The Novella by John Steinbeck, "Of Mice and Men" somehow just came to mind as I began to write this entry. The story, of which I had to remind myself just now, is about two migrant workers in the Depression, one of whom. Lennie, is mentally challenged and potentially violent. The men dream of being able to settle down one day and to own a piece of farm land where they will raise animals, especially rabbits. When Lennie, and George, his friend and traveling companion need to tell themselves things will be all right for them in time, Lennie will say, "Tell me about the Rabbits, George."
Suffice it to say, the dream never happens, and the end, for Lennie and George is sad. For Lennie, it's a killer.
Somehow our year of masks has an odd comparability. Masks were part of the dream, the dream of "Flattening the curve" of Covid-19. It was "just an inconvenience", we were told. It's all about public health, not seeing Grandma on her deathbed, not shaking hands or going for a family and friend picnic.
Vaccination. Yeah, that's the ticket out! Give a little, take a little is the motto of our leaders. Except the public is giving a lot, and the leaders are TAKING even more. You don't see it? What can I say? You don't see it. Poor the rest of us.
Vaccination means diddly squat in terms of freeing us. It has created a new industry. Vaccination passports. Whether these will become mandated by governmental or private industry ("You don't have to go to places that require it, you say?" But what if every private industry requires it? Well, then, tough, you do have to have the proof.) A vaccination card caste system.
And then there is the mask. I have had both vaccinations. It is more than two weeks. I am, referencing my last entry, purportedly "safe". One of the CDC "experts" said that someone vaccinated was unlikely to spread the disease to anyone. Was she squashed? I don't know. Apparently others haven't heard her words of expertise in favor of the expertise of the "science we like better." And yet, I have to wear a mask as if it were the beginning of the pandemic. At Trader Joe's they have raised separating the cashier from the customer to an art. The cashier takes your wagon. You must stay behind a line, and not even approach the barrier of plastic, until your items are bagged and you are ready to pay. The cashier I had the other day backed away from me, in my mask and in my vaccinated state (of which admittedly he did not know) as if I were a Leper in the time of Moses. But he was very nice.
Parenthetically, have you noticed something about all of us mask wearers? Even more than in the early days of our compelled anonymity, we pull at our masks all the time. You see as you breathe, sometimes the things kinda catches on your mouth and you have to pull it away. Oh, but there is another industry that can help you, one that makes a plastic thing you can wear INSIDE the mask to keep it away from your face (which seems to me then to defeat the purposse of the mask, to keep germs inside). Every time. Watch your friends. Watch them pull the mask away when they can't breathe. I do it. If I don't I begin actually to feel panicky.
Now, imagine a person who has had the misfortune to have to go to a hospital during these marvellous days of the protection of public health for our good. An older friend had a stroke and ended up in the hospital. Before she was diagnosed as having had a stroke, we spent hours in the hallway of a hospital as it was packed, packed I say, with. . . .sick people. And of course the many doctors, nurses and staff people a hospital contains. She was prodded and poked and forbidden water because they were going to run tests and did run tests that somehow water would have affected, and they kept passing by and putting a mask back on her face. I dutifully wore mine. You can imagine my thoughts. People, already strangers to her, came at her, their faces covered with the ubiquitous mask. She has been in hospital or rehab now for nearly three weeks. She hasn't seen an actual face in all that time of the people who are tasked with making her better. Imagine. You have had a stroke. There is this thing, particularly in the elderly, called hospital psychosis. Why? Because you don't know day or night in a hospital. Because even without masks people are coming in and out of your room at all hours to take blood, or check on you, or whatever the series of things are the protocol. At least now, she doesn't have to wear the mask in her room. Naturally, the one visitor allowed every twenty four hours for the window of between 5 and 8 p.m. does. It's all for the public health good. Yes. I know.
Perhaps in the future, some expert (if he or she is allowed to do so) will write an article, "The Mask as Torture Device in the 21st Century". Our politicians know that now, as do our scientists. Can you think of any who got caught NOT wearing theirs where we are required to do so? Can you? Or has that been erased from public and private memory by the fiat of the know everythings?
My friends and I were pretty avid movie goers before the pandemic lockdown. Some are already eager hearing that the theatres are being opened, and there has been discussion of our going when there is something we want to see. But you know what? When I go to see my friend at hospital, I wait on a line just to go inside to get checked in, to sign in that I don't have symptoms, and to have my temperature taken. I stand on the warning blotches--six feet distance. But do I want to pay 20 dollars plus popcorn to see a movie doing that? Oh, once or twice, I have risen above my principles, for a birthday dinner outside, most recently. When I was standing at the check in, I wore my mask. When I sat down I was allowed to take it off. Those germs are smart!! Today, I also rose above my principles and went to a local place for breakfast after running errands that has a patio. But you know what? I was the only one in the patio area so the mask was not much an issue, and there was no temperature check.
You want to know what I think? If you have gotten this far in my diatribe, you are probably not a "pro-masker", so maybe you do. I think the mask is a killer. Social. Moral. Physical. Psychological. Great, if you have a profession that requires it, like being a surgeon, that's the condition you have agreed to accept. But the rest of us, living our stupid little lives, really? And have people stopped dying?
I just read that a woman, a mother of five, was killed when a tree fell on top of her car. Death will have its day and this pretense of perfect safety is insane.
When will reasonableness return to the society? I fear that the answer is "never". Our dream, just like that of Lennie and George, is never going to happen.
And Masks are just the beginning of our nightmare.
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