"I don't know, let me Google it."
"KLB said if we protested, the responsible thing is to get tested."
"Some of these places want a doctor's referral. Wait, they are turning me away because they say I have to have symptoms. I did the online registration."
"These tests are only 70% accurate, they give out false negatives."
"They say days eight after exposure has the lowest rates of false negatives, only 20%."
"Wait, I found a place that does a PCR test, it is supposed to be 99.6% effective and you can be asymptomatic."
"It takes 48-72 hours though to get results, what is the point if we go on day eight, and get results on day eleven? Might as well just stay inside and wait for symptoms until day fourteen."
"I've been called back in to work and I can't walk into that building with all of those people without being tested. It just wouldn't be right."
We registered online, which in itself was a ridiculous process full of dead links and crashed pages. We finally got appointments, after several tries on various days, and then headed to the site hours ahead of our appointments. A police car blocked the driveway to the drive-up clinic. We drove around. We came back. We got in a car line in the Sherwin Williams next door. We drove away and left. We called, after never even getting a confirmation of our registration. No answer. We checked the websites of the Fulton county health department testing sites, and they said we needed to call and register, but no one answered the phone. We started driving to a Fulton county health department site that friends had said was easy, but turned around because we wanted the accurate test, even though we had to use our insurance to pay for it. We returned, and Alec walked up to the police car.
"He said people are waiting in the Waffle House parking lot."
We drove over, parked the car and waited with a bunch of other people sitting in their cars, with masks on. No one went inside the Waffle House.
The clock was ticking. The parking lot at the clinic was empty, but the cop car still blocked the entrance. Cars were lining up again at the Sherwin Williams. It was ten minutes ahead of our appointment time, but we still hadn't received any sort of directions from the clinic.
Then, the police car ripped away from the entrance to the clinic.
I put the car in reverse as quickly as a 2006 Honda Hybrid can move, looking into the mirrors as all of the other cars in the Waffle House parking lot did the same. I pulled out onto the superhighway-type road, hoping to cut off the Sherwin Williams people that came after we did when I noticed, in horror, that cars were pouring out from all of the massive parking lots on all sides of the clinic, all headed toward the same entrance. I NASCAR-ed the shit out of it and got into the clinic parking lot. As soon as no more cars would fit, the cop reappeared and blocked the entrance, leaving god knows how many competing cars driving around N. Decatur and Lawrenceville Highway, until the entrance would open again.
Three months into the pandemic, I don't know about you, but I am really tired of winning.
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