Behind the mask

By Paul Kandarian

What a difference a year makes.

About a year ago, the full impact of the pandemic was just being felt. We were all about to go into lockdown, quarantine, separating from family and friends, our lives turned upside down or more accurately outside in. Worst of all, people were dying from this insidious disease and there was no way to stop it, a situation made worse by an inept, uncaring administration.

Now, a year later, the death toll is horrific at more than a half million souls, but the light at the end of the tunnel is at least visible. Still, there are those in government at the state level in this country who want to open the doors to restaurants and other venues and let people in, unmasked, throwing caution and common sense to the wind.

That includes Massachusetts, where Governor Charlie Baker, after having the buck stop squarely with him over the incredibly incompetent handling of the vaccination rollout that was pretty much a debacle by any standard, decided to relax the rules in mid-March. Not sure what’ll be happening by the time this article is read, but as of this writing mid of the March, I’m a little doubtful.

Here’s the thing, people: don’t party like it’s 2019 because the last thing we need is the promise of 2021 to devolve into the dark despair of 2020, a year that, like many bad marriages and idiotic presidents, we’d rather forget about.

We’ve grown accustomed to our face, with apologies to Lerner and Loewe, even with masks on. At first, I hated the idea of masks and honestly, still don’t like wearing them. They’re uncomfortable and weird but if being uncomfortable and weird can protect other people’s lives and my own, I’m okay with that.

We’ve also gotten used to hand washing like a surgeon, scrubbing our flesh clean a zillion times a day, and/or dousing them in hand sanitizers. The economy has surely taken a beating but it’s gotta be a boon for companies making soap and sanitizers, not to mention masks.

This pandemic is an obvious game changer; going forward, people will adopt mask wearing as a necessary evil which will then just turn into normal wear

And on the bright side of a situation with not a lot of them, as we wind out of flu season, cases are at historic lows, largely because of not only mandated isolation, but hand washing, mask wearing, and staying physically apart from people. According to an article in Healthline.com, between October 1 and January 30, only 155 people in the US were hospitalized with the flu, a 98% drop in the same window of the 2019-2020 flu season, when 8,633 people were hospitalized.

That’s pretty amazing – and a testament to good hygiene, which by comparison, we were pretty lazy about pre-pandemic. When you think about sitting elbow to elbow with people in restaurants, bars, concerts, sporting events, or worst of all, doctors’ offices and hospitals, it’s rather obvious how illness spreads so rapidly.

This pandemic is an obvious game changer; going forward, people will adopt mask wearing as a necessary evil which will then just turn into normal wear, like putting on gloves in winter or shorts in summer. I know that I’ll be wearing one for sure in medical settings and perhaps others where people gather, or at least socially distance as best I can.

I was never a huge fan of standing too close to people anyway, owing to the fact that I mostly don’t like people (mostly just kidding), but am now even less a fan because we all spread stuff from our noses and mouths via perhaps the grossest medical term since flesh-eating bacteria and explosive diarrhea – droplets. Just the thought of inhaling/ ingesting someone else’s disease-laden droplets… ewwwww. Honestly, there should be a horror movie made called Droplets. It would make and disgust millions.

But I think overall, we’re in a better place at this time than a year ago. There is a vaccine with remarkable efficacy, there is a caring, competent administration in place looking out for the population of all political stripes, there is an awareness of disease transmission that we haven’t seen probably since the inception of the AIDS epidemic.

And there is no need for a repeat performance of this pandemic, if we’ve learned our lessons. But humans in general, and most definitely Americans in particular, are painfully short-sighted when it comes to learning from history, as we prefer to ignore it.

Americans are selfish, self-indulgent, woefully unaware (unintentionally and intentionally) of the plight of others, of doing the right thing for the greater good. We are a young country still, one born in the crucible of revolution where we formed a powerful and sometimes antiquated adherence to rules written centuries ago.

We are, laudably, fiercely protective of our independence. We are also, sadly, fiercely protective of that independence when we feel it threatened by government and common sense, two terms historically and demonstrably at odds with one another.

But we have to take heart and follow ours, knowing that what we do in these times of pandemic and beyond to protect ourselves and our own, protects everyone else and their own. We’re all in this together. And together is pretty much the only viable way out.