A Most Social Disease
A pleasant day in the mountains
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. … but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. … This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
CS Lewis
This day was sunny and hot; my wife and I were headed up to see some geology unique to Yellowstone. It was an easy hike meandering through lodgepole and spruce forests whose shade took away some of the more oppressive heat. Much of the trail was an old service road permitting in-bound and out-bound hikers to pass with ample distance. However, in the age of COVID a chance meeting on the hiking trail takes on a different tenor. Upon perceiving there is another human on the path there is a hesitation, an insecurity about what protocol governs this encounter. Are they masked? What kind of mask? Should you go left, right? Stand firm potentially allowing the plague ridden to violate the holy six feet? Keep going and use your mobility to dictate distance? What is one to do? The authorities did not provide governance for this.
Today the first encounter was a young couple in their twenties. Walking side by side, holding hands as if they were drawing breath from one another as those in budding relationships are wont to do. Then it begins, a change in stride, the male accelerating slightly and the woman taking a half step back to single file. A drop of the head and a deft mounting of the masks that had been dangling freely on one ear. Then the acceleration of both, eyes averted to avoid the viewing the modern day lepers. Once in the zone of safety the pace drops, masks are removed, and again side by side they continued on their way. My wife rolled her eyes and muttered “at their age what the hell are they worried about”. As we walk on the suspicious glances from the passersby only increase. A masked grade schooler is whisked away to the far side of her unmasked father, only to be followed by hostile glares from the bemasked grandmother.
The hike continues passing varying groups of walkers both masked and not. The masked looking as if the next step was their last as their lack of acclimation to altitude and rebreathing expired air conspired with the heat to lower blood oxygen to semiconscious levels. It was a wonder nobody went down due low oxygen saturation and heat stroke. These people were quite smug in their belief that face masking protected them from the most important viral threat that in reality could not have been more distant on a backcountry trail in Yellowstone. Yet the mask-o-philes completely ignored the risks that were immediate and potentially life threatening. Unfortunately this is the default setting of the human mind: overestimating distant risks and underestimating proximal risks. But such is New Normal in the days of COVID.
“Those Who Can Make You Believe Absurdities, Can Make You Commit Atrocities”. Voltaire