Virus: Why you think you won’t catch it

“Do you feel lucky, punk?”

That’s not actually what Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry asked an injured perp, but it’s close enough.

If I were asked, in regard to the coronavirus pandemic, I would have said, “Yes, I do,” until recently. I didn’t believe I would catch it, but that is changing.

Apart from hypochondriacs, who think they will catch everything, most people don’t think they will catch it. 

I asked a bunch of friends if they thought they would catch coronavirus. Every single one said no, except for two who thought they had already caught, and survived, it in March.

I think you have to believe you won’t get stricken to keep your sanity.

Did the people who died from it think they would catch it? Probably not.

If you believe you won’t get it, you don’t have to deal with this scenario — will you get a mild case, or a severe one? If severe, will you wind up in the hospital? If in the hospital, will you be in intensive care? If in intensIve care, will you be placed on a ventilator? If on a ventilator, will you die?

Is that a conversation you want to have?

It’s not one I want to have, but writers torture themselves that way.

Because of its long incubation period, I could have it right now. It could be duplicating and attaching itself to my lungs right now. 

I’m not used to feeling this way because for most of my life I have been blessed with good health, excellent health. And I do mean blessed.

Aside from birth and tonsils when I was 5, I didn’t see the inside of a hospital until I was 39, for minor surgery. The next time was 18 years later for removal of a gall bladder.

I was employed by the Daily News, and later the Inquirer, from 1972 to 2019, and I never took a sick day.

Sure, I was sometimes sick, but I often worked from home — and this was long before computers. Someone from the paper would drop off work at my home in the morning and pick it up in the evening.

The surgeries I mentioned? I took them as vacation time because I had more vacation time than I needed, and by this time my attendance streak had become a thing, a source of pride I wanted to keep going.

However . . . starting on election night 2016, my luck changed. (So did America’s, many people say.)

I tripped and fell that night and ruptured my quadriceps. I had two unsuccessful surgeries and I am on a cane for life. Recent cataract surgery did not give me the results I hoped for, partly because I have developed glaucoma. And between the knee and the eye surgery, a variety of my teeth have failed, leading to lots of implants and root canal.

In 2015, I did a column on an undertaker who wanted to put the “fun” in “funeral.”

As part of that, I posed for a picture laying in a coffin.

“No!” screamed some of my superstitious friends. “You don’t tempt fate!”

I laughed it off then. I’m not sure I would be so cavalier today because I seem to be having a run of bad luck.

So, now, truthfully, I kind of think I will catch COVID-19. I have thought about if and how I can quarantine myself in my condo if it’s mild. 

If it’s not, then it’s a hospital.

Have I pondered that it may be terminal?

No, not yet, but my age places me in a high risk group, and I do feel vulnerable.

My Dad lived to be 98 and this is not the way I would choose to go.

But I don’t get to choose.