Volume 3, Issue 9: Less Than You Think
"Your mind's a machine, it's deadly and dull. It's never been still, and its will has never been free."
We’re running your Quarantine World stories every Wednesday. Here are two particularly good ones, about an impromptu quarantine wedding and the perils of running a small business right now, if you need points of reference. Send them to me at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.
This week, for my New York column, I tried to answer one basic question: Why was their more optimism last week about the possibility of sports returning in 2020 than there had been any other week since everything began to shut down March 11? ESPN’s Jeff Passan said it was a matter of “when and how, not if” baseball would return, some NBA players were returning to their practice facilities and the president of the University of Iowa said sports practices would be back on as of June 1 and that “we’re ever so hopeful that this virus will be behind us at that point.”
That all seemed, oh, a bit soon to me, so I dug in to find out what was leading to all this positivity. Did they know something I didn’t? Had they found a biodome to play in? Had they stumbled upon a canyon full of tests? Did Dr. James Andrews whip up a cure?
No. The reason there was “growing optimism?” The states. “Over the past two weeks, as states have begun to plan their reopenings, nearly everyone along the decision-making continuum has grown increasingly optimistic that there will be baseball this year … Arizona, Georgia, Florida, Texas, Colorado and Minnesota are among the states slated to have stay-at-home restrictions lifted. That means more than a quarter of MLB teams could theoretically host games without fans right now.”
There had been no breakthrough. Leagues were optimistic not because the situation with the coronavirus had somehow changed, but because governors of certain states have decided they are ready to start lifting restrictions on their states, thus giving the leagues an opening for places to play. The optimism didn’t come from findings from medical experts. It came, essentially, from Brian Kemp.
Which brings us here to Georgia.
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If there are medical experts who believe it is a smart decision for the state of Georgia to end its shelter-in-place, as it has in the last week, they are talking to Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and literally no one else. Kemp’s decision has left local businesses scrambling about whether or not they should open and likely doomed either way — as a terrific Amanda Mull piece in The Atlantic (one that threw people off with a needlessly provocative headline that nevertheless was not necessarily untrue) quoted the owner of The Globe here in Athens, “We can’t figure out a way to make the numbers work to sustain business and pay rent and pay everybody to go back and risk their lives. If we tried to open on Monday, we’d be closed in two weeks, probably for good and with more debt on our hands”— but more than anything, anecdotally, it has led to a sense around here that that’s enough of this shit already. There are people out everywhere. Local businesses that have opened are putting social distancing protocols in place, and while certainly nothing is even remotely approaching “normal,” it’s undeniable that people are gathering and flouting the standard protocols of this pandemic in a way they weren’t before Kemp’s announcement. Many of the students have come back to campus — their parents must have gotten sick of them three weeks in and hey, I get it — and you can hear large parties going on nearly every night. The parking lot at the Lowe’s is more packed than I’ve ever seen it, traffic patterns have re-emerged and I’ve noticed people looking at me when I’m wearing my mask in public like they’re irritated by it, like it has reminded them of something they’d been trying to forget. Athens’ (excellent) mayor Kelly Girtz told Mull, “The trouble with [Kemp’s] ad hoc orders is that they sort of gin up a generalized interest in commercial or business activity,” leading to, as Mull puts it, “when people hear on the news that businesses are open, many will assume that it’s safe to patronize them, and may miss more nuanced information about ongoing safety concerns.” I don’t know if the people out are missing nuanced information or just ignoring it, but people are out. They are done with this shit.
And look: I understand. I’m tired of having to stay home too. I want life to return to the way it’s supposed to be just as much as everybody else does. (It is difficult to overstate how much I want to watch a baseball game right now.) I want my friends and family and colleagues get back to work. I want this over. Who doesn’t want this over? This sucks!
But what Kemp’s order—along with similar, if not as rash and hurried, orders in Colorado and Texas and Maine and other states—did, according to the people who actually chart this stuff, was unnaturally speed up the process. It fed into that impatience and frustration that I, you and everyone else has: When the hell is this going to be over? It gave the illusion of control to a situation where we have none. This has been going on for seven weeks now. People do not need much of a push to get the hell out of their houses. Reopening before the experts believe you should gives us all an official reason to do what we desperately want to anyway. If the government says I don’t have to do what I already don’t want to do and am in fact incredibly sick of doing, why in the world am I doing it? So people go out.
