Convenient excuse
People are lying about COVID-19 exposure to get out of plans
Last winter Trysta Barwig was burned out. She was overwhelmed by her job as a program manager, and she was traveling too often for work from her home in Atlanta. She needed a break.
So when Barwig’s boss asked her to pack her bags again, she used what had become her go-to excuse: a COVID-19 exposure.
“I figured this would be easier to tell my boss than having to answer a million follow-up questions of why I couldn’t go,” said Barwig, 31, who is also the founder of a travel blog, This Travel Dream. “He was very supportive and excused me from traveling for work.” Problem solved.
As the holidays lurk around the corner, plans are picking up in some parts of the world. And so too is social anxiety, at least among those who are naturally introverted or who might be feeling a little rusty after about 18 months of restricted interactions.
Some people have started lying about COVID19 exposure, figuring it’s the one way out of plans — from work to dates to dental appointments — that few will argue with.
Others have been using the lie all along.
Of course, actual exposure to COVID-19 is no joke, and lying about it is a luxury that many people, including huge numbers of essential workers who risked their health over the course of the pandemic, don’t have.
Dr. Larry Burchett, an emergency room doctor and family physician in Berkeley, California, said that those who are unvaccinated and are actually exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19 should quarantine for 14 days even without symptoms.
Vaccinated individuals who have been in contact (within 6 feet of someone for at least 15 minutes) with someone who has COVID19 don’t need to quarantine unless they have symptoms, but they should get tested five to seven days after exposure, Burchett said, in accordance with CDC guidelines.
But even permission from the CDC to skip quarantine if you’re vaccinated and not showing symptoms doesn’t stop some from deploying the lie.
Back in March, before many people were vaccinated, John Junior thought he had met the perfect woman online. Junior, a mental health activist from Cheshire, England, chatted with her online for two months before arranging to meet in person.
He bought movie tickets and made reservations at a bowling alley, only to get the dreaded COVID-19 excuse on the day of their date.
“She messaged saying her uncle dropped some presents off a few nights ago, and he said he has symptoms of COVID,” said Junior, 33. “She said to me she can’t leave the house in case she has COVID.”
Junior was skeptical of her story, so she upped the ante, telling him she had actually tested positive.
She sent him a photo of the test over Snapchat, he said, with a black marker clearly used to create a positive result. It’s the third time
Junior had a date cancel because of alleged COVID19 exposure, he said.
Sara Bernier, founder of Born for Pets, a blog providing pet care tips, has been on the other side of the equation. Last year, she met someone online and had plans to meet him, until he started sending suggestive messages the day before their date.
“Since I have a difficult time saying something as simple as ‘no,’ I made an elaborate story about getting COVID and how it would be impossible for me to show up,” said Bernier, who is 29 and lives in New York.
Therapists aren’t surprised that COVID-19 exposure has become such a convenient — yet also horrific — excuse for our times.
“For people who want to avoid doing something, whether due to anxiety, existential dread or the idea that it would be easier to stay in and watch ‘Squid Game’ than get dressed and go out into the world, the COVID excuse seems tailor-made: It’s timely, prominent and appears driven by an altruistic concern for your friends, co-workers or strangers’ health,” said Suraji Wagage, co-founder and director of the Center for Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in California.
“It’s difficult for the receiving party to react negatively without seeming like they don’t care about others’ health or the spread of the global pandemic,” she said.
Bonus: The excuse can be recycled without necessarily arousing suspicion, as you can potentially be exposed to COVID-19 repeatedly and at any time, Wagage added.
But it’s precisely because this excuse is so good that it poses its own risks, she said. By spending so long leaving the house sparingly, if at all, we’ve conditioned ourselves into limited socialization. As a result, it’s more difficult to do what seemed ordinary before, such as meeting friends for dinner or even going to work in an office.
Jamie Hickey, a human resources specialist at Coffee Semantics in Philadelphia, said he and his wife were supposed to attend two weddings within a 10-day period this past June. They really didn’t want to go but couldn’t think of anything that would get them out of both events with one swift lie.
“So we told them that I had a close encounter with someone that has since tested positive for COVID, and I had tested positive but was not having any bad symptoms,” Hickey, 42, said.
“We told them we didn’t want to come to a large event and possibly pass along the virus to anyone else.”
The lie worked a little too well, and the couple was inundated with phone calls, texts and emails from dozens of people making sure the Hickeys were OK. Did they need soup? Medical care? Assistance of any kind? COVID-19 is, after all, no joke.
Finally, Hickey admitted that they lied, which led to many lectures about his lack of morality.
“In the end,” he said, “it may have been easier to just go to the weddings and drink for free.”