Plague Year New York City 2020

By T.Remington

When I wrote and published these essays starting right before and during the first months of the pandemic shut down in New York City I suspected that we weren't going back to anything we'd come to accept as "normal" but I sure did not expect what we wound up with. From the vantage point of three years later it's interesting to see what I got right and what I was way off base about. And even more interesting (appalling?) to note that even the experts weren't exactly on top of things throughout the run of the pandemic. Did we learn anything? Take a look around and get back to me.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Remington Write
• Release date: Oct 31, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223472643

Book preview

Call Me Cassandra, And Then Ignore Me

Originally published February 19, 2020

Spoiler alert: I don’t think we’re going to make it. As in we, the human race. Every age has been sure that this is it, The End. We were pretty sure about it during the Black Death, arguably with good reason, and then again for decades after we started playing around with nuclear weapons.

It’s hard to say exactly when we’ll end or how, but we will end. It’s just that over the past couple of decades, our time seems to be running out more quickly than anticipated. In spite of our vaunted intelligence and ability to plan for the future we are shockingly short-sighted while our rate of self-destruction has accelerated.

And let’s be clear about one thing. The planet is going to be fine. This massive old girl is simply going to give herself a good, hard shake to dislodge us and what’s left is going to rebound until it’s their time to go.

As these things are generally measured, we haven’t managed a particularly long run of it, but what we’ve come up with in our measly ten thousand years or so is staggering both in its stupidity and its brilliance (plastic comes to mind on both counts). When you think about it, the mystery is less how much longer we can hang on than how the hell have we managed to get this far?

With our sophisticated technology and by simply paying attention we know which areas to avoid when rebuilding after an earthquake. Yet in every quake-prone region we resolutely rebuild right where we know the next quake is going to take us out.

We wade back into flood zones with shovels, prayers, and gutsy determination to reclaim what’s ours only to lose it all over again in the next round of flooding. And still lobby our representatives to keep flood insurance affordable. That’s starting to look a little iffy, however, as anyone trying to get flood insurance in Florida is finding out.

All that, though, that’s kid’s stuff. We have a global climate crisis to contend with now and about all we can manage is to argue and build electric cars (because this world definitely needs more cars). What do we think is going to happen to the UK as well as most of Europe should the gulf stream collapses due to all that fresh runoff from melting Greenland and the Arctic circle? Africans and South Americans are not going to be happy about that refugee situation although there’s certainly some cosmic justice to the scenario.

We’re greedy and driven by fear. We have the attention spans of gnats. We get mad and we get even. We are eating up the only place where we can live and what’s coming is not going to be what we expect or are prepared for.

My money’s on a Virus. Something we have no immunity against that is going to tear across continents like a wildfire. We’ve had some near misses over the past decades or so – SARS anyone? – but what’s coming is going to make SARS look like a kid at chess camp sitting down to play Deep Blue, IBM’s master chess computer. And here’s the kicker, we already have controls and protocols in place to counter this bug.

But how do you get people to comply with simple health guidelines? One look at what happened a hundred years ago when the influenza pandemic raged through the world should be sobering.

I’m hearing about something going on in Wuhan, China now. Have you read anything about it? It sounds like it could get legs under it. We aren’t ready for that, are we?

And, yet, how can you not love us? We keep surprising ourselves with the most sublime and astonishing things. Mega stupid obscenely rich men like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett almost work harder to give their money away than they did to amass it – for all the good that does.

We can sit in our cars and float to the glories of Schubert or Hovhannes. We are able to send poetry to the other side of the planet. We save up money to build schools for impoverished girls in far-away countries. We are Vermeer, Tubman, Sagan (Carl, not Bob), Wilde, Szymborska, Lennon, Pynchon, Marx, Streep, Disraeli, Morrison, Baez, Curie, Žižek, King, Monroe, Munro, Wallace, Franklin (Aretha and Ben), and The Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

Arguably better than all that, however, watch what happens when someone is crying quietly on the subway. See how that girl standing nearby slips her a tissue without a word or a look? Or go and stand near the gateway of a park where a determined and not very bright Canada goose keeps trying to make a break for it and watch how every single person passing will pause to shoo that goose back into the park.

