Of Masks and Plagues and Nancy Reagan

For some reason, I have masks on the brain.  I'm remembering a year ago, when mask mandates went into effect, and there was talk of mask shortages.  I'm a woman with lots of scraps of cloth, so I made myself some masks.  They were awkward and bulky, and I put ties on them instead of elastic loops for the ears.  Ties do not work well with my hair, so I soon changed them to elastic loops--the joys of a well-stocked sewing kit.

I remember the first week of the mask mandate when people were improvising.  I saw bandanas over faces, which made going to the grocery store feeling like bandits were among us.  Now I see two main types of mask wearers:  those who do a lot with cloth masks and those who are wearing medical type masks.  Or maybe a third type too:  those who don't cover their noses and/or mouths, but have the mask nearby.

I remember a year ago wondering how long we would be expected to wear masks and being eager to get to a time when we didn't have to wear them.  Now I have gotten used to them. 

I have also been thinking about a different plague, a different time of pandemic, the early days of the AIDS crisis.  In part, I've been going back to that time as our current pandemic has unfolded.  Yesterday, on The Atlantic's website, I read this excerpt out of Karen Tumulty's new book on Nancy Reagan.  The article explored both her response to AIDS and her husband's.

I have had strong opinions about that family, the Reagans, but those opinions have been tempered with time.  Ronald Reagan was elected when I was a sophomore in high school, which means he was governing for most of my early adult life, through high school, college, and part of grad school.  If you had met me in those days, I could have told you all the ways he was the most dreadful president ever.  Now I have seen worse.

But I'm also willing to see that most people are doing the best that they can with the information that they have at the time.  I do believe this statement to be true of Ronald Reagan.

Even giving him the benefit of the doubt, the response to AIDS was one of the huge failures of his administration.  If the disease had struck less marginalized parts of society, I have no doubt he'd have responded differently.  We've seen that dynamic at work in our current pandemic.