might have acquired immunity already by having had a case, even a mild one, of COVID-19. Some people have symptoms. Some people have none.

But we can't tell who has immunity, who has a mild case, or who might be a carrier just by looking at them. With all the cards moving so fast, we can't track the money card; we can't guess what's under which shell. Testing is still not ubiquitous, and until it is, we won't have good counts on the number of cases and who has what, where or when.

We're told the elderly and the immunocompromised (hello...I'm sitting right here!) are most at risk. It's accepted. It's medical science. The numbers so far don't lie. Here's the creepy thing: we're lots more okay with the notion that the old and sick are more likely to die than we would be if children and infants were particularly vulnerable and we suspected that their parents could be the carriers. The calls for lockdowns would be taken much more seriously if children and babies were in jeopardy, and fewer people would be calling this latest pandemic a hoax. Thank goodness it appears that children aren't as much at risk, and thank goodness schools are closing so we don't have to test that theory. Too bad so many people are really in need of lessons on public health and herd immunity.

But really it's quite simple. Chances are you know and love someone old, someone sick, someone with cancer. Chances are you love someone, period. I really, really hope someone loves you. Chances are you have friends, or, at least, a pet fish who needs you alive and well. And chances are you could be a coronavirus carrier. You might get COVID-19. You might not. But you could give it to someone else who really doesn't need it. Or you could get it and be too sick to take care of your pet fish.

Let's not suddenly fall in love with Natural Selection and Survival of the Fittest. Be your best compassionate, human, thinking self, and do the right thing.

I'm not asking you to panic. I'm just asking you not to fall for the short con. You think you're tracking the money card, but the house always wins.

Love your neighbor (or immunocompromised Auntie). From a distance. Keep calm. Wash your hands. Stay home if you can. When you do go to the store, leave some bread, milk, and toilet paper for the rest of us. Thanks!

P.S. On top of trying not to catch the coronavirus, I have scans this week, so ya know, no stress. My rad onc's office called and said to go ahead and get my CT and MRI as scheduled, but that if I wanted to get my results by phone instead of coming into the clinic, the doctor would be glad to call me. That's the prudent thing to do of course. I adore my rad onc and hate to give up a chance to say hello in person. Still, in the interest of public health, it's probably best to circulate outside the home as little as possible. Here's hoping her phone call brings good news.