Annus Mirabilis

The sense of unreality that I cannot shake is generated by how much the current situation resembles a piece of mediocre fiction. Everyone seems to be in his element. The bad are very bad, the good are very good, the threat to life seems inexorable, at times ineluctable. 

Vampires are abroad and biting everyone they come near and thus making new vampires who will go abroad. We have run out of garlic.

The best among us offer to share their food, their money. The very best of the best are risking their lives daily, by the minute, caregivers, doctors, nurses, those who respond to emergencies.

The learned and the wise tell us how to protect ourselves. They tell us that total protection, quick remedies, are fantasies, but that we are not completely powerless. These wise words slide off the unctuous film of stubborn ignorance some of us maintain. Those who foster this shield unwittingly ally themselves with the plague and fortify it.

The ignorant find comfort in their ignorance. They cling to their trust in those who are so saliently untrustworthy. They let these leaders take their money and their health, and they thank them for doing so.

The greedy attach themselves to this disaster with no more moral compunction than a weasel at a rabbit’s throat. They are immediate in their understanding of what is needed, of those things that might stand between people and their painful deaths, and they grab those things, and they corner the market on them and then they offer them for sale at obscene profits. They understand what the “market can bear” very well.

The sea is thick with Great White Sharks. The powers that be refuse to close the beaches. No boat will be big enough.

A bottle of hand sanitizer which retailed for $3.50 was selling for $25 almost overnight. Germicidal rinses doubled. Simple isopropyl alcohol assumed the value of a French perfume. Capitalism, the free market, sharked in on a rare and juicy opportunity to maximize profit. The plague may look ugly to us, but for Capitalism it is a captivating bride, and this is the most perfect of marriages.

For the first few weeks, the infection spread unrestrained, “virally,” its danger misunderstood, and even denied. The centers of greed tried mask it, fearing that it might slow the economy, mitigate profits. As the danger grew, the nation looked to its leaders. We found that our president was not only incapable of dealing with the notion of exponential increases, he was dumbfounded by evidence expressed in simple percentages. He told us that the seriousness of the situation had been blown out of proportion, that it would go away quickly, that the spread of infection was analogous to fatalities due to auto accidents, that the problem would go away by itself, that there was no need to isolate ourselves, that the churches would be “packed” full by Easter. Wiser heads tried to prevail but didn’t.

Only when number of cases became overwhelming and still self-replicating and the dead were too many to shuttle out of sight was this man forced to recognize what was going on. Finally, and far too late, he told us to stay home, to distance ourselves. Then he was finally persuaded to recommend the use of masks. They were recommended so that contagious people, even when they had no symptoms, could not infect others and not because they would protect those wearing them. Understanding this distinction, at last, the President made it clear that he would not wear one. Why should he if it merely made others safer and could not protect HIM? His followers, safe behind their sealants of ignorance and blind trust, will surely follow suit.

The young, eternally immortal in their own minds, ignored the advice to keep their distances and clustered to celebrate their risky rites and share the contagion in intimate gatherings before taking it home with them, each to his or her own state, town, and family, like a prize won at a county fair. The mindlessly religious still crowded into their churches egged on to do so by their “spiritual leaders,” who assured them that God would protect them from microbes. Then they went forth to spread the faith. Governors of states encouraged the congregations of the young and of the morbidly religious, fearful of hurting profits or their re-election chances.

It has been like a script, a bad and predictable one. Hardly anyone has deviated from it. The story is as vapid as the worst kind of make-believe, but it is real. It will prove to be the end of many lives, of many hopes and aspirations. 

Our system of government has failed us. If this is what democracy can bring, then I am through with it--although I think it ran out on me before I ever got the chance to tell it off.