CIRCLING THE BARN

  

 

 

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ow dangerous is Covid, anyway? At least twice as dangerous as World War II, so far, going by statistics on total deaths. No, make that four times as dangerous, since WWII lasted four years for us and the pandemic is only two years old so far. 

After WWII was over, studies showed that some populations that suffered horrific bombings (Dresden, Hamburg, etc.) nevertheless never wavered in their support for Hitler. War production in many areas actually increased in the wake of apocalyptic firebombing by the US and British. It takes TIME for catastrophic losses to sink into the consciousness of a population, to be understood and internalized and made the basis for rational choice. Short-term, the reaction can be more one of shock, with a sort of lizard-brain overreaction in support of whatever you were doing before. You keep trying again what isn't working. The horse runs back into the burning barn.

Right now, much of America is reacting much like one of those bombed-out populations that even at the bitter end couldn't see that the Reich was leading them to annihilation. Our losses are mounting inexorably toward the one-million mark, but too many of us have not quite absorbed what's happening. Teachers and front-line workers can begin to grasp the full magnitude of the disaster, but the rest of us? The restaurants are still open, our favorite TV programs are still available, and no one really makes us obey the please-mask signs that are posted everywhere. A million deaths is just one American in 350, after all. We've been told over and over what will work to defeat the virus, masking and (above all) vaccination. But both are slightly onerous, and more to the point, it's hard to FEEL what our rational brains are calmly telling us is true.

So we resist, we procrastinate. Less forgivably, we listen to the grifters and fanatics who peddle far-fetched rationalizations for our feelings of reluctance. Then to quiet our feelings of guilt, we pass along the disinformation and help wreak further havoc. Resistance becomes a political affiliation that can be hard to discard. The worst fools attend orgies or drink bleach or take horse dewormer, but it is the shilly-shallyers, the half-apologetic noncommittal recalcitrants, who are doing the real damage, tipping the overall balance toward mass contagion. Because there is never a felt connection between one's own inaction and the deaths that are, after all, still mainly figures reported on the news.

Can the country continue indefinitely in this state of stunned denial and inaction? You bet. It merely takes mass acceptance of a life that is marginally more dangerous and unpleasant than the one we had before. Back in the fifties, when I was a sprout, America cheerfully accepted deaths from epidemic tobacco use, poorly made cars, poorly regulated medicines, unstudied cancers, unlabelled foods, endemic crime, lead in our pipes, and all kinds of other pollution we have less of today. It was all just life, just a cost of doing business, and all of it together wasn't nearly as bad as the war casualties had been. To this day, of course, many of these dangers persist in part. More to the point, the steady toll of firearm deaths, maybe 20-40K a year, most of them surely preventable, continues almost unremarked, mostly below the level of consciousness. That's a calamity probably worse than Covid in the very long run, and everyone knows how efforts to address it have gone. Outta my way, let me back into that barn. Or maybe more: I'm sleepwalking here, don't you dare wake me up.

Point is, death and suffering in themselves don't seem to create a mandate for change. That takes an explicit, specific effort of consciousness that may feel sharply counterintuitive. It takes annoying activists like Ralph Nader and insufferable bureaucracies staffed with insufferable bureaucrats. It takes a titanic political and PR War, Chamber of Commerce vs. Sierra Club, duel to the death. It takes lawyers, God does it ever, whole armies of the fools nagging the rest of us to death.

Progress, the transition to what is all in all a better (safer, more pleasant) life, pretty often feels like doing the wrong thing. It can fill you with nostalgia for what your fallible memory insists were the good old days. Still, consider the fruits. 

So if you're still not vaxxed, my final thought for you is, for God's sake, DON'T TRUST YOUR FEELINGS. They have done nothing but betray you so far. Put away all that Luke Skywalker shit. Instead, take whatever semblance you have of a rational brain and THINK very calmly and cooly and intensively, in endless detail, about yours and your family's best strategy for surviving Covid. And give at least a passing thought to things like public spirit and civic duty. Then do the right thing. The country will survive, one way or the other, but there are better and worse paths through the crisis.