N. lives in a parallel world that is not accessible to me, a world where the global pandemic is over and lives like mine are an acceptable cost of a comfortable status quo. A world that is a kind of a death cult, a kind a collective fever dream, resting on a consensus of mass delusion. I would like to think that, even if I myself were not immunocompromised, my values would keep me anchored here, in the reality of a world where COVID is a fucking horseman of the apocalypse riding unchecked abroad; where masking and other COVID mitigation measures are a moral imperative to protect not only those who are currently vulnerable and disabled, but the entire population—because all of us are potentially an infection or two away from getting as devastatingly sick as I have been.