Quote of the Day (Samuel Johnson, on Socializing)

“Sir, I look upon every day to be lost, in which I do not make a new acquaintance.”—English man of letters Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) quoted by James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791)

That comment from Dr. Johnson should be borne in mind when we try to calculate the losses incurred by the widespread isolation in the days after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Quote of the Day (Adam Tooze, on Proper Funding for Vaccine Development)

“To expect that funding [for vaccine development] to come from the private sector is unrealistic. The work is too expensive and high risk and the returns too uncertain. Philanthropy and public-private partnerships may work. But ultimately it is governments that should foot the bill. Unfortunately, in public policy, pandemic preparedness is all too often relegated to the cash-starved budgets of development agencies or squeezed into strained health budgets. Where such spending properly belongs is under the flag of industrial policy and national security.”— English historian and international security scholar Adam Tooze, “Vaccine Investment is a No-Brainer—So Why Aren’t We Doing It?”, The Financial Times, Mar. 30-31, 2024

(The image accompanying this post, showing a woman receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, was taken Jan. 16, 2021, at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando, FL, by Whoisjohngalt. According to a 2022 study cited by the National Library of Medicine, at least 14.4 million COVID-19 deaths worldwide were prevented by the dissemination of the vaccine within the first year alone.)

Quote of the Day (The World Health Organization’s Maria Van Kerkhove, on COVID-19, ‘Here to Stay’)

“The worry is complacency. The worry is reduced fiscal space, mental space and political space to talk about COVID in the context of everything else. I am not suggesting that the world drop what it’s doing and focus [only] on COVID. That is not what WHO is suggesting. We’re saying, ‘Please don’t drop the ball.’ The virus is here. It’s evolving. It’s killing [more than 11,000 reported worldwide deaths between mid-December 2023 and mid-January 2024, with more than half of those in the U.S.]. It’s causing post-COVID conditions [also called long COVID]. And we don’t know the long-term effects. It’s a virus that is here to stay.”— Maria Van Kerkhove, now interim director of the Department of Epidemic and Pandemic Preparedness and Prevention for the World Health Organization, quoted by Meghan Bartels, “Rampant COVID Poses New Challenges in the Fifth Year of the Pandemic,” Scientific American, Feb. 6, 2024

Quote of the Day (Dr. Danielle Ofri, on COVID Vaccine Hesitancy)

“Covid cases and hospitalizations have continued to rise during the winter. As of early January, the average number of Americans dying weekly from Covid was over 1,700. And yet the Jan. 19 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report indicated that only 21.8 percent of adults 18 and older have received the latest Covid vaccine — less than half of the percentage of those who have gotten the flu vaccine….We in medicine are fairly good at responding to specific concerns; we easily marshal facts and numbers because this is the arena in which we are most comfortable. It’s tempting to shy away from the queasier realm of free-floating discomfort, but we can’t….As time-consuming and exhausting as these conversations can be, we have a communal duty to try to unmuddy the waters — all of us. If you’ve been hesitating about getting your updated Covid vaccination, you might want to put your heebie-jeebies front and center on the exam table at your next medical visit. They’re due for a checkup.”—Dr. Danielle Ofri, “Covid Vaccine Hesitancy Is Getting Worse,” The New York Times, Jan. 31, 2024

Nearly three years after the COVID vaccine was introduced into the U.S., hesitancy about it continues at an alarming rate. Even though many of us with underlying medical conditions would have been hospitalized or dead without the shots, the population as a whole remains at risk because of the low vaccination rates.

It is one of the follies and tragedies of our time that something which at heart is a public-health issue has become a political one. I don’t want friends or other readers to regard me as a scold on this subject.

But I would just urge vaccine holdouts to read Dr. Ofri’s article in the link above. It’s eminently non-judgmental yet reasonable. I hope it’ll make you at least rethink your recalcitrance.

(The image accompanying this post, of a person wearing gloves and a surgical mask while handling a COVID-19 Vaccine vial and syringe, was from the U.S. Census Bureau, and taken Jan. 27, 2021.)

Quote of the Day (Brilliant, Smolinski, Danzig and Lipkin, on Animal Virus Spillovers and Pandemic Prevention)

“Population growth in both animals and humans, industrialization, urbanization, and modernization have raised the risk that diseases will jump [from animals] to humans and spread. But modern advances have also given the world new tools to prevent, track, and contain infections, allowing us to stop spillover from turning into global chaos.