It’s easy to see why they would. It’s not scary right now. The hospitals are not overwhelmed (thanks in large part to Athens’ local leadership taking this more seriously than the rest of the state, earlier than the rest of the state), the weather is gorgeous, people are in good moods: I’ve never been waved at during my runs more heartily and cheerfully than I am right now. We also have not been hit hard the way that, say, New York City, or New Orleans did; fair to say ain’t nobody there arguing that their bowling alleys should be open. People are understandably happy to be out of the house.
The question is what happens in three weeks. The question is what happens if the experts are right—if this is too early, and we’ll have another spike in three weeks, and there will be untold suffering and we’ll just have to shut everything down again anyway. “If you get this wrong, many more people will die. It’s as simple as that,” an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins told the Times. And there has been so much death already.
I’m worried. My mother was an emergency room nurse for 30-plus years. She retired five years ago, but she has already said that if there is a spike and hospitals here get overwhelmed, she will consider it her ethical obligation to volunteer. My mother is of an [REDACTED TO THE PUBLIC] age that is considered particularly susceptible to the virus. Suffice it to say, as much as I admire her professional stance on this, I’m not particularly eager to see her on the front lines, and neither are her grandchildren, or her husband. I’m worried about this town I have lived in for nearly seven years now and have grown to very deeply love. This is my home, this beautiful little town, and I’m worried that this is too soon, and we’re all going to have to go back into lockdown in a month, and that next thing you know there is no school in September and no football, and no movies, and no concerts, and no life. I am worried that this rashness is just going to make this last longer.
But I do not know. And that is important to remember here … me most of all. We are all flying blind. Experts are shifting their forecasts and models by the day. New information arises; old information becomes obsolete. The World Health Organization is now saying that Sweden, which has had no lockdowns at all, was in fact doing it right. Nobody knows anything. We still don’t even understand what this virus even does! It is possible that Kemp’s order serves merely as a guideline whose vagueness actually threads the needle; it starts the ball rolling toward normalcy while private citizens and businesses observe social distancing and cleaning protocols enough that it keeps the curve flattened and hospitals not overrun. Because of the lack of federal leadership, each state is conducting its own experiment on how to deal with this. Maybe this is the right one? It doesn’t seem like the right one to me, but I am not a medical expert either, and it sure seems like it’s tough to get them on the same page anyway. I am not certain it is wrong, because I am not certain about anything, because no one should ever be so certain about anything. I believe Kemp has a tendency to be on the wrong side of history, and I also couldn’t help but notice that he has not, in fact, been seen riding around in his pickup truck rounding up illegals; he has not earned the benefit of the doubt in this or almost any other way. I don’t know he’s wrong. But I think he’s wrong. My editor David Wallace-Wells wrote an alarming piece just this morning arguing that he is very, very wrong; money quote:
“Over the past few months, [the possibility that this stretches into 2021 or even 2022] has often been described as a “second wave.” But such a wave would not be the result of disease mutation or a seasonality effect — the virus dying out in the summer, only to come roaring back during the fall and flu season. It would be because of human choices to gradually ease our way out of our bunkers and back into something more closely resembling “normal” life, though perhaps 95 percent of us have yet to even be exposed. It would be less like a second wave, in other words, than the breaking of a dam. All those people vulnerable to potential infection, and protected by quarantine measures, exposed by human choice. “That’s the risk we face here,” former FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said this week, “that this doesn’t really go away because we don’t get rid of this round. That the mitigation steps weren’t quite robust enough, as painful as they were, and we continue to have spread right into the fall.”
