A number of comments on my column this morning urged that I simply dispense with any COVID-19 restrictions I find useless or irritating and rejoin normal life. The power is all in my hands, they insist.

I find this advice impossible to follow. Even if I thought all the restrictions and safety precautions were useless (and I don’t), my life is too bound up in institutions that must follow New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s regulations, and in people that do take public-health advice seriously. That’s why my piece focused primarily on institutions that I can’t change. International-travel restrictions would add 2–4 weeks of extra quarantine time bookended to any visit to my father. There is no alternative hospital system that has visiting hours unaffected by COVID. There are no clandestine funeral homes. There might be some Catholic parishes that are a bit less fanatical about the current restrictions than my own, but there are none that are completely heedless of them. I cannot replace the neighbors on my street with others that have a different attitude. I cannot singlehandedly revive some of the institutions that were part of our family’s life that simply died because of the pandemic restrictions.