Yes to Masks. No to Parties. 2021 Will Be a Lot Like 2020
Original article from WIRED , 2020
Sorry, folks: Thanks to Covid, next year won’t be much more fun than this one, at least until enough vaccines arrive..
The morning of November 11, 1918, dawned cool and drizzly in France. It wasn’t quiet, though. The Armistice that stopped what should have been the War to End All Wars had been signed before the sun came up, cementing an agreement that the guns on both sides would fall quiet in six hours: with symbolic richness, on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. The Allied and German armies cabled their troops at the front to be ready to observe the cease-fire—but they also told them to keep fighting to the end.
And at 10:59 am, Henry Nicholas Gunther of Baltimore—once a supply sergeant, recently busted back to private—charged alone toward a German emplacement, leveling a rifle. The troops behind the machine gun reportedly waved him back, yelling that the war was over. When he kept coming, shooting as he ran, they fired on him. Seconds later, as the silence spread, they climbed out of the gun nest, carried his body back to his company, and shook hands. He was the last American, and possibly the last combatant, to die in World War I.
It is almost certain that those soldiers, the last men killed from each of their countries, knew that the end of the war was within reach. They died regardless, out of respect for what they thought was their duty, or out of inattention, or belief.
After a year of a different kind of war, it is difficult not to read their deaths as a cautionary tale. Vaccines have arrived. There is confidence the pandemic can be ended. But for now we have to fight as though the battle continues. We’re likely to be covering our faces and staying home for months yet, and there probably won’t be an Armistice parade where we all throw our masks in the air.