In many ways COVID19 was as bad as a pandemic could get without being really bad. It doesn’t have the virulence of measles combined with the mortality of bubonic plague. This, however, makes it all the more galling that Donald Trump and his cadre of sycophants failed to guide the nation through these straits effectively.

Unlike 9/11, which literally exploded across the nation, we knew this was coming with weeks of lead time and Trump’s team failed to act. Here’s the story of how we got the signals of the threats ahead, how Lauren and I experienced it, and how Trump spread disinformation ahead of it.

Prelude to a Season of Death

In February of 2020, I was due to start a new job. Ahead of it, and knowing that new work tends to dominate life for a little while, Lauren and I planned to take a trip to the beautiful Netherlands. I had long hoped to share the wonders of the Mauritshuis, Zuid Holland, and Amsterdam with her. While we were there, though, the European media, forever ahead of US media in terms of international reporting, was running stories about a highly infectious illness sweeping the Wuhan province of China.

While 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 6^th 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 10^th), and then I (the 12^th), 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.

Watching the Graphs

While Lauren and I spent early March ailing from a mysterious respiratory illness, the rest of the city sat transfixed by the growing spike in COVID-19 infections — watching the statistics that we were part of.

By late-March, it was clear that something massive was afoot. The soundscape was profoundly altered. Previously, we had heard the children of PS75 coming and (raucously) going at the beginning and end of school days. We were (grudgingly) familiar with the horn leanings-on as impatient commuters tried to cross this most famous of islands along 96^th street. By the end of our acute phase, the soundscape was muffled and still like during a snowstorm — save for the intermittent punctuating screams of ambulances.

New York’s trusted sources of information were Dr. Fauci and Governor Cuomo. The ridiculous clowns of nonsense and non-reality that were ignored bore the surname Trump or carried water for that odious patriarch of perfidy. At that time, we had no certainty whether the rising slope would ever plateau, or if it would continue growing until it overwhelmed the health care systems of the city, if not the entire state, if not the country.

March to April: Our Fortunate Recovery, Social Changes, and…Groceries

After our acute phase had finished, Lauren and I remained quarantined in our apartment for 14 long days. We hung a sign on our door with a COVID-19 spiked ball illustration as a warning to neighbors and food delivery services.

We were left alone.

During our convalescence from mid-March through mid-April 2020, our imaginations feasted on the grim details that were emerging. Refrigerated trucks were brought to hospitals in Brooklyn and Queens to account for the exploding number of deaths.¹ Governor Cuomo warned of demand outstripping supply of ventilators.². Field hospital tents were pitched in Central Park to create more-spaced triage capabilities for the Upper East Side’s hospitals.

My colleagues had generations of co-congregants of certain generations vanish at church and temple . Lauren had friends whose parents entered hospitals where they were to stay weeks. During early-to-mid April we remained sequestered in our home with the brief errands recounted in the previous installment. It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that we didn’t leave home (outside of A-to-B trips for necessities) until the last of April, 2020.

And when we emerged from our month of sickness, quarantine, and extreme caution, we found death everywhere. Here’s one death that shows how the magnificent tapestry of New York City is held together by knots of single individuals.

His name was “Steve the Bookman.”

Quoth the New York Times, the kids of today are claiming that the dark under-eye circles are “cool.” This lead me to recall “Billy Madison” where the incontinent field trip farm woman proclaims:

If peeing your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis.

Recent posts striking a note of hope were greatly encouraged by the fact that I made plans, out, with someone to whom I’m not married, for the first time in a year. We were able to make these plans because New York’s COVID protocols are now tolerating indoor dining for reduced guest populations which register in a contact tracing regime. My friend Chris suggested that he get a break from our shutdown routines, and he made a reservation for a Pappy van Winkle bourbon tasting flight at Fraunces Tavern, the oldest bar in the city. I headed down to Wall Street last Friday night where we met up.

Note: Title inspired by famous computer science paper by Edsger Dijkstra: “goto Considered Harmful.”

