Covid Comebacks

When the New York Times features the University Hospital in my German city--as it did today, and as it's done several times--I feel epi-centerish. We're not Berlin, we're not New York, we're not the misguided denizens of mask-free Trump rallies. But people in my city go to bars and restaurants with their masks guarding their chins, or below sneeze level. They go to doctors who write them excuses, claiming asthma precludes the wearing of masks.

I don't go to bars or restaurants. I don't miss them--for the twenty years of my marriage, my husband and I usually preferred to stay home. When we dined out, we chose a Japanese restaurant that, during the week, boasted fewer than two or three patrons. We used to joke that maybe the place was a front for the mafia or something--how else would they stay open?

It's getting so that the hot spots are no longer hot spots, because they can't be distinguished from the places that are warm, and getting hot. 

I still figure I'm okay on the tram with my surgical mask and plastic face shield. I want one of those fishbowl style head coverings , the isphere, from Plastique Fantastique, the Berlin-based art studio that seems only to be hawking prototypes on eBay. The gym might close in two days; I still have my creaky cross-trainer, but no leg press. As the rain splashes the windows, as we all huddle through the last days before the election, I wonder if that rarest of sensibilities, common sense, will ever descend upon us again.