You Are Not Exempt from History

We are in an unprecedented time.

Except that we aren’t, really. We live in a time that is hard for us, in the US and Europe, to fully grapple with, because it’s been over a hundred years since the last time there was a global pandemic. Plagues seem biblical, ancient, medieval, maybe Victorian, to us. What they don’t seem to be is a modern phenomenon.

But here we are. We’re not even halfway through a modern plague, and people are struggling. We’re two months in, and people can hardly believe it’s real.

The news is full of people who want things to open back up. Much of this, I suspect, comes from large businesses that want to go back to making money. Some of it comes from small businesses that simply can’t make it much longer without customers in the door. Some of it is also legitimately people who just want a haircut or to go to a bar. It makes sense to risk your life to earn a living. It makes less sense to risk it for a dye job. It’s downright cruel to demand others risk theirs so your portfolio does well.

Not on the news, but present all around me, are people whose disbelief is softer. They want to go to the park, or back to work in an office, or they debate exactly under what conditions they need to wear a mask. In this I see a similar bargaining to what I see at the reopen rallies: this idea that maybe we…