To be a member of society

 Charles Blow in NYT writes "There will Be No Post-Covid"

In the early part of the pandemic, when some Republican governors were following Trump’s lead, politicizing the virus by bucking C.D.C. recommendations, many Democratic governors held the line and committed to following the science.

But now, many of them seem to be buckling as well, lifting mask mandates against C.D.C. recommendations.

The urge, both political and social, to simply “get on with it,” is incredibly strong.

The number of lives taken by Covid in this country alone — north of 900,000 — is almost unfathomable. But, somehow the public has absorbed and reckoned with it in some way. We have taken on a Darwinian sensibility about it all, accepting it as sudden thinning of a herd, a form of natural selection. It is both sad and stunning.

Covid has made us reconsider everything, the meaning of home and work, the value of public space, the magnitude and immediacy of death, what it truly means to be a member of a society.

We are still finding the answers to those questions, but the America we knew ended in 2019. This is a new one, scarred, struggling to its feet, dogged by moral and philosophical questions that on one hand have revealed its cruelty and on the other have forced it into metamorphosis.