“In other words, spillover and outbreaks are inevitable, but pandemics are not. Humanity's greatest task now, therefore, is to do everything possible to sever the link between the former and the latter. It is a task made easier than ever by modern science, yet also one that requires crucial elements sorely lacking in the age of COVID-19—speed, cooperation, and trust.  Without overcoming these deficits, the chain will remain unbroken.”—Larry Brilliant, Mark Smolinski, Lisa Danzig, and W. Ian Lipkin, “Inevitable Outbreaks: How to Stop an Age of Spillovers From Becoming an Age of Pandemics,” Foreign Affairs, January/February 2023

Quote of the Day (Alfred, Lord Tennyson, on the Perilous ‘Dreamful Ease’ of Languishing)

“Let us alone. What is it that will last?
All things are taken from us, and become
Portions and parcels of the dreadful past.
Let us alone. What pleasure can we have
To war with evil? Is there any peace
In ever climbing up the climbing wave?
All things have rest, and ripen toward the grave
In silence; ripen, fall and cease:
Give us long rest or death, dark death, or dreamful ease.” —English poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), “The Lotos-Eaters” (1832)
 
This poem, inspired by an episode from Homer’s Odyssey, came to my attention through an article last year by The Wall Street Journal’s Barton Swaim. The piece likened the situation of Odysseus and his men to the phenomenon of “languishing” experienced by so many during COVID-19.
 
The metaphor may have seemed appealing at first glance, with its sense of losing a purpose-driven life. But the strange creatures that Odysseus encounters were slothful and blissed-out from consuming narcotic-like fruits and flowers—more like the hippies of the ancient world—rather than the anxious people working at their computers over the past two years.
 
Moreover, Odysseus’ purpose was to get home, to Ithaca; the purpose of the COVID-anxious population since the start of the pandemic has been to stay home, until the danger abates.
 
One year after Swaim’s article, the United States is at a different stage of the pandemic, with many having returned to offices. But the life many of us remembered no longer exists, any more than Odysseus' circumstances did after 20 years away from Ithaca.

Last year, psychologists and economists hoped that, with the development of vaccines, Americans could progress from “languishing” to “flourishing.” But that has not quite come to pass.
 
And who knows? Despite the protests of politicians like New York Mayor Eric Adams, some restrictions from the first year and a half of COVID-19 might be put in place again, if the current surge continues. 

In that case, a different poetic metaphor for our time will need to be found—one that takes full account of the “dreadful past” that Tennyson, at this early stage of his career, so marvelously evoked.

Quote of the Day (Samantha Montano, on the Scientific Opportunity Lost During COVID-19)

“In early 2020 some thought the pandemic would be just the sort of focusing event that wakes up world leaders to the risks of sleeping on the climate crisis. Maybe they would use this ‘window of opportunity’ to draw obvious parallels, so that one global crisis inspired action on the other. Perhaps the U.S. Congress would finally admit the need to reform—and massively expand—our emergency management system to one that prioritizes risk reduction rather than reactionary measures. One that meets the needs of frontline and marginalized communities who experience disproportionate disaster impacts and are kept from accessing adequate aid.

“None of this has happened. Not only is the government not applying the lessons of the pandemic response to other disasters, but even within the pandemic itself, many elected officials have failed to apply the lessons learned at the beginning.”— Samantha Montano, assistant professor of emergency management at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, "We Didn't Get Serious About the Climate Crisis," Scientific American, March 2022

Quote of the Day (Emily St. John Mandel, Anticipating a Civilization Gripped by a Pandemic)

“No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities.”— Canadian novelist and essayist Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven (2014)

Two years ago this week, the New York metropolitan area prepared to shut down as COVID-19 spread.  Few people could have predicted the pandemic’s impact on American healthcare, business, technology, culture, politics—and, in the fissures it created among friends and family, even relationships.

We did not quite reach the nightmare that Emily St. John Mandel wrote in her novel Station Eleven. But, even as New York and other cities now prepare, tentatively, to loosen restrictions and “reopen,” who can say what may happen in the near future?

The COVID-19 variants Delta and Omicron should have taught people that, just as animals can evolve, so can viruses. 

But from the first, a hard core of Americans have engaged in successive forms of denial about the coronavirus: that it even exists, that it’s not as bad as others from the last decade or so, that it’s been confined to a certain geographic area, that social distancing, masks or even vaccines aren't needed to combat its spread, or that it could it couldn't damage one’s self or one’s family.

Pray that we have something like a return to the cherished sights and sounds of civilization celebrated in the passage starting this post. But above all, pray that neither COVID-19 nor any future disease surprises us again.

