VIRUS DIARY: Have toilet seat, will travel

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. (AP) — People said we were crazy. We said we’d be careful.

Maybe so, my doctor-uncle warned, but it would only take one moment of carelessness to get infected — one time finding ourselves too close to unmasked people.

Others raised eyebrows in Zoom calls, silently judging our desire to spend a nonessential week at the beach in South Florida, the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

Then I pointed out that we’d be traveling from Georgia, where Gov. Brian Kemp has steadfastly refused to order mask-wearing, just like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Only Kemp has gone further, saying most coronavirus infections are just like “a stomach bug or a flu or anything else,” and forbidding mayors from doing more than he would to preserve public health.

When it comes to deaths from COVID-19, Georgia is winning this awful contest, with a rate of 36 per 100,000 people, compared to 33 in Florida, during the vacation week I’d signed up for.

My family is incredibly privileged to be able to hunker down in a home with a backyard big enough for chickens, a vegetable garden and a berry patch. And in a world where so much is beyond our control, we remain determined to be the last ones to get sick from COVID-19.

So we’ve hardly left since March, working and studying from home, buying veggies at open-air markets and ordering meat and milk delivered. We’ve kept up with friends by using “outdoor voices” heard from a distance or through three layers of cotton. As rewards, we’ve indulged in an occasional carry-out meal or ice cream cone.

But our sanctuary had become stifling.

As Georgia’s sweltering summer deepened, with schools going online and the pandemic’s horizon stretching, our family was on edge. To summon the stamina required to endure...