Maybe you’ve been in a situation like this. You’re minding your own business, doing what you’re doing as you’re doing it, when all of a sudden a man wearing a Home Depot smock aggressively pushes a shopping cart in front of you and demands that you go around and use the designated store entrance and not go through the opening they push the shopping carts through.

If you have, then you know what it’s like to experience COVID-19 Related Shaming, CRS for short. CRS happens when you least expect it. Sometimes it’s warranted, such as a gentle reminder to the person who’s standing a little too close to you at the checkout line. Other times, such as when you’re being scolded like a toddler by another pedestrian for not wearing a mask while jogging outside, are not so warranted.

Now I consider myself a good American liberal, and as such, do what good American liberals do. I consistently vote Democratic (because what other option is there ), phone bank for the DFL, and listen to NPR on my way to yoga. But with all that said, lately I’ve been feeling like an outsider looking in. My vigilance about anything and everything related to COVID-19 has reached its peak. Of course, I still use the proper face protection when I go to the store and I thoroughly wash my hands afterwards. But I’m done when it comes to the politicalization of this virus.

I used to be one of those self-righteous individuals that would cackle to myself anytime I would see someone enter a store with careless disregard as to the right placement of their facemask. The horrors! I know.

But not anymore, I’m just too tired to be so sanctimonious.

I haven’t moved away from my leftist fiction absolutism, as Tom Wolfe would call it. But as for COVID-19 politics, I’m out. If that makes me a pariah of my political community, so be it. It’s not the first time “Jill Stein 2016” and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I shouldn’t be treated at the same level as a Holocaust denier because my nose itches when I wear a face mask. I just ask you to think of your own transgressions before you shame someone for eating sushi in a restaurant in Hudson, Wisconsin during COVID-19.