Ray Duckler’s front-page story on Tuesday (“No mask, no service”) had a quote from Jennifer Reno that struck home for me. She said: “There’s an underlying current between anger and sadness. It’s just everywhere.” She was trying to get back to Canada and couldn’t do it now because of travel restrictions. I think many of us may feel similarly “stuck” between anger and sadness. If the last 3½ years have really made us “great again,” I think I’d prefer an alternative path.

The pandemic rages on here when many other countries have managed it and are in or near recovery. Here lots of people have lost jobs. No one knows whether schools can safely open. Small businesses that we all have valued are now closed. The long-term public health and economic impacts and uncertainties of the pandemic remain to be shaped and understood, and yet we don’t seem to be able to agree to basic and fundamental terms on what is currently happening.

COVID has almost simultaneously been described as a Chinese virus, a failure of the World Health Organization, and a Democratic “hoax” by leadership. How can all three be true?

Acknowledging that “science” is in general dispute these days as “unreliable,” let’s try math? Roughly 140,000 people have died so far. Total deaths from the Nazi bombing blitz in England (1941-45), American casualties in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and the 9/11 attacks in New York City amount to under 129,000 total deaths (although we are not finished counting in Afghanistan). We have all honored these casualties and some of us have been directly impacted by them. They are viewed by most as “heroic.” Why are 140,000 deaths (and still counting) in America still flying “under the radar” for many? The national priority seems to be back to “business as usual.”

Is “no mask” a sign of constitutional freedom, courage, dangerous misunderstanding, or a basic lack of care and concern for other than yourself? It’s not a real surprise that anger and sadness comprise, if not occupy, the mental, physical, and emotional landscape for many. I, for one, hope and pray much “greater” days may return.

(Cleve Kapala lives in Contoocook.)