I’m talking everyone from the ladies with the copies of the Watch Tower, young mothers pushing strollers, even yammering packs of teenagers...everyone stops what they’re doing to make sure that dumb goose doesn’t get run over.

See what I mean? We are nuts. No sense of priorities. We give to charities that rob us blind and walk right past someone sleeping on the sidewalk in the rain. We, most of us, genuinely believe that we are good people and - for the most part - we are. The problem is that we remain hungry, scared, dangerous animals with no natural predators and very little common sense.

It won’t happen to me. It’s not going to happen here. Not in our lifetimes. Don’t worry. Be happy. Fill up the tank and let’s hit the road.

Think anyone will miss us? Low odds.

How Worried Should We Be?

Originally published March 13, 2020, two days before the city got shut down

According to editors at The Paper of Record (remember them, they’re the ones who pushed the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2004 and are now insisting that the cognitively impaired older gentleman with wandering hands is the safe, electable candidate...yeah, them) we now have 154 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New York City.

Time to cue the freak-out? Meh, not really. For the most part, I’m seeing people take this in stride. Come on, we’ve been at red alert in this city since that beautiful Tuesday morning in September 2001. You’re going to have do better than that to keep us off the streets. True, it is easier to get a seat on the subway now and that’s a plus.

When we got to Trader Joe’s earlier this afternoon the line outside the store went to the corner and around the block but that’s usually true for any given Friday late afternoon.

The New York Post, that bastion of journalistic excellence, posted some photos on Monday of deserted subway platforms and stations at Times Square supposedly taken in the middle of the afternoon. Chilling to see. But puzzling since I was at that station on Monday and it was not deserted. It wasn’t the usual pandemonium but there were still plenty of people shoving to get onto trains. I question the time at which these photos were taken. Keep in mind that the Post is owned by Rupert Murdoch (enough said).

Now I’m not running around licking subway seats or anything like that. In fact, I’ve taken to wearing gloves when I go out. That’s mostly so I won’t be touching my face which I can’t seem to manage otherwise. I’m washing my hands thoroughly at every opportunity and availing myself of any public hand-sanitizers since all the stores are sold out.

And, yes, I was relieved when one of my favorite musicians, Rachelle Garniez, decided to postpone her upcoming CD release concert at Dixon Place this coming Sunday evening.

It was also probably a wise move to close down Broadway shows as well as the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We’re very sorry, tourists, but please feel free to blow as much money as possible in other ways while you’re here. May I suggest a relaxing afternoon in Central Park followed by outdoor dining at any one of the numerous cafes and restaurants up and down Broadway, Amsterdam, and Columbus Avenues.

Hey, I’m guessing hotel rates may be pretty sweet right now as well.

Ok...so, yes, some people are getting a little jumpy around here. I stopped in at my local grocery store on my way home tonight and walked right back out. The lines are to the back of the store. I don’t need anything that badly. Especially since my partner in life and art, AleXander, took care of getting toilet paper and good seltzer earlier. Go AleXander!

I’m of the age now that several of my closer friends are cancer survivors and have compromised immune systems. We’ve got them covered with deliveries to their door of groceries and other necessities.

This Virus is not to be taken lightly and I don’t. I get the sense that a lot of the people I’m walking past or sitting next to in the city are shrugging this off and I’m glad I don’t live with them (I’m talking to the guy with his finger up his nose waiting for the 1 train at 72nd Street). If this thing gets traction we are in for a beating and I’ve had enough of those in this go round.

But when I get up to pee at 3 am and can’t get back to sleep, curiously enough, it’s not thoughts of the zombie apocalypse keeping me awake. No. I’m much more focused on finding something besides this tiresome Virus to write about tomorrow.

Priorities, my friends, priorities.