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After battling COVID-19 for the past week and a half, I had a lot of time to think about who we see and hear about getting sick. The thing I realized is that we all know somebody that has gotten COVID-19, but we only hear about a few rich people getting sick.

Everyone remembers when Tom Hanks and his wife Rita Wilson were of the first celebrities to catch COVID-19 back in March 2020. That likely made the public realize that the virus was a real and dangerous thing.

But what about now? I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard about famous people getting sick from COVID-19. It’s not like they aren’t taking any risks.

For example, at the Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, the county imposed a mask mandate for all fans. If most fans chose to wear one or didn’t, they weren’t put in the spotlight. But famous people are in the spotlight and can be seen here not wearing masks during the event.

Taking Risks

Whether you agree or not with the mask rules, you can at least agree that celebrities and wealthy people are taking risks with this virus. So that begs the question, “Are rich people getting sick as well?”

In the past couple of months, I’ve been taking more risks than I have in the past. For my wife and I, we rate the risks from a “return on risk” point of view. In other words, “is the reward of taking the risk worth it?”

Did all of these celebrities go to the Super Bowl with that same mindset or did they not care if they got sick? Or did they know they wouldn’t get sick? Along with being in the spotlight, do they also have a superhuman immune system?

If we have a trip coming up or an event that we don’t want to miss, then we will most certainly be taking more safety measures to protect ourselves. We will go into stores and restaurants less to avoid those risks to ensure we are healthy for the big events.

This helps us determine if we can live with the consequences if we get sick or if taking the necessary precautions to not get sick is worth missing out. This is a subjective scale that can only be solved through communication with the other person who is in-directly taking the same risk I am.

Guilt is The Worst Part

I am a young, healthy (according to my doctor) 30-something, so I was able to recover from COVID-19 after 4 days of rest, Tylenol, and good soup. Yes, I count myself lucky that it could have been much worse.

I did not lose my sense of taste or smell nor have I seen a relapse in symptoms that I have heard some others have. It is too early to tell if I will have any lasting symptoms. All that being said, I had a relatively mild case. So, when I say the guilt is the worst part, I realize am speaking through the lens of a mild case.

For me, worrying about how many others I could have infected is the guilt I am talking about. How many lives were turned upside-down because I didn’t stay home when I had a slightly sore throat the day before I tested positive? I thought it was another cold or allergies.

But now that I am on the other side, when do I re-enter the world? If I go back into society too soon, I risk infecting more people. If I wait any longer, my mental health of being isolated will continue to decline. I do know that the fear of missing out on time with friends and family because I am being overly cautious would not compare to the guilt I’d feel of being the one to get them sick.

Don’t Believe Everything You See

Obviously, we shouldn’t believe everything we see or read in this day and age. But we should be reminded that what we see on TV and what we read in the news is not necessarily real life for these celebrities.

I am picking on celebrities but, in the Rich Life Habits definition, I do not consider all of the rich. They may be well off financially, but may not be rich in all other areas of life. So, what about those other people who are actually rich?

We don’t usually see them in the news and their social media feeds are not filled with unrealistic images of a “perfect” life. They are just like us, taking calculated risks and are sometimes getting sick and sometimes missing out.

That’s what I was trying to remember during my quarantine. While I may be sick and isolated from the world, I wasn’t the only one that had gone through this, that is going through this currently, or that will go through this in the future. We have more experiences in common than you think.