Mask, and Ye Shall Receive
I visited India for the first time in 6 years and had a lovely old time in the magnificent house my parents built for their retired selves. During casual conversations, my dad asked me what he always does- why haven’t I written anything in such a long time? I countered with all the scientific articles I have (co)authored over the years as a researcher. But of course, I know that’s not what he meant. Why haven’t I written anything that matters? Perhaps for the most obvious reason of all: I simply have no words.
Writing is the thinking man’s refuge. When you have too many thoughts, it is good to put them to paper, digital or otherwise. Despite still being a popular literary device (much like hanging up phone calls without saying goodbye or an average person affording an apartment in New York City), I don’t believe anybody actually maintains a physical diary anymore. When they have thoughts they are itching to share, they most often do so on social media- engaging in 280-characters-at-a-time discourse with seemingly like-minded individuals. I have nothing to write, which is not to say I have no thoughts. In fact, I have too many of them, and not enough words to put them down. I am speechless at the state of the world.
My international voyage during a crippling global pandemic was absolutely bonkers, to say the least. Traveling is such a crazy endeavor at the best of times that I wouldn’t blame you for questioning why anybody does it ever, at all. But during a pandemic? Masked up for 36 hours hurtling across time and space with coughing adults and bawling children? Forget about it. Unfortunately, my wife and I didn’t, and went for it anyway. It had been too long since I went home, we are triple-vaxxed, and, well- whatever, right?
Sorry, not whatever. The state of the pandemic should still very much be in our own hands. I say this despite the pandemic never actually being in our own hands to begin with. We have never once been in control of this situation, have we? Folks will tell you that everything that happened was inevitable, there was nothing we could have done differently, and finish with the most odious of schools of thought- we simply have to “learn to live with the virus”. For some people, living with the virus means doing nothing to curb its spread, pretending like it’s not even there, going about our lives like we would in a pre- March 2020 world. It is safe to say that I’ve been feeling like I’m slowly but surely losing my mind since - I want to say some time in 2015? - owing to the rise and election of a certain someone to high office, and everything else that came with it, but it has truly reached a different level since Covid became an integral part of our lives and deaths. I am convinced that nobody, least of all the governments who have all the power and resources, has taken it anywhere near as seriously as it should have been, and the world is facing absolutely dire consequences as a result.
The sheer loss of human life has boggled my mind more than I could imagine. Upwards of 800,000 in the United States and about 5 and half million worldwide. Possibly close to half a billion people have suffered the ravages of the virus. At this point, I almost agree with the folks who say it is inevitable that all of us will get the virus- but not for the reasons they say it. It is inevitable because of our policy choices, because we consider death and destruction of the have-nots an absolutely fair price to pay for the haves to enjoy any semblance of blissfully ignorant “normalcy”. From now until the end, I will refuse to accept that things had to get this bad. I firmly believe that the only way to tackle this pandemic was to pay everybody to stay home, impose a total lockdown for a period of time, mask and social distance with extreme caution and diligence if ever people had to mingle, absolutely crush the spread of the virus, slowly transition back to normal life, get almost everybody vaccinated, and go sit on a beach somewhere sipping margaritas, reminiscing about the temporary sacrifices we all made to get rid of the virus and save human lives. Many geniuses will argue that this is what we actually did- we didn’t really though, did we? While you and I stayed home, worked remotely, binged content, and complained on social media about what a sucky situation this is- there were “essential” workers out there, curled up right inside the belly of the beast, running our restaurants and coffee places and grocery stores and hospitals and other places. They received next to no protection or guidance from the powers that be, no consideration from the general public for their well-being, and barely a thought when they met their bitter end and became just another statistic on worldometer.
Despite my defiantly pessimistic tone so far, I do believe that it’s not too late to do the right thing. If we put our best feet forward from here on and urge governments to do the same, we may yet make it through without millions more dying. Why is it that I go grocery shopping or other public indoor spaces and my wife and I are the only ones wearing masks? Why is an overwhelming majority of people (a) not masking at all, (b) putting on masks with their noses fully exposed, which makes me want to come down on the world like the hammer of Thor, or (c) still wearing cloth masks or other outdated modes of protection? Why do people I know still express surprise when I tell them they can just walk in and get a booster shot somewhere? When will I start feeling like I inhabit the same world as everybody else? To circle back to the brief note of optimism I attempted to strike in this paragraph- if only there would be some sort of a mask mandate again, and people would start masking up in front of strangers, and get ALL doses of the vaccine, and stay away from mass gatherings for the time being. We may yet make it through this.
The last two years give me very little hope, if any. The overwhelming narrative of late is that vaccinations are the sure-shot way of ending this pandemic, and if you are vaccinated, you have done everything you possibly could and are now free to go about your lives normally. This is such a dangerous line of thinking. It takes me back to the summer of 2021, when I found myself coming in to work masked as usual to find everybody else unmasked and gathering in droves indoors for meetings. I could not believe the CDC would remove the mask mandate bang in the middle of the pandemic simply because some people had got vaccinated. My university brought back their mandate basically within a week, seeing how the virus was starting to spread uncontrollably once again. What a glorious week that must have been for people who hate masks so much they’d rather we kill a few million more than experience the slightest inconvenience. A state-wide or nation-wide mask mandate never returned, and people continue to gather indoors without face protections, determined to raise daily cases well over a million, and formally break our over-capacity hospitals down to nothing.
So come on, let’s put our masks back on, huh? That would be rather chill of you. I dined indoors a few times between July and Nov 2021 (and not once before- I must be some sort of an anomaly here), but I certainly will not be in the next few weeks. I have spent upwards of 95% of the last two years inside my house, only leaving for grocery shopping or nature hikes (one of the last safe and enjoyable activities to do). I attended two conferences in person in the last three months, but any future cross-country travel and in-person conference attendance is now absolutely questionable. The pandemic cannot be defeated by individual choices- if it could, it would already be over for me. Instead, I have spent a week in isolation, worrying about whether the virus found me during my international travels, finally breathing a sigh of relief upon testing negative. We have to come together to crush this plague, and more crucially, the powers that be have to decide to make the best choices. Will we/they? I don’t know. I am not a time traveler.
Just mask up and stay away from people, alright?