(The accompanying photo of Emily St. John Mandel was taken on Dec. 2, 2017, by librarie mollat.)

Quote of the Day (Noel Coward, on the Urge to ‘Go Out and Be Social’)

“I've got to be bright
And extremely polite
 And refrain from becoming too loose or too tight
And I mustn't impose conversational blight
On the dolt on my left
And the fool on my right.
I must really be very attractive tonight
As I have got to go out and be social.”—English playwright, composer and bon vivant Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973), “I’ve Got To Go Out and Be Social,” in The Noel Coward Reader, edited by Barry Day (2010)
 
In Coward’s youth—in fact, in the youth of many early in this century—the instinct to “go out and be social” during year-end festivities was seemingly ineradicable. For the last two years, going on the dinner-and-party circuit has been far harder to sustain because of COVID-19.
 
Here’s hoping that in December 2022, the way of life that Coward tweaked will return, and that his witty verses will be understood and chuckled over again.

Quote of the Day (Ann Radcliffe, on ‘The Best Security Against the Contagion of Folly’)

“A well-informed mind is the best security against the contagion of folly and of vice. The vacant mind is ever on the watch for relief, and ready to plunge into error, to escape from the languor of idleness.” — English Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794)

What stuck out for me in this quote was the word “contagion.” It may have been a metaphor when it was written. 

But these days—as COVID-19, aided more than a little bit by misinformation, has not only stubbornly hung on but even formed variants—the term is literal as well as symbolic.

Quote of the Day (Sir Francis Bacon, on Helps to ‘Overcome the Necessities and Miseries of Humanity’)

“[L]et us hope… there may spring helps to man, and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity.”— English author, courtier, and philosopher Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626), “The Plan of the Instauratio Magna,” in Charles W. Eliot, Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books (1909-1910)

The most prominent among all these “helps” today are the vaccines developed, in near-record time, to deal with COVID-19. All the more reason, then, to feel frustration over the many people who have still chosen not to be vaccinated.

In his advocacy for inductive reasoning as part of the scientific method, Bacon was the herald of a more enlightened age that lengthened lifespans and improved quality of life. We now have to ask whether the tides of disinformation previously confined to politics are now reversing the gains he helped bring about.  

When public health becomes just another entrenched front in the never-ending culture wars, you can say goodbye to any hope to a return to the everyday life we once knew.

Photo of the Day: Stranger in a Strange Land—or, Back in Midtown

A week and a half ago, for the first time in 14 months, when COVID-19 restrictions went into effect, I ventured back into New York City. In meeting friends for lunch, I was as curious about what I was about to encounter as I was apprehensive, given the rapidly changing and confusing guidelines issued by the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

The bus ride through northern New Jersey into the Lincoln Tunnel contrasted strongly with what I saw and heard even only a few weeks ago, though the evidence for a change in ridership habits was still apparent. In the spring of 2020, with the lockdown in place, I walked by buses that, though once standing room only, now had only one or two passengers during the morning rush hour. So few people were on board that it made me feel as if I were viewing a ghost bus.

Though a good deal more people were on board the New Jersey Transit bus I took that Monday morning, plenty of seats remained—even with the four seats behind the driver roped off. (The driver was additionally protected with a glass shield.) I was relieved to have the opportunity for social distancing.

As late as last fall, friends were still telling me that pedestrian traffic in Times Square had diminished markedly—especially during the Christmas season so critical to retailers.

Stepping off the bus and out of the Port Authority terminal, I did not feel as crestfallen as I might have at year’s end—there were a good number of people on the streets. Still, something had changed, in a way that this shot, which I took from Times Square, looking uptown, can’t convey.

I didn’t get my first real sense of how much was different until I met my friends at an English-style pub in the Garment District pub. Though still anxious about being inside, I took comfort in the considerable distance between our trio and the closest customers in the restaurant.

In fact, one of my friends at the table indicated that, in this same restaurant, at a comparable hour, he would have been lucky to get a seat here before the pandemic.

Analysts are talking about the pent-up demand that restaurants will experience from people anxious to celebrate the end of isolation with friends. I am sure there is something to that—and indeed, compared with the desperate situation at this time last year, when so many restaurants were gauging how to move towards a take-out model, the situation is vastly improved.

But I suspect that restaurants in many cities such as New York will still find surviving a difficult matter. Many will depend on lunchtime spending by the white-collar sector to supplement expenditures by friends and families.

