Normal People Say ‘No Mask’
We fought for three years, and the Covid fear-mongers lost.
By Gabrielle Bauer, March 13, 2023, WSJ
We’ve won the war. By “we,” I mean normal people who want normal things: community, connection, creativity, with a bit of dancing on the side. For three years, we’ve had to battle those who were unwilling to tolerate any Covid risk and demanded
that the world conform to their fears. At times I was sure we would lose.

Most articles I read during the pandemic crowed that the bulk of humanity was ready to embrace a constricted life indefinitely, if it also meant a (possibly) safer life. In 2020 National Geographic asserted that the pandemic was “reshaping our senses
of fear and disgust” and would lead us to avoid crowds for years. In 2021 Bloomberg predicted the pandemic would permanently change the fitness industry, with virtual workouts out-muscling the sweaty-bodies format. Travel would also change forever. In
an article “updated” in November 2022, Reader’s Digest told us to expect preboarding temperature checks, mask requirements and socially distanced airplane seating “forever, or at least for the foreseeable future.”

In October 2020, Tom Frieden, a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director, proclaimed that “masks are in and handshakes out for the indefinite future.” A March 2021 Vox article marveled at the oddity of watching maskless gatherings
in movies and on TV, as though this behavior belonged to some quaint prehistoric era.

I am happy to report that the prognosticators were dead wrong. The year 2023 is marching to a new drumbeat—an infectiously catchy rhythm that sounds remarkably like the Old Normal. International travel, leisure travel, business travel—it’s all back,
and then some. And let me tell you about the medical conferences I attended over the past six months in Barcelona, Milan, New York, Montreal and Miami Beach. There were a lot more handshakes than masks, and these are doctors we’re talking about.
People are even blowing out their birthday-cake candles: I’ve seen it happen twice in the past two months. It’s only on Twitter that people still insist we must #BringBackMasks to stave off the apocalypse.

It seems that the expert class and its acolytes hoped Covid would fundamentally change human behavior. That it would make us keep our distance from each other, retreat into ourselves, dedicate more of our lives to gardening, sourdough-bread making and
the like. They really wanted this. But it turns out human nature is more powerful than their smug and classist vision of remote work and socializing. With their blinkered focus on a virus, they failed to consider that most of us want more from life than
avoidance of illness. We’re even willing to tolerate getting Covid to get to the good stuff. Imagine that.

To paraphrase George Costanza: We’re back, baby! We’re flying in planes and jostling each other in crowds and offering our friends a lick of our ice cream cone, and there’s nothing the doomsayers can do about it. Without fanfare, human nature has
nudged the Overton window back to its pre-Covid resting position. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of the view.

Ms. Bauer is author of “Blindsight Is 2020: Reflections on Covid Policies from Dissident Scientists, Philosophers, Artists and More.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/normal-people-say-no-mask-covid-pandemic-return-to-normalcy-conferences-fitness-travel-handshake-76c20281

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