This pestilence that plagues us persists but, while unique, is nothing new. Epidemics have ravaged humanity for as long as humanity has existed. History, thus, repeats itself: Though medical science may have advanced since Homer and Thucyidides described plagues, in 700 and 430 BC respectively, humanity has not learned from its mistakes. Some segments of the population remain in the Dark Ages.
Historians and authors alike have chronicled real and imagined outbreaks, perhaps to make sense of and learn lessons from them, as I struggle to make sense of and learn from the fallout of the novel coronavirus. Homer opens The Iliad with a reference to one beleaguering the Greek army at Troy. Thucydides discusses the social toll of the Athens plague, especially on doctors who struggled to save the suffering (sound familiar?). Shakespeare and his cohort suffered through repeated theatre shutdowns in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In fact, the Bard only survived to adulthood because his parents, who had already lost two children to the scourge, hunkered down in their Henley Street home in Stratford Upon Avon when he was a mere pup of three months. Isaac Newton developed modern physics in isolation, having fled Cambridge and the threat of the Black Plague of London.
I turn to, or back to, literature to help me make sense of current events and process emotions. My role as distanced observer of their stories allows me to mull and cull lessons and patterns that apply to our current situation, in which I am more emotionally tangled. I look to The Plague, Blindness, and other writings to “see better.”
In The Plague and Blindness, Camus and Saramago (respectively) reflect societal ills as symptoms of physical ills. The Plague chronicles an outbreak in a small Algerian town, while Blindness, a more overt allegory, describes a wave of affliction that waxes and wanes inexplicably in a nameless place.
As I reflect on how these accounts inform our current situation, I find myself both encouraged and disheartened. Encouraged that, despite limited information, these contagions eventually dissipated – but not without steep costs exacted in the form of human life. Disheartened because at this moment in time, some seem either incapable or unwilling to learn important lessons from these accounts.
In Early Modern England, no one bickered about whether to shut the theatres. If more than thirty cases arose in a week, they closed, and they stayed closed until things subsided – no tossing of the political football thither and yon, as we do in a democracy. Under an absolute monarchy, disobedient heads could roll.
Skepticism and resistance understandably rear their gnarly heads, as they did in both tales, when governments enact mandates to ameliorate the growing threat. But ultimately, indisputable facts roll out like a bloody red carpet that quells even the loudest creatures’ objections.
In Blindness — where the disease’s source is, symbolically, fear — the disconcertion feels more justified because the provenance of and remedy for the spreading blight remain a mystery. It’s hard to know how to address a problem without fully understanding it. During the Black (bubonic) Plague, doctors donned ominous-looking dark cloaks, hats, and beak-shaped face masks filled with sweet smelling herbs, flowers, and spices. They believed that the plague was transmitted not by fleas that bit infected rats, but by a lingering miasma of bad air, so they did their best to eliminate what they, mistakenly, perceived as the threat.
Today, we know, thanks to superhuman heroes dressed as scientists and medical personnel who work tirelessly at unprecedented, breakneck speeds to match that of the contagion’s spread, what causes COVID-19, how it is transmitted, and how to prevent it. And still, in a sad twist on an admirable and motivational quote, “nevertheless, some persisted.” Persisted in resisting science. Persisted in resisting being “told what to do with my body” (while still objecting vehemently to abortion). Persisted in listening to fake news about both the virus and the valiantly developed method of prevention. The miasma lingers in the form of contagious ignorance.
Each of the novels’ outbreak caused mistrust, unrest, and violence. That seems natural when an invisible invader arrives and starts taking people out with seeming randomness. But the divisiveness that we have witnessed in the face of this pandemic appalls me. Early on, when we still thought we’d be free to move about the country — nay, the world — by summer 2020, one of my sons said, “Well, at least this issue can’t be politicized.” He believed — as many of us did after 9/11 — that we would coalesce around the shared goal of staying healthy and eradicating the virus.
Sadly, his prediction proved false. The ex-Voldemort-in-chief, hellbent on destroying everything good about this country despite the message embroidered on his red cap, opened the floodgates, and upturned boulders that granted even the most heinous viewpoints and erroneous theories credibility.
A recent Facebook post featured a rant about a United Airlines pilot who asked that all passengers remain masked for the duration of the flight (for everyone, including the flight crew’s benefit) so “we don’t have to have anyone arrested when we land in Los Angeles,” followed by a chuckle. The poster and his supporters expressed outrage at this pilot. They commented: “This country has become Nazi Germany,” “The vaccine is biological warfare,” and “The virus is not real.”
The choice not to get vaccinated is every person’s right. However, as Spock said, the good of the many outweighs the good of the few, and if that choice has at its base something other than religious belief or medical contraindication, then it is tantamount to intentionally putting every single person on Earth’s life at risk.
The infections described in the two novels represent much more than bubonic plague and blindness. They represent the pathogens of ignorance, apathy, and stubbornness that have turned a crisis that could have united us into one that has divided, and could decimate us. “There are none so blind as those who will not see” (Jeremiah, 5:21). Shame on each and every one of them. We need a cure for the infection of reason-blindness as much as we do for COVID-19.
NB: I owe a debt of gratitude to Dustin Lowman for his insightful edits on this piece.