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The World Historical Year 2020: The Scourge
BlogWhile Trump and his cabal of misinforming hacks were proclaiming that COVID would “just go away” or it was “well under control,” the virus began boring through the communities of New York City in mid-February. By March 6th my new employer had sent us all home to work from home until further notice.
In the weeks leading up to the permanent work-from-home order, my colleague had emphasized that she did not believe the statistics presented by the Chinese government were trustworthy. She urged us to stock up on basic items at home. We did: snacks, food, frozen goods, toilet paper, etc. Her tip off was about to become vital. In early March, Lauren (the 10th), and then I (the 12th), fell ill with a strange respiratory illness characterized by cough, burning lungs, and a fever.
I say “strange respiratory illness” because we could not get medical care in this time as the city’s medical capabilities were being overwhelmed. According to the New York Times, there were 121 deaths on March 26, and 486 on April 1. New Yorkers were urged to stay at home unless their ability to breathe became compromised. Lauren and I fell shy of that mark so we complied so that the most vulnerable could receive care. By the time we were able to get a test (several months later) we were told that antibodies could not be confirmed. Were we not ill enough to produce antibodies? Were the tests ineffective. We do not know to this day. Nevertheless our symptoms were consistent with COVID-19.
During the first days of our onset, it was near-impossible to get telemedicine appointments due to demand. Doctors from other less-impacted areas were, generously, making themselves available to help in the effort. We wound up getting a consultation with a doctor from North Carolina who reported that he’d been on phone calls all day with individuals displaying the sickness’ symptoms — our symptoms.
As a lifelong asthmatic, I had learned the tricks of shallow breathing and had an albuterol inhaler handy. I never thought I’d be teaching my blessed-by-Californian-sunshine, baseball-playing, rough-and-tumble wife such miserable tricks of asthmatic existence, but such was her discomfort.
I’d spend miserable nervous hours wheezing while working (as a distraction) or while playing video games. Ironically the “plague conquers mankind” themed game The Last of Us felt both relatable and like an escape. In between it and work, Lauren and I would watch movies and take showers to keep our sanity and hygiene.
Since we had stockpiled gloves and masks we were able to forge a small, isolated existence inside our home. We would creep down the stairs in off-hours to tend to Byron, and then head back upstairs. Upon our re-entry we’d wash our gloves, wash our hands in our gloves, wash our masks (there was a shortage, so re-use was required), wash our faces, and then get back into pajamas. It was a hot, monotonous, claustrophobic, cabin-fevered existence. About four days in, our symptoms began a long, slow, process of easing.
My symptoms can’t be described easily, but I’d say that COVID mixed the hot air feeling of your first suck of a cigarette with asthma with inhaling a pound of ground up beer bottles and fiberglass. It burned, it punctured, and it felt hot deep inside. Accompanying this intense feeling was deep body lethargy, sweats, and cough.
As we suffered through this, the toxin in the White House said things like this:
“This is a very contagious virus. It’s incredible. But it’s something that we have tremendous control over.”
and then he tried to revise history and his utterly incompetent performance with this:
“I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic.”
Hearing such lies and misinformation as my beloved ailed made me white-hot furious. Lauren and I were compelled to persist on shelf-stable snacks and to stay indoors all hours of the day. “Tremendous control,” said Trump. If that were the case why couldn’t we get tests? Why was there a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE)? The man was and remains a lie factory and a fantasy reality shilling mountebank.
Not only did we feel abandoned, we felt actively undermined. As we hung up “STAY AWAY” signs on our door and took the stairs late at night to avoid interacting with others, it felt like we were doing all we could while a toddler-brained president prattled nonsensically about a fictitious reality.
While we were not able to go outside during our quarantine, darker realities were taking shape in the world we could not venture into.