That’s definitely an argument that he’s wrong. (Also: Ugh.) This should not, however, be confused with hoping he is wrong. I hope he is right! I hope the University of Iowa president is right when he says the worst of this will be over by June. That strikes me as pretty much impossible, but again: I don’t know. One of the ugliest things that has happened in the last few weeks is that this once-in-100-years global catastrophe has, inevitably, turned into a partisan issue. If you think that maybe this is too early to be opening up, you’re against small businesses, you’re an elitist who doesn’t understand the importance of getting back to work, you’re just trying to promote your anti-Kemp, anti-Republican, anti-Trump agenda. Somehow, the idea of being worried about public health has turned into “Lockdown Culture.” (It is absolutely insane that one can sort of tell the political persuasion of a business owner in Georgia by whether or not they are opening their store right now. And you sort of can!) There is no “Lockdown Culture.” There is no one who likes this! No one! Everybody wants this over. You think this is how Gretchen Whitmer and Mike DeWine wanted to spend their springs? The question is whether opening now makes it less likely that this is over sooner, and, more urgently, whether it is going to kill more people.
It seems to me like it will. But I do not know. And that should not be confused with wanting this to fail. It is bizarre to be put in the position of being a defender of us all not leaving our homes, the very thing that’s making everyone so antsy and crazy and lost. Everyone is feeling their way around in the dark. The only people I distrust are the ones claiming certainty.
I hope that Kemp is right. I hope in a month that there hasn’t been a spike in cases, that we are over the worst of it, that we’re back to business, that we’ve got sports and life coming back, that we can pick up the pieces and get moving forward, that quickly. I hope this national nightmare ends sooner rather than later. I have my doubts. But of course I am rooting for him to be right.
In many ways, this crisis is a daily battle between hope and despair. It is the only aspect of this most of us can control. I am very worried about what happens next. But I am choosing hope over despair. I am going to enjoy the time with my family, and checking in on my friends, and appreciating that we are healthy and together. And look forward to coming out the other side. That is the best I can do. What other choice do any of us have? It’s the only fight we can make sure we do not lose. It is, so far, the only certainty I can find.
Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.
The Harmless Radio Show Practical Joke That Changed Baseball History, MLB.com. Thanks to my editor Matt Meyers for suggesting I make a larger piece out of this. (It was initially a small note in my 1983 look back.) It turned out to be an absolute blast to report and write. The story really is wild.
“The Last Dance” Has a Void at Its Center, The Washington Post. I’m enjoying the documentary too, but let’s not pretend it’s anything but a Michael Jordan-produced-and-controlled vanity project..
There Is Increasing Optimism That There Will Be Sports in 2020. Should There Be? New York. The last line of this piece is what inspired this whole newsletter.
This Year in Baseball History: 1991, MLB.com. The worst-to-first season!
What To Watch Instead: Black Widow, Vulture. The ongoing series. I still bet Florence Pugh is the best part of this, whenever we get to see it.
The Thirty: Every Team’s Biggest Rival Right Now, MLB.com. Hating a rival feels like sweet bliss right now.
PODCASTS
Grierson & Leitch, we looked back at the movie year of 1997, and also “Raising Arizona” and “Tucker and Dale Versus Evil”
Waitin' Since Last Saturday, no show this week
Seeing Red, no show this week, and perhaps no more shows ever. My co-host Bernie Miklasz was laid off by his radio station on Friday, part of dozens of cuts across the country involving Hubbard Radio. I’m not even sure we have the rights to do the show now; I certainly don’t have access to the feed. Anyway: Bernie’s the best. I hope we can figure out something.
LAUGH THAT I NEEDED THIS WEEK
Shiny Adidas Tracksuits and the Death of Camp, from the pages of Might magazine. There was a time in New York City in which every media dork had a copy of Might in his or her apartment. Also, it’s sort of amazing that I’ve been on Amazon long enough that it can track when I bought something in 2003.
LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK
“Trump’s 100 Days of Deadly Coronavirus Denial,” Mother Jones. My friend Tommy Craggs, a top editor over there, was instrumental in putting this incredible piece of journalism together. I’m not sure you can make the case any better than this.
ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!
A piece about this project is running on NBC News next week. Let’s keep this party going. So send 'em:
Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603
CURRENTLY LISTENING TO
“About a Girl,” Nirvana. Yeah, get that Post Malone shit out of here.
If you’re gonna be locked in a house together for months on end, someone might as well learn how to ride a darned bike.
Be safe out there, everyone.
Best,
Will