Covid Finally Catches Me...and Forces Me to Think.

After 4 1/2 years of dodging the inevitable, I was still surprised to see the pale red line forming on the test kit. I had thought I was coming down with a cold, but it rapidly seemed rather worse than that, so I tested… and less than 24 hours later, my husband also tested positive. The next few days were not pleasant: a foggy blur of aches and fever, staring off into space, and deep exhaustion along with coughing and congestion. We’re coming out of the worst of it now, with the help of recent vaccinations, Paxlovid, and a lot of sleep.

It was perhaps a fitting time: our illness coinciding not only with the surreal run-up to the American election but my own re-reading of The Magic Mountain. Thomas Mann’s epic novel, published exactly 100 years ago, is about tuberculosis patients in the rarified confines of a sanitarium in the Swiss Alps during the years just before the outbreak of the first World War.

Canada is not as removed from U.S. reality in 2024 as a snowy mountaintop was from the political machinations of Europe a century ago — modern media has made sure of that -- but it does feel one long step away. I voted several weeks ago, in Vermont, but most of my Canadian friends are only able to anxiously await the results from a country they once thought they understood, but which has become increasingly incomprehensible. When they ask me, “How is it even possible that this man might win?” I hardly know where to begin.

I’ve been reflecting not only on the election and its potential ramifications, but on the pandemic which is offically “over” even though there’s a major wave of infection in my city, and perhaps in yours too. Capitalism is always ready to seize the opportunity. In the U.S., the anti-viral treatment Paxlovid stopped being free when the COVID emergency was declared over; now a five-day course of treatment costs $1400, which is covered by some but not all insurance carriers. Medicare will cover it for most seniors through the end of December 2024; after that, who knows? Here, the treatment is covered by the province of Quebec with a small co-pay if you meet certain criteria (such as being over 60) but it sounds like hardly anyone even asks for it. Vaccinations are still free in Canada, but uptake is low. Basically, people just don’t want to think about it anymore.

As I was getting sicker, feeling the virus taking hold in my body, I remembered the fear of the early days of 2020, when we had no treatments whatsoever, when we were washing and wiping everything that came into our houses, and, on the news, seeing morgues filling with bodies. I thought about the people I knew personally who succumbed to the disease. I felt immense gratitude to the medical community of researchers and providers who risked so much and worked so hard to save lives. And I wondered how long it will be before we are willing to look back and see this period of time clearly.

In Mann’s book, illness is both an everyday reality and a metaphor. The residents of the sanitarium, who have come from many different Western and Eastern European countries and from Russia, are preoccupied with their health but also with triviality and pleasure. They eat five sumptuous meals each day and live in luxurious, hotel-like surroundings, completely removed from their previous lives and responsibilities, whether career or familial. They dress up, play games, wander in the mountains, gossip endlessly, drink and smoke, and take their rest cures wrapped in fur robes. When someone’s disease progresses to “the horizontal state”, they are confined to bed and disappear from view. Meanwhile, down below, Europe edges toward war. Two of the patients, the Italian humanist Settembrini and the Jesuit champion of traditionalism and authority, Naptha, have removed themselves from the sanitarium to live out their days in the neighboring town, and there they engage in philosophical debates about the great questions facing civilization and every human being. They battle for the mind of the young, unformed protagonist, Hans Castorp, who, before starting his planned engineering career, had visited his cousin at the sanitorium and taken up, after a somewhat dubious diagnosis, permanent residence there himself.

Mann’s book shows us human beings as primarily short-sighted and self-interested, drawn to the pursuit of pleasure and superficialities, and prone to ignoring and forgetting the lessons of recent experience — but also looks at other possibilities of how to live one’s life.

He began The Magic Mountain before the war, after visiting his own wife while she was a patient in a Davos sanitarium. He put the manuscript — originally intended as a short story! - aside and finished it after the war. His book was widely read and talked about at the time, and it has a lasting reputation as one of the greatest novels ever written. Today, not only do we seem to want to forget a worldwide catastrophe as devastating as the pandemic, and pretend it doesn’t still exist, we certainly do not want to read literature about it. As democracy is eroded by far-right ideologies and billionaire fortunes, as fascism arrives on our very doorstep, and war rains down on other people’s heads, we can still easily spend much of our time scrolling, shopping, and being entertained.

It’s taken me a while to read Mann’s long book, for the second time in my life, and it struck me with the force of truth much more than when I was young; I’ve seen a lot more of life by now. If someone writes a definitive novel about our own time, I wonder how widely it will be read, and by whom — both in the coming years, and 100 years from now. However, when the overriding question of the present day is, “How did we get here?”, it seems worthwhile for each of us to grasp that moment and give it some thought, as individuals who are living through a pivotal time in history.

Comments

[Natalie d'Arbeloff]

Very sorry you and Jonathan have been hit by Covid. I hope and trust it will quickly depart and leave no trace of itself behind. I wish you and Jon a healthy and peaceful autumn. It would be great to hear from you.

I've been lucky not to get caught by the Covid bug but maybe it's because my life is mostly that of a hermit!

I sympathise with you and all who worry about the ominous possibility of Trump returning to the White House and are totally baffled that this is even possible. Local and world-wide news are currently more disastrous than ever.

[Jackie Mineo]

I agree. How will this time be seen? Hard to imagine when you are in the middle of it.
Hope you both feel better soon.
I will be reading Mann's book. Thank you for the interesting review.