What a viral story about COVID-19 nuptials sickening the innocent tells us about American society in the pandemic.
In the summer, my fiancé and I made a difficult but obvious call: We postponed our planned September wedding until next year, for a date we’ll probably have to change a second time. The pandemic wasn’t over, and wouldn’t be for many months. We’re inconvenienced, disappointed, even a little depressed. But we can reschedule a wedding. We can’t resurrect anyone who dies because we decided to throw a plague party. If you think your wedding should be a celebration of love and community, then COVID-19 narrows your options. You either postpone, or you go the Zoom route. Less death, more joy. And in what may be the COVID wedding to end all COVID weddings,23 nursing-home residents died after staff attended a 300-person wedding in Washington state. Local health officials are still investigating the link between the wedding and the deaths, but it’s already a confirmed superspreader event, responsible for dozens of cases of COVID. I have not seen pictures. Maybe the wedding was beautiful. Maybe it even seemed vital, a celebration of life amid so much death. But illusions are flimsy by definition. We have been living with COVID-19 for around ten months, and we are familiar, collectively, with cause and effect.