Even with tourist bookings accelerating, the damage to the office sector will continue—at least until Labor Day, when many companies will be able to put their post-pandemic plans in place and see how early returnees to old spaces are faring.

I believe that some of the damage to office space will be permanent. Over the course of a year, companies have proven that they can operate remotely if need be. They no longer have the need to have all their employees in their buildings five days a week. Some companies reduced their workforce so dramatically during the pandemic that it will take years to reach their former levels--if even then. This means that fewer workers will be making lunchtime purchases.

In some ways, the post-pandemic city may be better. My friend Rob, for instance, looked forward to fewer people on subways during rush hour. “Who wants to get on trains packed like sardines?” he noted. “After all, there is a quality-of-life issue involved here, too.”

You can forgive New Yorkers who blinked at what they saw all around them as the restrictions came down. Everything looked familiar but wasn’t—much like the post-pandemic city whose dimensions we won’t be able to grasp for weeks, months—even a few years.

Quote of the Day (Albert Camus, on ‘Refusing to Bow Down to Pestilence’)

“He knew that the tale he had to tell could not be one of a final victory. It could be only the record or what had had to be done, and what assuredly would have to be done again in the never-ending fight against terror and its relentless onslaughts, despite their personal afflictions, by all who, while unable to be saints but refusing to bow down to pestilence, strive their utmost to be healers.”— French Nobel Literature laureate Albert Camus (1913-1960), The Plague (1947)

Camus wrote his novel The Plague as an allegory of the authoritarianism that had enveloped so much of the world in the era between the world wars. In 2020 and 2021, what he saw as metaphor became reality, as COVID-19 often seemed to encourage the fear and ignorance underlying reactionary movements.

With restrictions against the disease increasingly crumbling this week, it is important to absorb Camus’ lessons: that we forget what happened in this mortal struggle at our peril, and that the only way to check both disease and authoritarianism is through eternal vigilance born of the need for unillusioned, unblinkered truth.

Photo of the Day: Good Advice on an Outdoor Table Sign

In my hometown of Englewood, NJ, I glimpsed this sign on one of those restaurant tables increasingly popping up with the weather getting warmer. 

But the advice it offers, I think, is evergreen—good at all times, no matter what the season, though remembered more forcefully now than at any other point in most of our lifetimes.

Photo of the Day: Carnival, Overpeck County Park, Bergen County NJ

This afternoon, I took the attached photo while visiting—or rather, for the longest time, attempting to visit—Overpeck County Park, not far from where I live in Bergen County, NJ. That effort proved so fruitless that I had to park quite a way off, in a lot near a theater.

I thought at first that the throngs outside were merely there to enjoy the warm spring temperatures. But I soon learned otherwise: Unbeknown to me beforehand, this was the third and last day of a carnival being operated to benefit the Teaneck Armory.

In years past, the sight of a crowd at this kind of event would not have bothered me in the slightest. With COVID-19, however, I could not view so many people close to each other, even outdoors, without feeling some residual dread, even after last week's much-trumpeted (if ambiguous) easing of restrictions.

I dearly hope I’m wrong, but we shall see. Somehow, that gray, cloudy sky in this picture seemed an appropriate background for my fears.

Quote of the Day (David Brooks, on the ‘Distrust Doom Loop’)

“Once it is established, distrust tends to accelerate. If you distrust the people around you because you think they have bad values or are out to hurt you, then you are going to be slow to reach out to solve common problems. Your problems will have a tendency to get worse, which seems to justify and then magnify your distrust. You have entered a distrust doom loop.”— Columnist David Brooks, “Our Herd Immunity Failure,” The New York Times, May 7, 2021

Photo of the Day: The Three Hopes of Spring

I took this photo a couple of days ago, when—much to my surprise—this group of flowers appeared in my backyard.

I do not possess my late father’s green thumb, so these shot up from the earth with no tending by me. I think of these as an example of stubborn hope—the instinct in nature and people for rebirth, even without our best efforts—even when so much conspires against it.

There is a second kind of hope, false hope—the illusory belief that matters will advance far beyond the need for us to supervise or take precautions. In other words, it’s the difference between pleasant surprise that a few flowers will spring up after abundant rainfall and an expectation that an entire garden can grow without the need to plant seeds or to ward off creatures that will nibble at or rampage through the resulting product.

This past weekend, I saw more people than I’ve glimpsed in more than a year in restaurants. These throngs, of course, are the result partly of climbing temperatures, partly of pent-up demand after a year of isolation, and partly of relaxed rules for gathering together.

