COVID-19 and Personal Responsibility

lk 🇨🇦🇺🇲 • Take a risk: be kind.

The situation:

A person has been very vocal about the importance of wearing masks, social distancing, reducing forays into public spaces, etc during the pandemic. However, she recently traveled to another state to visit her elderly mother and they had lunch with a friend, everyone unmasked and not socially distanced, and apparently the friend was infected but asymptomatic. This person and her mother now have COVID-19 and are symptomatic. They have called in another family member to care for them and are hoping that person does not get sick as well.

Here's where it gets sticky: this person is now loudly blaming everyone in the state to which she traveled for getting her and her mother sick because they don't wear masks or practice social distancing there.

My question is this:

At what point does personal responsibility kick in? She chose to travel out of state, she chose to meet someone for lunch, she chose not to wear a mask, she chose not to socially distance, and she is now putting another family member at risk. Does she bear any responsibility in this situation or is it the fault of an entire state and the asymptomatic friend that she and her mother got sick? Is it hypocritical for her to be angry now that she's sick when she broke her own rules about COVID-19 avoidance procedures?