I am proud to announce that I started the New Year on a negative note. Having had a very mild fever Thursday evening and a very mild nagging cough, I thought the better part of wisdom these days was a COVID test, even though I would have bet serious money that it was something else, like a mere cold. But it did make me slightly uncomfortable. The fever was gone yesterday. So, at just after 8 a.m. today, I walked to a nearby National COVID Center, which offers free tests without appointment and was open today from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. I strongly suspected there would be no line, that few other people had roused themselves out of bed, let alone showered and dressed and gone outside, so early this holiday morning.

I was right. I got there, a storefront on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago, and the lone public health nurse staffing the place greeted me, the only person who had arrived, the only person the whole time I was there, had me fill out the forms, gave me both the rapid antigen and PCR test, and we chatted a bit while I waited 10 minutes for the antigen result. We discussed our dismay at the apparent lack of critical thinking among anti-vaxxers, and when I said I was trained to think analytically, she asked what I did, and we discussed the relationship between urban planning and public health, which goes back more than a century to Jane Addams days, when health officials and civil engineers and planners made common cause to clean up the city, build sanitary sewers, and pay attention to what makes cities healthy places to live. We discussed college as a gateway to learning how to learn for a lifetime. It was a great conversation. Then the ten minutes were up, and the antigen result (75% accurate, she said) was available: Negative. We must wait three days for the lab to e-mail the result of the 99% accurate PCR test, but I would stick with my original hunch.

But out of an abundance of caution, and a concern for those around me, I am still glad I took the time to find out for sure. You just never know, which is one thing I have also learned in spades as a planner specializing in disaster issues. This pandemic has been nothing if not a public health disaster, which always brings us back to this question of critical thinking. Give me one wish for 2022, and that would be it. The gift of critical thinking for the entire population of the U.S. and the world. I can dream, can’t I?

Jim Schwab