Recently, Mike sent along news about a woman in Galveston, Texas who refused to wear a mask when she entered a local Bank of America. The body-cam footage from the officers suggests that both the management of the bank and the police explained to her how Governor Abbot’s abnegation of state-directed mask-wearing policy still allows businesses to enforce whatever behavior they expect on their premises. She woman flips out. She calls the other customers “sheep.” She seems to expect a revolution to protect her right to flout the standards of behavior expected by a private business under legal directive.

While, philosophically, I grant that a Governor-directed mandate should trigger alarm bells of executive overreach (and did in 2020), I think this interaction demonstrates why Gov. Abbot should not have rescinded the order yet. Lacking a uniform source of appeal (e.g. statute, executive order), variance in custom requires per-interaction negotiation. This negotiation puts undue additional pressure on local peace officers and business owners and serves as coercive pressure on proprietors.

HOT UPDATE: Per Mike, apparently this woman pulled the same stunt at another business.

I’m glad to see that the vaccine roll-out has finally touched our lives here. Owing to my age and asthmatic status, I was able to get in right before the general 30+ free-for-all and got my first “Fauci Ouchie” today.

After a year of hiding and watching the gross incompetence of Donald J. Trump’s administration lead to so much unneeded death and suffering, the vaccine delivery promise of candidate Joe Biden and the promise fulfillment of President Biden has finally reached my household’s arms. Both Lauren and I got our second Pfizer vaccine on the 29^th.

It was non-optimal timing that this should happen on the day after our move, but that prompted a lot of the preparation that lead to our easy move and our making sure that we had an ailing bed ready upon move-in.

This past Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control announced, unexpectedly, that fully-vaccinated individuals could intermix freely without a mask without presenting a hazard to themselves of the community. By coincidence, that very morning Lauren and I had crossed our two-week waiting period and had crossed into the realm of fully-vaccinated status. To put things mildly, it was a time for jubilation.

For those of us who survived the long plague year in the city hardest-hit by the virus, it was a strange sort of announcement. Could we actually go back out, without our hot breaths being re-routed back up our nostrils? That first afternoon that we dared it. We left the apartment and took Byron to the 87^th street dog run. The air was clear and warm. It smelled incredible. Pollen and warm sunshine mixed in a delightful way reminding us of what we had lived without for so long: the dust of the dog park, the smell of a stranger dog greeting me, the smell of freshly-mown grass. The smells of New York’s electric and vibrant summer were returned to us after a year-long absence.

At the run, many who had not yet reached full vaccination or were still wary were still masked. After the initial elation and a fun playtime in the run, we headed back to our building, masked up (per building rules), and came back home. That evening we ate out, maskless, indoors, and it was again a novelty. But over the next several hours Lauren and I found ourselves wearing masks again, perhaps out of custom, and perhaps out of laziness as we drifted in and out of establishments requiring their usage. Their wear had become habit and I was surprised to find that I couldn’t just stop.

Noticing this phenomenon, and reading others’ experience of it, suggested that there might be two groups for whom giving up mask wearing might be a little less attractive to cease doing:

• those whose appearance is outside the mean and occasions unsought scrutiny
• the pandemic “shell-shocked” for whom the mask is a psychological support in uncertain times

Top Image: Flowers in the shanty at Chu-Ros Thai

Let me be clear: there was nothing good about COVID. There will be nothing that I miss about the COVID era. But in its misery, there were little spots of sunlight that broke through dour clouds, little bits of kindness, consideration, and beauty that dappled the gray life in this time.

One of those things I’d like to remember were the restaurant shanties and their rich decor. Read on to see more pics of what they look like.

The pandemic has challenged all of us, and especially your truly, in the department of maintaining equanimity, magnanimity, and loving-kindness for my fellow humans. Recently, I’ve been wrestling with anger toward the “vaccine-hesitant” and thought I’d write about it.

Recently, I discovered a Reddit community called /r/HermanCainAward. A “Herman Cain Award” is named after the Trump-supporting businessman Herman Cain who, shortly after attending a Trump rally in 2020, contracted COVID-19, and then died of it.