Coronavirus Dispatch NYC #3
Things are getting broken
We’re ready. The cupboards are so full that opening one catapulted an unwary bottle of soy sauce out to smash AleXander’s prized salt shaker.
It’s not a family heirloom or anything. But he’s had it for decades and when he dashed into the kitchen at my shriek…well, it was a sad moment.
Required Statistical Update
The latest bad news (as of March 29, 2020) has 30,000 confirmed cases in the city with 672 deaths so far, 222 in a 24-hour period just before the weekend. The usual background white noise of the city has lessened to where the constant sirens stand out all the more.
Closer to home, I have several friends who have either tested positive or who are really sick and can’t be tested because they’re not yet “experiencing respiratory distress”. That’s right, while countries like South Korea mobilized early to massively test and track the movement of the virus and thus contain it more successfully, in The Greatest Nation on Earth we can’t even get tested until we’re ready for a ventilator….that may or may not be available.
These are thoughts best shut right TF down at 3 am.
Speaking of 3 am. Late Thursday night I was rising from and falling into dreams about helicopters hovering outside. When I got up at 7 am to write there was, in fact, one very loud helicopter hovering outside. It never occurred to me to check the news because I’ve gotten used to this kind of thing not making it to the level of being reported. I just got to work.
Later I read about the deliberately set fires on three subway platforms and a fourth at street level of another station. The worst fire was at “my” station where an MTA motorman died evacuating passengers from his burning train and 17 others were injured.
My Worst Fear
Thousands of undiagnosed cases wandering about infecting others. Severe shortage of ventilators and even hospital beds in the city which may force doctors to choose who lives and who dies. That suspicious tickle in my throat and heaviness in my breathing at bedtime (that vanishes each morning). The inability to find a bottle of Lysol.
Those are bad. Here’s worse.
We lose electricity and our neighbors turn into something that makes the guys in Mad Max look quaint. We lose access to the outside world, the police retreat and we’re left on our own in a post-apocalyptic shit show where, face it, us old folks won’t last long (and, yes, I did think about buying a gun and, no, I didn’t do it).
Am I overreacting? Maybe. Those fires tell me I may not be, though.
On one of our last forays out to buy provisions for ourselves, we passed multiple gatherings of people who weren’t in any way paying attention to the circling police vans telling people to stand six feet apart. More than once someone shouted at us from a stoop or street corner and everyone laughed. Ok, right, this is not the first or only time this has happened but now it’s scarier.
We’ll be having our groceries delivered from now on and limiting our time outdoors to walks over to Central Park. Together.
Chess, Infinite Jest, Movies, Sex, and Lots of Naps
Two weeks into our current shut-down and we’ve established our new way of life. AleXander is teaching me how to play chess and tomorrow we’re starting the world’s smallest book club reading “Infinite Jest”. Wish us luck (full disclosure: we’ve both read it once before so we know what we’re in for).
As non-monogamous people, we’ve had to adjust our sex lives accordingly.
That’s actually working out quite well (thanks for asking).
AleXander is using this opportunity to tackle the boxes of mail art that he dutifully lugged from Vermont when he first moved back to the city and then brought along when he came to live with me in Harlem.
I’m much less motivated. It’s not that there aren’t any number of things I could be doing to better myself (really learning Italian comes to mind), but I just don’t have it in me. I manage to keep up my daily writing, publishing, promoting schedule and make the bed after each nap. We take turns on kitchen duty, one cooking and the other cleaning up. Laundry and other household chores happen on a regular basis.
A friend taking online courses at Johns Hopkins has hired me to edit her assignments which is a welcome opportunity to rebuild old muscles and earn a bit of scratch to put away.
Beyond that, I’m not to be relied upon.
Two Trillion Ways to Save Capitalism
About a month ago, whenever any bloody socialist said the words Medicare For All, a chorus of naysayers would erupt in chants of “How Are You Going to Pay for It?”.
Curious that no one, not Pete or Joe or Amy or even good old Tom, is asking that about the massive aid package that just got passed to save what really matters in this country: Wall Street. The usual suspects, lobbyists at the forefront, are shoving their way to the front of the line to slurp up billions to “save” their industries. Everyone remembers how well that worked out in 2008 and 2009, right?
While I’m reading that unemployment benefits are to be extended and even expanded on to increase the amount of money us peasants can spend on consumer goods (like that’s going to happen in a shut-down), it appears New York State hasn’t gotten on board with that. I’m down to a month’s benefits and then, who knows?
Well, there will be those handy little one-time checks mailed out in three weeks. Maybe.
But isn’t it reassuring to see that The Home of the Free and The Land of the Brave has its priorities straight? What has always come first in this country is money. Whoever puts their energy and talent into keeping the money flowing to the 0.1% will be rewarded richly. The rest of us can go fight over ventilators and toilet paper.
We Are All We Have
Clearly we’re not going to be able to rely upon our, ahem, government to step up in this crisis and take charge. If we’re lucky, we’ll have governors and local politicians (who have friends and family either already sick or at risk) ready to cobble together some kind of response.
Our best hope is to take every precaution, wash our groceries and our hands, reach out to our friends again today, stay healthy and be ready for nothing to look like it did on New Year’s Day 2020.
Have something to eat and call someone. Then take a nap.
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