Thursday
A week ago Deborah Birx, the physician who oversees the White House pandemic response, acknowledged the Covid is exploding in America in part because the administration failed to anticipate how young people would behave once states began reopening their economies. Perhaps she should have read the Cavalier poets.
As reported in the Washington Post, Birx said that
leaders in states that were not hard-hit early on “thought they would be forever spared through this,” and when they reopened their economies, they didn’t expect a surge in cases spurred by a cohort of mostly millennials.
To be fair to millennials, I think that Generation Z should bear some of the responsibility here—many millennials, because they are well into their thirties and have families and demanding jobs, did not flood into bars and beaches at the first opportunity. But it is true that many of the young people who did were propounding a version of the carpe diem or “seize the day” philosophy found in the works of Robert Herrick and Andrew Marvell.
These poets were themselves living in apocalyptic times, with the monarchy swept away and the future uncertain. In a season of death, why not grab for all the sweetness to be found in the present?
I believe that, with strong and clear guidance from the White House, the Center for Disease Control, and the nation’s governors, America could have effectively countered self-destructive impulses. But because we have the leadership we have, we are rapidly approaching 3.5 million cases and 140,000 deaths.
I’ll let you decide which age group you feel would most thrill to Herrick’s famous lyric. It’s directed “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time,” but you can imagine other crazy activities as you read it:
Gather ye Rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles today,
To morrow will be dying.
The glorious Lamp of Heaven, the Sun,
The higher he's a getting;
The sooner will his Race be run,
And nearer he's to Setting.
That Age is best, which is the first,
When Youth and Blood are warmer;
But being spent, the worse, and worst
Times, still succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time;
And while ye may, go marry:
For having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry.