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Last Sunday, braving the two-block expanse which separates my apartment from the nearest grocery store, I had an experience increasingly common during the coronavirus pandemic.

The store had locked all but one door, and had posted a sentry at the lone entrance, who explained their policy of admitting only one member of a household at a time. I sent my girlfriend on ahead, and took up what seemed a secure position by the curb, among the perhaps half-dozen other men who evidently couldn’t be trusted to pick a ripe avocado or the right brand of tomato sauce either. We, of course, waited far apart from one another, careful to maintain an appropriate distance. Except for one fellow who paced back and forth a while before coming to rest directly beside me.

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Now, I am generally a cool-headed person, and not given, in ordinary circumstances, to overreaction or alarm. But these were no ordinary circumstances. At a critical time for the suppression of the spread of COVID-19, as we are justly urged by politicians and medical experts to foster social distance and flatten the curve, every excursion outside seems a treacherous risk. When it is deemed necessary, such as to pick up groceries or take a modicum of exercise, taking basic precautions is not merely advisable but utterly imperative. When I deign to leave the apartment, wearing a face mask jury-rigged from an old cotton shirt, I treat pedestrians as though they are radioactive, veering out of their way as if to avoid oncoming shrouds of toxins. And I expect other people to act the same way — because social distancing only works if everybody is on board.