How to Have a Safer Pandemic Memorial Day

Among the incredible variety of events over the past two weeks that have come out of the widely shared COVID-19 risks-related blog post, I was given the opportunity to publish my latest piece as an article in the New York Times. The article was published a few hours ago. I may not reproduce the article as a regular blog post, but you will find the link below.

Memorial Day weekend is a time of reflection, a time to honor those who gave their life defending the nation, and usually a time to come together and spend time with family and friends. But this is 2020, and so far it's been rough. Sometime this weekend, we will pass the milestone of 100,000 American lives lost to COVID-19. And in the years to come, this will be yet another event that we will remember over this holiday weekend.

I have been asked many times this week whether it will be OK to visit family and friends this weekend. From an infection-control standpoint, the answer is no. You shouldn't be mixing households until the new infection numbers in your area are much lower.

But you're going to do it anyway. I don't blame you. We are all looking for some normalcy after spending the last two or three months in varying degrees of isolation. So I'd like to give you a few ideas for how to make your likely socialization this weekend safer. I wrote about it in this article How to Have a Safer Pandemic Memorial Day for the New York Times.