Volume 4, Issue 21: Ambulance

"High in a trance, my life smeared right past."

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The first person I knew who had Covid was an old friend from New York. She’d just come back from a trip to Spain with some friends in late February 2020, and they discovered, upon return, that all four of them were as sick as they’d ever been in their lives. I learned all this from Facebook in the days after March 11, the day when the pandemic truly hit in the United States, when we were all at our most genuinely terrified. She’d told the story of having Covid, and I—like many in the comments of her post, it seemed—took the news as if she had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. It made me feel bad for not talking to her more often, more recently.

In the Alex Gibney documentary Totally Under Control, a film about the initial disastrous American response to Covid-19, there are scenes from Wuhan’s hospital that show the care of the first-ever patient diagnosed with the virus. The patient is inside a massive plastic bubble and surrounded by staffers wearing biohazard suits who will only touch the bubble with metal tongs. We would shut down most of American society shortly thereafter.

The first close contact I had with someone who was diagnosed with Covid was … Kevin Durant. The Nets forward tested positive on March 15, a month after I’d sat with him for three hours for a cover story for New York magazine that never ended up running, for very obvious reasons. A month was considered outside the window of contagion, even back then. But, then again, who knew anything back then? All I knew was that Durant was one of the last people I’d spent any extended period of time with before shutdown, and now he had tested positive. I texted his manager, Rich Kleiman, whom I’d also interviewed, to check in on how Durant was doing. “Hanging in,” he said. “It’s so fucking scary.”

My wife and youngest son Wynn both had Covid just after Christmas 2020. My son William and I sat downstairs for two weeks and played NBA2K while communicating with them over walkie-talkies and leaving plates of food outside their door. At the time, vaccines were close, and it felt like they were among the last people who didn’t make it back on the helicopter out of Saigon. When I got my second shot five months later, I thought, like millions of others, that my experience with Covid was over—that I’d made it through, like life was about to return to normal, or some semblance of it.

It did not exactly turn out that way.

But through it all, despite having had multiple exposures to people that I knew had tested positive, despite being in New York City when Omicron hit and then heading to Indianapolis for the College Football National Championship Game (where just about everyone I know in Athens contracted Covid), despite once having a Covid-positive child fall asleep on my chest, blasting his Covid air right into my face, I had never contracted Covid. Two months ago I wrote about this odd feeling, the idea that the entire world had been turned entirely upside down, how there had been such tragedy and such grief, how we’d never really be the same, but it was something that had still happened entirely outside of me, like I was simply an untouched observer being tugged along by what this virus had done to other people, essentially immune to it myself.

Well, as it turns out:

I could not fall asleep Tuesday night, the night after staying up and watching Miles Mikolas come this close to throwing the first Cardinals no-hitter since September 2001, and I was so cold—in the midst of daily 100-plus temperatures here in Georgia—that I put on a sweater in the middle of the night. This will seem stupid to you, but I did not think it was Covid. I figured I was dehydrated—it’s very hot, after all. Besides, it’s not like I have a lot of experience in self-diagnosis. The last time I was sick in any way, shape or form was probably … late 2018? I inherited a terrific immune system from both of my parents; I’m fortunate enough to be one of those people who has never used a sick day in his life. But I certainly knew something was up. Wednesday morning, I wrote a backpage piece for the All-Star Game program despite barely being able to see the screen, I taped the Seeing Red podcast with Bernie Miklasz that morning at about three-quarters speed and then taped an Illinois basketball history podcast with Robert Rosenthal at IlliniBoard that wore me out so much that by the end of it, I had tilted the computer so I could continue the Zoom by lying down on the floor. (If you listen to this podcast, please forgive everything I said, I might have been hallucinating.) I immediately went to bed, still couldn’t sleep, decided to finally take the test, and then boom, there it was, right there in my face. It was a bit of a bummer to realize that I was not, in fact, an indestructible god. The more you know.

