Viral load: thoughts from a pandemic island

In the Edgar Allan Poe story The Masque of the Red Death, Prince Prospero and a thousand noble friends escape a plague by sealing themselves in an abbey. In their refuge, they are indifferent to the cares and preoccupations of the outside world and instead hold a masquerade ball, celebrating the wisdom of their retreat and their assured safety from the horrors of the pandemic.

For some time now, this has been what it has felt like to be Tasmanian in the time of coronavirus. One infected visitor a few months ago was enough to put half of the state into lockdown, but the global tsunami of “spicy flu” has been, for our sleepy shores, mostly a mere ripple. Not for us are the shell-shocked faces of Melburnians trying to remember “whether that happened in lockdown five or six”.

A colleague once told me that we owed it to ourselves and to the rest of the world to live the life that many others could only dream of. A friend on the mainland, trapped in isolation, conversely stated, “I see all of your photos. I love you and I hate you.”

The clock, of course, has always been ticking. Experts told us a hundred times that a new normal was the only way forward, and that we needed to learn to live with coronavirus (which had the unfortunate side-effect of sounding like the disease was something that people died from only out of their own inattention).

“Open up, open up,” was the collective catch cry of thousands of social media posts and press conferences, calling to mind a parent coaxing a child to accept a proffered spoon, or the giant’s last words just before he swallows the young boy whole. We danced with abandon at the ball on our island, but it could not last.

It didn’t.

Now, I spend a lot of my time creating arbitrary laws for myself based on daily case numbers. Under 1,000, I tell myself, I’ll go to the shop instead of ordering my groceries to the door. Under 700, going out for lunch or dinner feels okay. Under 500, and perhaps larger crowds are manageable. There is no specific logic or science to any of these rules of course, especially as I jostle each day with the masked throng of students at the school where I teach. But these things aren’t science, they are attempts at controlling the uncontrollable.

Ultimately, the only thing to do in a pandemic is whatever allows you to sleep at night.

As we face coronavirus as part of our daily lives, it seems that every week our language and vocabulary changes. Anyone looking at my web browser’s search history might think that I was some kind of military mechanic or designing a new series of Thunderbirds: N95, KN95 KF94, P2. And my obsession with RATs has reached almost Lovecraftian levels.

The creative mind living in this kind of constantly shifting landscape of dread and uncertainty is an interesting beast. On some days it is desperate for distraction and on other days it simply cries out to engage. Often, I feel that there is nothing of value worth saying about Covid-19 that has not already been said, and in the next instant it can feel like the only thing worth talking about at all. When you live in history, it is folly not to try and capture each profound gasp of time, and creating art about the worst that happens to us is a kind of promise: it reminds us that what we see now will one day be the past. Our histories require our contemplation and preservation entirely because they are not forever. We must move forward in hope, stenciling the shapes of our shadows in chalk outlines behind us. I was here.

In Poe’s tale, the guests of the prince are never safe. Soon enough, a new figure joins the party: Red Death. The secure walls of the abbey that were meant to keep them free from the plague finally become a prison as they realise that they are now trapped with the virus, not without it. They were foolish to ever believe that the disease was something that they could hide from, that there was a scenario or outcome that was possible – and even practical – in which it only affected people other than them. One by one, they fall.

Earlier, as our new year brought with it challenges that to the rest of the world were so much old news, I was careful. If I’m honest, I was scared. One of the few privileges I allowed myself was to run through the trails near my house and down into the deep, unfolding Cataract Gorge – a place that, despite its challenges, anti-social behaviours and tragedies, has never failed to feel like home to me. I crossed the suspension bridge, feeling its familiar tremulous bounce through my feet beneath me, thinking about the unsteadiness of life; thinking about the way the chaos and churning flotsam is always beneath us, waiting for the fall. I jostled from side to side as people approached from the other end, trying to avoid the harsh residue of their puffing mouths. I turned away. I looked down. I kept my hands away from the railings and tried to choose my steps carefully. Out here there were no masks required and a sharp wind blowing, but that did not mean that I felt safe.

At the end of the track, where the cars of the city glide over another bridge in almost-perfect silence, stood a man in his mid-20s, holding two shopping bags stuffed to the handles. As I passed him, he did the unthinkable: he smiled, a broad, outdoor smile that was all teeth; a pre-pandemic grin that was deep and sincere and unignorable.

Sometimes, when life feels like I am crushed under the viral load of all of this information – changing updates, rules and expectations, case number after case number, the graphs rising and falling like so many mountains on the horizon – I think about that man. I think about The Masque of the Red Death. It strikes me that we don’t really need to “learn to live with coronavirus”. We need to learn, again, to live with each other.

We fear our breath, but we must breathe; we fear our ambition but we must persist to write, and think, and love and create. I try to be aware of, but largely disregard, the specifics of waves and variants and superspreading events. We are defined by what we give our attention to, and I choose to give my attention to the things that sharpen rather than diminish my love of humanity: the people around me, the pursuit of something greater, art and song and nature and sport. We live in uncertain times, but I choose to believe that it will be okay. All that can be guaranteed now is that which is most simple: hope, a smile, human kindness, and an unshakeable belief that, whatever happens today, tomorrow we keep going.


Lyndon Riggall is a northern Tasmanian writer and English teacher at Launceston College and co-host, with Annie Warburton, of the Tamar Valley Writers’ Festival Podcast. His first picture book for children, Becoming Ellie, was published by Forty South in 2019. He can be found at www.lyndonriggall.com.

forthcoming events