The Mask of the Red Death: Covid-19

Covid-19, a “pandemic level virus” that hit the world in late 2019. A virus that caused a global shutdown, killed many small businesses, caused many people to lose what was left of their mental health, caused many mask mandates, and to what avail? None, not a single breakthrough. Only a vaccine that is 90% effective against the virus. There’s no curing the virus. It’s going to mutate and become immune to any drugs we throw at it. It’s not going to go away anytime soon. Even in the early stages of the “pandemic” the virus was already mutating. There’s no stopping a virus, you can only hope to contain it, but a virus is like bad news. Once the news is out, it spreads like wildfire.

I was in an English class one day while on a hybrid learning model, 2 days in school and 2 days virtual, during Covid-19, and we were doing an Edgar Allen Poe unit. Poe was truly a dark and depressing man, yet very complex and expressive. I didn’t care for him that much. That whole unit I was wishing it was over. Poe was just so predictable, with all his greatness and accomplishments, everyone in his stories either died or were tortured. Anyways, in that English class we started reading “The Mask of the Red Death”. As I was reading the book on my computer I noticed a correlation between the story and the events in 2020 with the Coronavirus. In “The Mask of the Red Death” there is a wealthy prince named Prospero. In the story, there are people that are dying from “the Red Death” and Prospero doesn’t want to die from the plague. It is similar to the Black Plague that happened in Europe in the 1300’s. Prospero saw that the peasants were dying at a rapid rate, so he isolated himself inside his abbey. He didn’t come out of his abbey and he lived out the rest of his days in perpetual fear of the plague until he eventually got killed by it.

Sound familiar at all? Isolating yourself from society in order to try and avoid death by a virus, ringing any bells? When we started reading this book I immediately made the correlation of Covid-19 and the Red Death. Prospero was living in great fear of the plague because he didn’t want to die. He didn’t want to get the plague, he quarantined himself just as we did in 2020, and he got the plague anyways and died shortly after getting it. We in modern day quarantined in order to try and contain the virus when really all it did was prolong the virus. If we had gone on with our daily business and just taken normal flu season precautions we would have been fine. Instead we decided to quarantine, and many children’s education were cut short, mental health took a huge toll, many families ran into financial trouble, many businesses ran into unfathomable hardships to stay open, and many people still got the virus anyways.

This short story should show people today that they shouldn’t live in perpetual fear of something they can’t control. For example, we all know that we are going to die at some point in time. We don’t all live in fear that we are going to die and one day disappear, we can’t control death. With Covid-19, we can’t really control it, yet we have to live under rocks and quarantine when in 1918 when the Spanish flu hit we were burning dead bodies in the roads and didn’t think twice about it. We, as citizens of the world, are living in a never ending and never changing fear of catching the Covid-19 virus. Let this short story by Edgar Allen Poe be a lesson to everyone. You can’t live in fear of something you have no control over. If you get the virus, you get the virus, that’s how life is. Sometimes it’s very unfair and you just have to live with it.

The way that I see it is that when you get the virus you get it and that’s just your luck. There’s no avoiding it or getting around this virus situation. Another lockdown isn’t the answer, another quarantine isn’t the answer. Quarantine is an unconstitutional thing that is pushing against our given rights as Americans. Our founding fathers vowed that the government would never have full control of the citizens of the United States. If the founding fathers could look down on us and see what we have become they would be disgusted with every single one of us. The fact that we are scared of a little virus that is similar to the flu when they had to work against dysentery, malaria, the flu, which was a big deal at this point in time, and smallpox. They had 4 huge diseases that they needed to battle against while fighting in a war with one of the world’s biggest superpowers at the time. They would also have to fight through the snow, the intense heat, while starving and wondering when they were going to see their families again. Not to mention that they would also have to constantly worry about being killed by a British redcoat. If our founding fathers looked at how we are today, scared over a single virus, shutting down the country because of a virus, in a place of political incoherence and dishonesty. If they saw us today they would be disgusted at the people we have become.

For the people who first fought for our country’s freedom to be disgusted at the people we’ve become is saying something about what we are today. There’s no excuse for how we’ve been acting through the last year and a half. There really isn’t besides the classic excuse, “it’s 2020, what can we do about it?” There is something you can do about it! Stop blaming everything going wrong in your life and the world on 2020! Yeah, I get it, it’s been a rough year, but us as a world and nation can’t keep going on like this. We need to move on with our lives, make our founding fathers proud, stop living in fear of Covid-19, and become the United States again. There’s no excuse anymore, we know what this virus can do, we know how to treat it, we have the supplies to be able to try and prevent it, what are people waiting for? We need to get back to our regular lives, no one is going to be able to go on like this for much longer. Take back your part of freedom from the government! Don’t let the corrupt politicians of today’s government take away your freedom! We can defy the odds, as we have done many times in the past, and beat this year! No one is alone, we need to come together as a nation, and work together to reopen as a whole. There’s no “me” or “I” there’s only “us” and we can do it.

What are we waiting for? Opportunity waits for no one. There’s only one thing we can do and that’s to stop being afraid. Stand up to everyone keeping our country down and be the bigger man! Go on with your lives, make your voices heard, let the virus run its course. There are going to be more cases at first, but then it will fall and there will be less and less cases everyday. A shutdown isn’t the answer. Moving on is the answer. The one thing humans are designed to do is move on and make new stepping stones for themselves. If one thing knocks us down we’ll pick ourselves up and come back twice as strong. No more fear, no more politics of cynicism, no more Covid-19 scaring people into their houses. Go outside, get your groceries, get on with your lives, make your next day count as if you were to die tomorrow. Even if Covid-19 does get the best of us we will win. There’s no need to live in perpetual fear anymore. We as a nation, we as an Earthly being will be the bigger man and win the fight!

Thank you for listening to angry writing time with Phoebe Matthews and I’ll see you next time!