In the coming months, we’re going to see if these crowds and others sure to follow have come out due to stubborn hope or false hope. I’d feel much better if our lives take a turn for the better through a third type of hope, realistic hope: that matters can and will improve as long as we remember that a good outcome is a product of human care rather than human wishfulness.

COVID-19: An Impressionistic History of the First Year of the Emergency

A year ago this week, the reality of COVID-19 hit full force for Americans with the declaration of a national emergency and a ban on non-US citizens traveling from Europe.

Virtually no aspect of life—at the workplace, at home, at “third places” that bound together society—went unaffected.

During this time, while one day seemed to blur into the next, a whole way of life was being transformed over the long term.

These are my recollections of what I directly experienced or heard from others in the Northeast, one of the original pandemic areas in the U.S. I am writing not just for future readers who won’t be able to understand what happened, but also for those now who have lost some memories of aspects of our lives in this time.

In Manhattan, where I was working then, company such as mine watched, with growing concern, in late February and early March as the number of cases and deaths rose. In short order:

*Industry members suddenly backed out of events, afraid to travel by plane or linger in enclosed spaces for prolonged periods.

*Hand sanitizers began to appear on counters all across offices.

*Workers looked askance at anyone veering within six feet of their desks, rolled their eyes if they heard of a colleague exposed to the virus coming into the office, and came into the office in decreasing numbers as management offered the option of working from home.

*Management, after listening to national and local officials, announced, after a day of testing, that employees would work from home till further notice.

*Local newspapers began reporting on how your town was a “hot spot” or “epicenter,” even amid a state that was one of the first—and worst—hit by the pandemic.

*Morning buses, once filled to capacity—even sometimes with commuters standing in the aisles—were now all but empty, even during rush hour.

*Company executives told employees that they were living in “unprecedented times. Nobody could have foreseen this.”

*Employees speculated whether major recent expenses, such as furniture bought for a new move, might have been well-advised, given the subsequent hit to business.

*Employees in mass Zoom sessions looked like The Hollywood Squares, only with considerably more unglamorous people in casual wear replacing the celebrities on the old game show.

*The President repeatedly told the nation that the pandemic “is going to go away.”

*Seemingly everywhere, in rapid succession, supermarket and retail shelves were progressively emptied—of masks and other personal protective equipment, ventilators, drugs, toilet paper, meat, shoe varieties—and everyone prayed for a vaccine.

*Cursing and screaming matches occurred at supermarkets, as some customers ignored cashiers’ request to wear masks or crowded into the personal space of other customers online.

*Virtual wars erupted on Facebook among longtime friends, with quarrels centering on the true count of COVID deaths.

*Many states allowed liquor sales for fear of withdrawal symptoms by alcoholics, with some governors saying that revenues from marijuana legalization might help offset those lost to COVID-19.

*Obituaries shifted during the week and, in the case of the Sunday paper, greatly expanded in column inches—as the bereaved, with no possibility of receiving visitors at final services, chose to disclose loved ones’ deaths on the day of the week when the items would be most read.

*Manhattan, emptied of tourists and office workers, became a ghost town.

*An obnoxious new phrase was coined—“The New Normal”—even though nobody could figure out what it was or how long it would last.

*Businessmen across multiple professions griped about the unfairness of it all—why they were singled out for closures when other industries weren’t so affected.

* “Curbside pickup” became the only viable option for restaurants that, if not closed completely by state law, were forced to operate with limited capacity.

*Self-checkout lanes became more prominent in supermarkets and discount department stores, supposedly to foster safety—but leaving at least one shopper suspicious that the move was a Trojan horse to reduce the need for cashiers.

*Technostress was experienced in multiple settings—not just at companies forced virtually overnight to crank up digital operations, but also among workers at home, unable to get online or to get rapid help from overwhelmed MIS personnel.

*After a few weeks, executives announced limited furloughs—and the fear grew among remaining employees that more extensive layoffs might be in the offing.

*After a few more months, that fear was realized, as mass terminations occurred—with employees first requested by e-mail to stay near their computers and phones, then informed in calls with executives and human resource consultants hired for just this eventuality that they were being let go.

*Unlike times past, COVID-induced isolation meant that terminated employees could not gather with colleagues for last dinners, drinks, or hugs.

*Former co-workers, with neither a job nor even the need to show up at any office, left the city. And now, you thought more than ever of these Billy Joel lyrics: “Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes/I’m afraid it’s time for goodbye again.”

*Terminated employees over age 50 not only faced massive competition for fewer remaining jobs, but also the daunting prospect of age discrimination.

