The Ides of March Then and Now

A year ago, the Ides of March fell on the Third Sunday of Lent. By then, the Covid-19 pandemic, which had already been insidiously making its way around the world for months, was now an established presence in the United States, and we were suddenly (and somewhat unwillingly) being roused from our lethargy and complacency to acknowledge the increasing threat. Whereas a mere one week earlier, it had been more or less business as usual, by that Sunday, attendance was already noticeably down and and the first precautionary adaptations were being implemented.  

It all happened so fast. A year later, the return to "normal" (whatever "normal" might mean) is happening slowly, in fits and starts. Encouraged by increasingly widespread access to the new vaccines, more and more we are stepping back out into something like an ordinary world. Meanwhile, we wonder, what have we learned, and what difference has it made?

The more I look back on this past year, the more perplexing the whole experience seems. Notwithstanding the historical memory of plagues past, including the last proper pandemic, the 1918 Spanish Flu, such horrors seemed alien to modernity, more like the stuff of science fiction. The last big polio scare of the the early 1950s is remembered, after all, for being the last, before Jonas Salk saved the world with the first polio vaccine. My generation had all been vaccinated against smallpox, polio, and more recently shingles. Diseases were preventable now. Pandemics were for far away places where people intermingled too freely with wildlife, and diseases like ebola resulted. But, then, what was Lyme Disease or Zika?

Then suddenly we were surrounded on all sides by this new virus for which we had neither vaccine nor any anti-viral medication, and we were as exposed and endangered as our ancestors were when the Bubonic Plague arrived, equally uninvited, in Europe in October 1347.

Except that we had Zoom - and Facebook. Imagine if a year ago anyone had told us we needed to learn how to celebrate Mass on Facebook! Who would ever have thought of such a thing, apart perhaps from some obsessive technophile eager to equate evangelization with the latest soul-destroying technological upgrade? Then, all of a sudden, it was something we were all expected to do - and right away. (Actually it took us a couple of weeks to get up to speed. It was Palm Sunday already when we celebrated our first Facebook Mass.)

Instead of the interpersonal joy of meetings, there was zoom. Instead of a quick stop at the supermarket, there were pre-planned excursions to the store, maybe at certain, early morning, "senior" hours, armed with mask and gloves and sanitizer, followed by the ludicrous washing and sanitizing of groceries and even mail. Such "hygiene theater," as it later famously came to be labelled probably contributes less than we hoped to our health and safety, but it somehow reassured us in some obsessive-compulsive way. 

Meanwhile, as we slowly learned what precautions really did matter and really might make a difference in keeping one alive or out of the hospital or even better not sick at all, we found ourselves surrounded by foolishly fearless folks, for whom the precautions mandated for public health were an intolerable burden on their inalienable right to oppose the common good. Even now, one year later, when I go out for a walk or to do an errand, I still find myself uncomfortably walking past the occasional unmasked person or (just as bad) someone with his or her mask on wrong, as if the mask were a useless fashion accessory rather than a practical health precaution.

And, for all the talk about being all in this together, we all know, because we have seen it, how this pandemic has affected different people and different communities in very different and unequal ways, and how our morally corrupt "system" of health care continue to prioritize making money. A year ago, during pre-pandemic presidential primaries, the issue surfaced of the need for something like "Medicare for All." The pat year has highlighted our need for that, but are we any closer.

And so it goes. Of course, we all want to see family and friends again and go out to dinner on occasion and go to a movie. But do we want to enrich airline companies by flying again, now that we have all survived a year without flying? There are so many such questions that we need to be asking. And, not just asking, but answering.