ENGINEERS, DOROTHY AND THE END OF CORONAMANIA

As a high school senior, I took Physics. Because I test well in Math, I was put in the class with the smartest STEM kids in the school, most of whom went on to such colleges as MIT, Cornell, Dartmouth, RPI, Tufts, Lafayette and Wisconsin, et al., to become engineers. But past PSAT performance doesn’t guarantee future Physics results. I sometimes fell behind. It didn’t help that I let go of the academic rope halfway through the school year.

There were about a half dozen juniors in the class of thirty. One was named Marty. Marty played electric guitar during our church’s Sunday night mass. Sometimes he played and sang Eagles songs before mass started. Most of us want to be good at something that we’re not really cut out to do. Marty wasn’t much of a singer.

But he was real good at Physics.

Once every three weeks or so, our teacher, Mr. Stephens, subjected us to a 45-minute period-long test. I did well enough on the first few. But the tests became more challenging as the year went on. When, while test-taking, I’d look, from my back row desk, at the analog clock along the room’s right/hallway side, I was often behind schedule and sometimes came up with improbable answers, such as finding that the truck in a test problem weighed 2.3333 kilograms. I knew something in my analysis was wrong but lacked the time to restart such problems from scratch.

Almost without exception, with 15 minutes to go in the test period, Marty rose from his seat on the left/window side of the room, carried his paper to the front of the room, dropped it on Mr. Stephens’ desk and smirked as he bouncily strode toward and out the door. As I still had half of the test to go, that smirk pissed me off. 

Stephens was old school. A day or two after each test, after he had graded the tests, he handed them back. He distributed them in order of score, starting with the highest. I knew this without asking. As the year went on, I went from getting my paper back early with a high score to getting it back late with a low one.

Marty was always one of the first kids to receive his graded paper. A junior outperforming the best senior STEM kids in the school was impressive enough. But the most impressive part was how fast Marty figured out the answers.

I just looked up Marty on the Net. He has multiple Engineering degrees and heads some Engineering institute.

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In September, 2022, my normally insightful nephew prefaced a comment by saying, during a group breakfast, “Now that we’re post-Covid…”

I asked him why he thought we were post-Covid. He said it’s because people think it’s over. In turn, I asked: why do people think it’s over? He said it’s because people aren’t freaked out by it. Then I asked him why people aren’t freaked out by it. He said because they’ve had it and survived.

At various times in 2023, other people have echoed my nephew’s belief that even though people are still getting Covid, and some are still said to be dying of it and some are still masking and vaxx-boosting, “Covid is over.”

When enough people thought it was over, it was over. 

Though I’m glad the mania is over, at least for most, this explanation doesn’t sound very scientific to me.

Near the end of The Wizard of Oz, the good witch tells Dorothy that she, Dorothy, could have gone home any time she wanted. Hearing this surprises and delights Dorothy. She clicks her ruby slippers and magically returns to Kansas. Her nightmare is over.

During Coronamania, Americans resembled Dorothy. We could have gone home—back to normal life—any time we wanted to. Instead, people embraced the mania.

But by now, most people have finally figured out what I knew about Covid in March, 2020, when nearly everyone I knew told me I was evil for opposing lockdowns.

Took y’all long enough.

There’s an additional sign that even though Covid itself isn’t over, Coronamania is, at least for most people. After over a year of vaxx failure, the now-widespread refusal to take additional shots reveals that more people are belatedly perceiving that the shots are worthless. And injurious. Remember how two years ago anyone who declined the shots was selfish and stupid and didn’t deserve to have a job, receive medical treatment, attend school or enter a gym or a bar?

It's been a remarkable— and yet, largely unremarked upon—reversal. 

By figuring out the Scamdemic immediately, I resembled Marty. Only in real life. Though I’m still not much of an Eagles fan.

I wonder if Marty supported the lockdowns, school closures, masks and testing and tracing. And if he vaxxed. Because…Science!

The engineers whom I knew saw Covid as a numbers problem, conquerable, as they see the rest of the world, by technological interventions; in this instance, lockdowns, masks, testing and tracing and injections. But all of these gimmicks failed more miserably, and far more consequentially, than I did on my hardest Physics test. The engineers were good at Math and Physics but bad at Biology, Sociology, History and—as were most MDs—Medicine, Public Health, Mental Health and Bioethics.

Perhaps Marty was out of step with other engineers and rejected Coronamania. I hope so. Except for that smirk, he wasn’t a bad guy.