*Friends begged off appearing on Zoom calls because of “COVID-15,” the weight gained during the emergency because of physical inactivity.

*A new form of litter appeared on city streets: discarded masks.

*Cities and states struggled with how to reopen schools—particularly when young people flouted social-distancing restrictions by holding parties that became super-spreader events.

*Librarians tried to maintain services, even with irate patrons who hurled (possibly COVID-infected) spittle in their direction.

*Friends told you on the phone that, after a few symptoms, they were terrified that they had contracted COVID.

*Relatives wrote from across the Atlantic of fierce outbreaks even in rural villages, as your ancestral homeland went into lockdown.

*Sports were played despite shortened seasons, simulated crowd noise, and contests affected by players who had come down with the disease, despite widely publicized precautionary measures.

*Weddings were delayed, and delayed again.

*Fitness buffs, unable to use gymnasiums, exercised outside, as long as weather permitted.

*Zoom religious services replaced the in-person Sunday masses attended by families for decades, with a progressive hollowing out of interior spiritual peace occurring with each week.

*Situation comedies of one’s childhood—“Bewitched,” “The Munsters” and “The Andy Griffith Show”—became more of a go-to option, a kind of electronic bath in which to wash away anxiety.

*Spring dragged into summer, summer into fall, and fall into winter before vaccines became available, if only on a limited basis.

*Economists began talking up a possible burst of renewed business activity in the near future, while epidemiologists cautioned about letting our collective guard down as mutations of COVID-19 began to spread.

*The end of winter brought talk of “pent-up demand.” But “pent-up frustration” might be an equally accurate description of what so many were feeling.

Spiritual Quote of the Day (Poet Christina Rossetti, on Finding ‘Hope in Grief’)

“Say not, vain this world's turmoil,
Vain its trouble and its toil,
All its hopes and fears are vain,
Long, unmitigated pain.
What though we should be deceived
By the friend that we love best?
All in this world have been grieved,
Yet many have found rest.
Our present life is as the night,
Our future as the morning light:
Surely the night will pass away,
And surely will uprise the day.”—English poet Christina Rossetti (1830-1894), “Hope in Grief,” in The Complete Poems, edited by R. W. Crump and Betty S. Flowers (2001)

This is for all those who lost friends and relatives to COVID-19 this past year—or who could not, because of the disease, be there at the moment of passing for their loved ones.

(The image accompanying this post of Christina Rossetti was painted by her brother, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in 1877.)

Quote of the Day (Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, on Friends Recalling ‘Many a Vanished Scene’)

“We sat and talked until the night,
      Descending, filled the little room;
Our faces faded from the sight,
      Our voices only broke the gloom.

“We spake of many a vanished scene,
      Of what we once had thought and said,
Of what had been, and might have been,
      And who was changed, and who was dead;

“And all that fills the hearts of friends,
      When first they feel, with secret pain,
Their lives thenceforth have separate ends,
      And never can be one again.”—American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), “The Fire of Drift-wood,” in The Seaside and the Fireside (1850)

Remarkably, Longfellow wrote this scene, of two friends in a farmhouse somberly summarizing the passage of time, when he was only 43—more than a decade away from when he would lose his second wife in a fire, and when friends would die quietly of heartbreak, having sent their sons off to perish in a civil war of unforeseen carnage.

Over the years, improved life expectancy had kept many Americans from facing the same grim death counts that Longfellow’s characters quietly lamented. But over the last few months, as COVID-19 has struck at a wider swath of people, that blessing has increasingly vanished. 

Last spring, it was not uncommon to be asked how many people one knew had contracted COVID-19, or even died of it—with the implication being that, all things considered, it really wasn’t that bad. Today, more and more people would answer both questions in the affirmative.

In addition, indirect deaths are resulting from the pandemic: doctors’ appointments and elective surgery delayed because of fear of coming down with the virus, as well as rampant isolation, depression and substance abuse.

There is also the “secret pain” glimpsed by Longfellow, the unspoken sense between once-intimate friends that they “never can be one again.”

In his time, it would have meant the separate paths people took in terms of earning a living, family life, perhaps relocation. Today, another element has been introduced into the equation: politics, which increasingly infects what was once considered the private realm. Social media have made obvious what people seldom if ever spoke about before.

The result is that, if they don’t un-friend each other on Facebook and Twitter, old friends will likely stay silent about what now divides them. Peace may be maintained, but the ease in another’s company once enjoyed has faded, like the faces of Longfellow’s friends in the evening light.