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| Pictured: Cholera, not COVID. Still pretty evocative though. From Le Petit Journal, 1912. |
You, me, and everyone we know, all of us, have probably at one point contracted COVID-19 in its various forms. If you haven't yet, you probably will. In the middle of the illness, time seems to contract inward; all you can focus on is your pounding head, your labored breathing, your aches and pains. It's only later that you may - or may not - stop to consider the global ramifications of what you just went through.
You and me, Gentle Reader, and probably everyone we know, are now part of history.
I won't re-hash the last two years of the Great Plague of 2019. You can go anywhere on the internet, or the radio, or TV, or any other media for that. I also wonder about the value of establishing a timeline for events that are still transpiring, as though we're in some kind of half-time show, recapping the events so far...that only makes it more exhausting. To my eyes, this virus showed the futility and stupidity of media coverage as anything other than a blow-by-blow of daily statistics and mind-numbing footage of overcrowded ICU's and empty store shelves: every time they try to offer a "summation" or a "prognosis" or present a health official's predictions, the virus brushes it all aside. It's like a glacier crushing a town - molasses-slow, but so inexorable that nothing on earth can halt its progress, and so totally destructive that even the soil is tilled down to the bedrock. I'm constantly dumbfounded by how such a miniscule half-life, a package of RNA in a protein-lipid shell in its hundreds and trillions and quadrillions, can move and act as a force of nature.
My small town was mostly insulated during the last two waves of the virus; Delta nibbled around the edges, but it seemed as though we'd escaped the worst of it. Omicron shattered that illusion. In short order my fiancee's coworker caught the virus, then her grandfather, then finally both she and her mother tested positive. By that point the whole town was overtaken. I tested negative on a Sunday, and by Monday was sick as a dog. My employer said something breezily to the effect of, "Oh, we're all going to get it eventually..." So I said, "Fuck it." I'm on second shift, and there's nobody around my department for most of the day anyway, and I wore a mask. I was vaccinated and boosted, so the symptoms were more like a bad cold - lots of nasal drip and hacking. My mental state was a one of angry resignation. I was tired of running out to get tested for every illness that came along, always coming back negative, even for the worst symptoms. Part of me wondered if the Rapid Tests weren't catching it, or if the local Urgent Care was trying to deflate its positive numbers (whatever that would accomplish). And anyway Omicron was a real fucker of a virus, where whole households would catch it but one person wouldn't; meanwhile it jumped so mysteriously, it might as well spread by text message. It just seemed so stupid and futile to try and quarantine, to stay home and lose money while politicians shrugged and your Capitalist overlords looked for excuses not to protect you. So Fuck It. Might as well be a good little cog and work for the mortgage until either the symptoms petered out or they found me slumped over my machine, cold and blue in the face.
My fiancee and her mother weathered the symptoms like champs - they had bad days, but mostly they seemed upbeat. Grandpa fared a lot worse. Being in his 70's and stubborn, he never wore a mask or got vaccinated, so when he got sick he stumbled around town, going from his job to the gas station like everything was normal, then returning to his decrepit house with the hole in the roof.* Finally his brother got fed up and called an ambulance. Grandpa ended up in the ICU for pneumonia and severe respiratory distress, and at some point had a mini-stroke. He survived, thank God, but he was in the hospital 11 days and then moved to a rehab center where he currently resides; he was really low for a while, but now appears a little more upbeat, or at least restless and wanting to go home.
This was my family's #CovidExperience. They should have a website where we can put our stories. Ours is not as bad as some, but worse than others. Maybe they'll put up a placard someday - "Here, on January 2021, the Great Coronavirus Plague of 2019 finally reached our town" - along with a list of names of the lost. But then again, maybe not. Maybe like the 1918 Flu Pandemic, the whole thing will be swept under the rug, forgotten in the name of "Progress" or "Carrying On" or whatever the hell else might be the cause du jour. Plagues aren't like wars; they're amorphous, random, and not as clear-cut. Nobody declares Pandemic, or cease-fire, or draws up a treaty to end it. It just sort of dribbles out, waves receding or resurging until they become more localized, and finally the virus reaches an equilibrium with our immune systems and becomes endemic. It fades away, and with it our attention. In ten years' time there might be an article here or there saying "Remember when?", or a vogue for masks ("Pandemic Chic"), or yet another Monkeypox/SARS/Swine Flu scare, but mostly people will just be like "huh" or tune out a boring story from Grandma about how it was "scary" to live through it...but by then we'll have other big concerns.
