This has been a very strange week for me. It was spring break, so the small town where my university is located was pretty much deserted. With reduced obligations, I had scheduled some minor surgery for Monday. As anxiety about COVID-19 ramped up, I was wondering how fraught my visit to the surgery center might be. The last time I saw my dentist, he noticed that my uvula seemed unusually large. My GP diagnosed me as having a lesion on my uvula, and recommended me to a surgeon to have it removed. And so it was on Monday. I’ve been on pain medication since Monday, and healing has been proceeding, but that whole process has lent an extra veneer of surrealism to this week’s events.
We all know what’s happened since. My university (and all the others except Liberty University) have ceased face-to-face classes, and now I have a week to learn on-line teaching techniques. Despite spring break’s end, students will not be coming back, and the place still resembles a ghost town. Every type of meeting, concert or social event has been canceled or postponed. Long lagging behind the New Yorks and Los Angeleses of the world, toilet paper has finally disappeared from the shelves of the local supermarket. People are not going out, and when they do, they are maintaining proper distances. It’s eery. It’s as if we’re all waiting for something to happen, and, of course, we are.
The head of state shambled out in front of cameras several times to spew mixtures of lies and incoherence, finally concluding in the declaration of a national state of emergency, now with corporate sponsors. While legitimate medical and health authorities repeat responsible messages to keep us safe from a coronavirus epidemic, the noise coming out of the White House only causes confusion. Some people don’t know what to believe, and others have decided to make their own reality. Yesterday, my aunt, who is sadly vulnerable to Fox and other right-wing propaganda, sent my sister and I (and other family members) a graphic which I will not duplicate here, but which stated the following:
2002: West Nile virus will kill us all.
2004: SARS will kill us all.
2005: Bird flu will kill us all.
2009: Swine flu will kill us all.
2014: Ebola will kill us all.
2016: Zika will kill us all.
Wake up America! Same fear campaign, different year.
I’m a Ph. D. chemist, and my sister works in the microbiology lab at Johns Hopkins Hospital. Neither of us took this lying down. My sister in particular pointed out that my aunt (in her 70s) and her husband (in his 80s) are among the most vulnerable to this virus. However, in my bubble, it never occurred to me that there would be deniers launching this sort of a campaign.
We’re approaching Passover, as well as Easter. I’m not Jewish, but the mood I feel right now seems more in tune with Passover. We are quietly waiting, holding our breath, doing all the things we’ve been told to do to avoid doom, and hoping the Angel of Death passes by our particular household. Unlike Moses, we don’t know precisely when the storm will break (partly because we have no data on how many people are infected because, well, Trump). We have to let the storm break and try to stay out of the more violent currents.
Those are my thoughts for tonight. Next week, maybe we’ll have a better idea of how the epidemic will be shaping up.
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