AAs I write this, 8141 people have already died of Covid-19, and thousands more, hopefully only thousands, will die before a vaccine is developed and made available. I sit at home, here in New York, and watch the numbers rise, “in real time” or as “real” as time can now be experienced: 8142, 8143, 8144. That’s probably my job. Sitting at home and looking at numbers. Nobody told me to do that. Nobody gave me instructions. City and state governments have only closed bars and restaurants, museums and galleries, concert halls and theaters, and expect this to be enough to keep me and eight million neighbors off the streets.
It is now said that a quarantine is imminent. It starts Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday, definitely Wednesday at 12 p.m., definitely Wednesday at 5 p.m. They say the army will move in to enforce the quarantine and / or disinfect infected areas and / or set up test sites and field hospitals and / or deliver our organic vegetables to your doorstep like the bike couriers from Amazon or Whole Foods, just that their bikes are tanks.
Nobody knows who to listen to
What else? The subway and buses are said to never be suspended because they are used by hospital workers. Then: The use of the subway and buses will be limited to hospital employees. And what are they supposed to do? Maybe just live in the hospitals, like the patients they inevitably become?
In case all of this wasn’t clear enough, let me try again: there is no clarity at all. Nobody in New York knows who to listen to, we only know who to not listen to: Trump. But we’re still not sure if not listening to Trump also means we shouldn’t listen to his deputies. Nobody knew the two most present in the news a week ago: the sleazy and legally savvy Alex Azar, apparently our Minister of Health and Labor, used to be a pharmaceutical manager and pharmaceutical lobbyist. And our medical inspector, Vice Admiral Jerome Adams, apparently former Indiana health commissioner under Mike Pence when the current vice president was governor of Indiana, looks like a cheap fitness trainer on a sinking cruise ship.
The two performers on this reality show that I like the most are Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the Federal Office for Infectious Diseases, who looks and sounds like Don DeLillo (“The worst possible scenario is either you do nothing or your containment measures are unsuccessful”), and Dr. Robert Redfield, Head of Disease Control, who looks honest with an Abe Lincoln beard. These are the people who speak to me from my screens, I try not to argue. I live alone and have no pets, not even a bat or pangolin. These people are my only company.
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