THE NEW YORK TIMES, SUNDAY, JUNE 28, 2020 ST 9sure that was the case. He could ask them
directly and check their social media ac-
counts. But there is no way to know exactly
what they were doing behind his back and
out of the spotlight. Still, he will continue to
insist.
“Today, face masks are the new con-
doms,” Mr. Agustin said. “If you’re not using
them, then you’re not getting any action. So
please use protection because you don’t
know if you might be a carrier.”THOSE WHO HAVE BEENisolating in a group
have been finding ways to work around the
strictures of quarantine from its beginning.
But now, with the patchwork of reopenings
across the country, disagreements are aris-
ing about which new pursuits may be
permissible.
Thomas Gunderson, 24, is an aviation
student at Southern Utah University. By the
end of March most students had left Cedar
City, Utah, where he started living recently,
having transferred from a different school.
Three people he knew were still in Cedar
City, including his brother, 25, who works fora network marketing business and is his
roommate, and two female students, 19 and
30, who live together. “The group got whit-
tled down to the few of us,” he said. “We de-
cided this was going to be our Covid group.”
They are still socializing only together. At
night they make food like tacos and watch
television, including “Money Heist” on Net-
flix. During the day they hike to Logan Can-
yon and the Great Salt Lake. They have de-
cided not to go to restaurants, which are re-
opening, opting to wait to see whether the
virus is halted or renews its spread.
With mixed messages from the govern-
ment, family and friends have had to col-
lectively decide what they feel safe doing.
The one time there was a disagreement,
Mr. Gunderson’s group decided to err on the
side of caution. While churches were closed
in Utah, they were open in Idaho, and one of
the women suggested they drive there to at-
tend services.
“I said: As much as I would like to, I don’t
think it is a wise decision,” Mr. Gunderson
said. “The whole point of them shutting
down was to promote social distancing andkeep people at home.” The group stayed
put.
Ilana Brown, 34, and Joel Wishkovsky, 37,
usually live in New York City but are cur-
rently in Moab, Utah, with another couple
and a single friend. The group has been to-
gether since mid-March. Though they are
living in something of a dream scenario, re-
lations occasionally get a little rocky.
The group moved to different houses
around California — Tahoe, Palm Springs,
Temecula, Paso Robles — before settling in
Arizona and now Utah. Setting their rules
and norms has been a challenge, one com-
pounded by the array of places where
they’ve stayed.
When they were in Arizona, the state was
open, Mr. Wishkovsky said, so there were
more questions. “Can we get a haircut?” he
said. “Can we go to a restaurant and do out-
door seating? Can we go shopping for new
sneakers to hike in? There are going to be
questions now, because in Arizona you can
do whatever you want.”
“There has been some yelling,” said Ms.
Brown, who works for a hospitality tech
platform. “It’s people trying to convince
others of their opinion.”
As issues (and opportunities) arise, the
team discusses them over the dinner table.
“We agreed early on that we were going to
do consensus,” said Mr. Wishkovsky, the
founder of Simple Health, an online supplier
of birth control. “It has to be 100 percent.”
On one occasion the couple really wanted
to visit a farmers’ market, but received
strong pushback from another party in the
house. They kept talking about it until they
found a way everyone would feel safe:
wearing masks, staying six feet away and
buying only from vendors wearing masks
and gloves no matter how good the straw-
berries looked.
The conversation was intense, but Mr.
Wishkovsky understood why:
“People are nervous, stakes are high. Go-
ing to a farmers’ market shouldn’t create
animosity, but people are scared.”MELODY DUMONT, 41,lives on the Tulalip
Reservation, 30 miles north of Seattle. She
has not been tempted to quarancheat,
partly because she took some liberties from
early on.
Ms. Dumont has four young people under
her roof, ages 20, 18, 12 and 9. Her motherand father live next door with her brother
and his two children. One house down is her
sister, her partner and their six children; a
mile away are two nieces with their children
and another brother and his son.
For the first five weeks of the pandemic
they were all staying in their individual
homes, trying to figure out what to do. That
soon turned into yard visits. Ere long they
had decided to pool their living arrange-
ments so they could help one another stay
safe. “It happened kind of informally,” Ms.
Dumont said. “At one point I saw one of the
babies outside, and I couldn’t stand it any-
more. I said, ‘Come give me a hug.’ ”
The large, extended family now gets to-
gether for meals, to play in the yard and to
have movie nights complete with candy. Be-
cause they are in one another’s physical
space, they also remind one another to stay
safe. A few are working, and when they
come home, they gently nudge them to
change their clothes and wash their hands.
They text their mother regularly to say,
“mask check.”
But more and more people are seeing lit-
tle reason to continue as they were.
Jake Littleton, 25, a mechanic in Dickson,
Tenn., went to his beloved Waffle House as
soon as it reopened. “I went by myself on
my lunch break,” he said. “I always get the
sausage and hash brown bowl, ‘all the way,’
which includes cheese, ham bits, mush-
rooms, diced tomatoes, jalapeños, onions,
gravy and chili.” He said he didn’t wear a
mask or feel unsafe, especially because
plastic partitions divided the booths. “I de-
cided to take a risk to return to some version
of normality.”
Most of his summer plans have already
been thwarted. “I don’t think there is any-
thing I won’t do that hasn’t already been
canceled,” Mr. Littleton said. “I play in a
bluegrass band with some older guys, and
we were supposed to play at a few events
and festivals starting in May and going
through the summer.”
Everything else, he figures, is fair game.
“Other than that, I will probably live life as
usual with continued precautions,” he said.
“Unless there is a second wave of cases that
results in another period of quarantine.”
As for Ms. Coleman, in Massachusetts,
she is planning other family trips this sum-
mer — but carefully, very carefully.
“We are nervous,” she said. “I have to
take steps that put my mind at ease.”Cyré Olivia Coleman with her
daughter on vacation in North
Conway, N.H. The family felt it
was time for an adventure, but
it was a little nerve-racking.
Ilana Brown and
Joel Wishkovsky
in Moab, Utah.JOEL WISHKOVSKY