Journal of the Plague Year 8

The current experience of the COVID-19 pandemic shows that the plague might be nearing an end, at least in the United States. Mask mandates are disappearing, social distancing requirements are being eliminated, and all businesses, gyms and offices are preparing to open at almost full capacities. The word ‘normal’ appears more and more in news stories, though  I don’t know what they mean!
     I needed some essentials today at the local supermarket. Usually when I go into the market for a single item (like a lettuce and tomato, for example, for my veggie BLTs) I rarely make it out of the store for less than $50.00, and so I had expected to exit with at least one double-bagged assortment of supplies and goodies, and hoped that I had remembered the lettuce and tomato. Even when I make a list there is always some attractive display of a food I know I’d like to consume, maybe. I still had sufficient quantities of toilet paper and yeast, but today organic strawberries were on sale as was pineapple and watermelon. Or maybe I just needed to leave the house, an experience rare in the past months. I turned off the house lights, changed from my slippers into outdoor shoes, checked the weather to make certain I wouldn’t catch cold or suffer heat prostration walking from my car into the food emporium, pulled the appropriate outer garment from the closet and then put on my mask.

     Though the CDC and the governor have said that outdoor masks are not required for most of the population and certainly not for the fully vaccinated, at many establishments, and certainly supermarkets, indoors masks are still de rigeur. I have not stepped outside of my apartment door without wearing a mask for almost fifteen months; I keep a sufficient supply in my front coat closet and another in the glove compartment of my car. And it suddenly struck me that I’d forgotten what my face would feel like unmasked out of doors. For more than a year of seasons only the upper half of my face has touched the air, and my nose has inhaled only its own exhalations. I wondered what the world, what I, would look like unmasked. For over a year I had seen very few people without masks, even on my early morning or afternoon walks. And even out there, as a seemingly unmasked person approached from the opposite direction, s/he would reach down and raise a mask to cover the face as s/he passed by me. 

          I brought two pints of the strawberries to the counter but I hadn’t read the advert carefully enough: only the first one was on sale and the second pint cost more than double the on-sale price. Through her mask and from behind her plexiglass cover she offered to show me the daily flyer, and through my mask and in front of her screen I responded that would not be necessary. Hell, I was already at the cash registers and I like strawberries! I am fortunate and can afford this luxury. I made my purchase and walked to the market doors; everybody going in and coming out were masked. It is normal.  

DeFoe writes in Journal of the Plague Year that “where the Plague was in its full force, there indeed the People were very miserable . . . but after it was gone, they were quite another sort of people, and I cannot but acknowledge that there was too much of the common Temper of Mankind to be found among us all at that time: namely to forget the Deliverance, when the Danger is past . . .” Defoe suggests that soon our experience of Plague will be forgotten and people will attempt to return to their usual ways, before the onset of the pandemic. I know that we will soon walk outside unmasked, though it is now being suggested that the masks may be appropriately worn during certain seasons. I know that I would like to feel again the world on my face, but I am aware that it will be a different world that I will experience.