So to all those who have had COVID-19, or have loved ones who've had it, or even lost them to the Plague, whether your experience was mild or harrowing or full of grief, remember: you are part of history now. You and millions all over the world have experienced the same Plague, the same virus, a kind of (unwanted) global connection. Despite every difference - nationality, ethnicity, politics, race, color or creed - we human beings have all shared this disease. I have no illusion that the Great Plague of 2019 will "bring us together" or some other happy horseshit; looking back through history at all the other Great Plagues, all you see is disruption, war, famine, and death. Pandemics seldom have lasting positive outcomes. And yet somehow, in the briefest, tiniest of ways, we can pause and reflect on this one shared experience, and maybe it can plant the seed of thinking differently about ourselves and the rest of humanity, friend and foe alike, family and stranger together.
I contradicted myself - I griped about the futility of "pausing to reflect" and then did just exactly that. This Plague isn't over. Looking back through history, most major outbreaks seem to last between three and five years. All modern science can seem to do is moderate their severity - without being glib, at least we don't see piles of bodies everywhere, and despite the strain on the health care system our hospitals are doing a remarkable job.** Reviewing the horrors of previous pandemics, we are actually living through one of the best ("If you're looking for a plague to live through, try COVID-19!" Jesus Christ Rick...). There is cause to count our blessings. I'm thankful that none of my family members have died from the virus, that I still have a job, that we still have plenty of food on the table and enough money to cover our bills. Many people are not so fortunate. I just hope and pray that this plague will end soon, and though I doubt everything will ever return to "normal", at least we won't have the dark cloud of the Pandemic hovering over us forever.
Be safe out there.
Rick Out.
*You read that right. A tree fell on the roof last year and his landlord won't fix it. Grandpa won't push him because he's afraid of getting kicked out, so up till now he lived in an ice-cold house with a water-damaged wall and yes, probably black mold. But he'll be damned if he moved out, because what would happen to all his stuff? If you can't hear me banging my head against the wall, it's because technology isn't sufficient at this point to convey my dumbfoundedness with this town and the people who live here.
**If you haven't figured it out yet, I tend to view things from a "Wow I thought it would be a lot worse" perspective. Perspective, in fact, is what most of us are missing - I keep getting sucked into these conversations about how the world is ending or civilization is about to collapse. I have a coworker who wants to me to teach him how to hunt and cook squirrels (yes I eat squirrels, it's meat, get over it) because he's worried about "how he's going to feed his family when the food industry collapses" - due to the price of beef. Yes, it's a little frightening. We're not used to this. We're not "supposed" to see even the hint of scarcity in the good old US of A. Sometimes the constant drumbeat of DOOM penetrates even my thick skull. But then I take a step back and look at the big picture, and look back through history. Historical plagues, Gentle Reader, were much, much worse. Apocalyptic. Even just forty years ago, the AIDS Pandemic rocked the foundations of society in the US, not even mentioning the devastation it wrought in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, and that plague was somewhat selective in its victims due to its blood-borne nature. This Universal Plague, which has probably infected more human beings than any other Great Plague, was at least somewhat prepared-for and addressed with remarkable speed - even accounting for the wicked stupidity of right-wing world leaders and the resistance of a suspicious, superstitious populace. We've fared very, very well. I can't stress that enough. I thank God every day that I live in this modern age. I'm sorry if you're more pessimistic, and yes, we could have (and should still) do better, but when you line it up squarely against previous Plagues, this one's a pussycat. We'll get through this, Gentle Reader, and then we'll be even better prepared for the next one.
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