But, of course, it is no longer March 2020. It is June 2022. There were no grave physicians in hazmat suits to escort me to the intensive care ward. I sighed, put a mask on, grabbed some snacks, loaded up my computer, my phone and all the various required chargers, and headed into my isolation room. My wife has tested negative, my children are off at camp (I’m sleeping on William’s twin bed with his stuffed turtle pet Asa next to me), I hadn’t seen my parents in a week anyway and the guy I watched the Cardinals game with (outdoors) is fine. What was once terrifying is now routine—mostly annoying, even banal. My wife noted, too, how different it felt, socially, to get Covid in December 2020. Back then, everyone wanted to know where you got it, where you were, what you did; today, with the world completely open, you just shrug. You get it simply by living and walking around. I remember, when she and my son had it back then, being furious that this virus had made it all across the world and into my home, had found its way until my family; it felt like an invasion, like I’d failed, as a father, to protect them. Now it just feels like it was a matter of time—a surprise, even, that it had taken this long.

The other major difference, of course, are the vaccines, of which I have had three. My most recent booster was in November, which is a while ago, but still surely a help. Having Covid-19 has not been pleasant, particularly for someone who is never sick, but it has hardly been incapacitating. After the initial chills, a slightly elevated temperature and an overarching achiness, by Day Two, my symptoms fell quickly down to a slight headache and a minor cough. I’m on Day Five now, and the only thing I’m feeling is an occasional need to blow my nose and frustration that I haven’t gone for a run in nearly a week. (I’m hoping, perhaps irrationally, to test out this afternoon.) But when I first got it, I found it almost anthropologically fascinating to witness how my body was dealing with this foreign agent. My heart was pounding wildly, and it felt like the whole physical instrument that is me was furiously pedaling as fast it could to beat this thing into submission. (With some crucial help from science.) It made me feel vulnerable at first, but then strong: Modern and this 46-year-old body were going to take this thing out. Bring it.

Otherwise, I am lucky enough to have had no other side effects so far, no brain fog, no inability to write like I usually do (as far as I can tell at least, you tell me). I think I, like millions of people, have made it through this without any major issues. By next week, I doubt I will be thinking about it at all. Which is of course derelict in its own way. Millions of people have died of Covid. Every person on this earth has had their lives changed by it somehow. That I have gotten through this easily shouldn’t make me forget that. If anything, it should make it more present in my mind, make me realize just how truly fortunate I am, when I contracted it, to have been fully vaccinated and blessed with an immune system that could fight it off. It should give me better perspective. I’m not sure it will, though. I’m not sure in a month I’ll be thinking much about it at all. That may be natural. It may even be healing. I still think it might be wrong.

A recent CDC study estimated that, as of March 2022, 43 percent of Americans have contracted Covid-19. That number strikes me as low, but it speaks to the larger point: I suspect, after a while, we just stopped counting. Covid-19 has gone from the monster around every corner, to an unspeakable tragedy, to another politically polarizing thing for people to start yelling at each other about, to something people have decided they are done with, to a pain in the ass that you just try to get over with. Much of my thought process throughout the pandemic was to believe that this was the biggest thing any of us would ever live through and that we’d be talking about it the rest of our lives. I no longer believe this. I believe we have all collectively tried to turn the page on it as fast as we can, for better or (probably mostly) worse. We will talk about the early days, the early fears, the shutdowns, and we’ll mourn loved ones we lost, or iconic figures who died from it. We’ll try to help those who suffer from long-term complications. It’ll always be a part of all of us.

But at this stage of the pandemic, getting Covid is just something to get through—another trial during these endlessly tumultuous times. And when we get through it, when I get through it, we’ll just move on to something else. There was a time when having Covid would have scared me as much as anything on the planet. Now I’m just ready to get it over with. I’ll confess that most people I know feel the same way—again, for better or worse. It is perhaps sad to say that this, today, almost counts as progress. I’ll take any progress I can get at this point.

I will say, though: I’ve finally had the time to finally watch Severence. Great show.

Here is a numerical breakdown of all the things I wrote this week, in order of what I believe to be their quality.

1. Why People Are Less Angry About Baseball Change, The Washington Post. An honor as always to write for the Post. It had been too long.

2. How Saudi Sportswashing Is Roiling Golf, New York. My annual bit of golf writing.

3. The Toughest Calls on the All-Star Ballot, MLB.com. They’re mostly in the National League, actually.

4. Watching the Liars Actually Having to Fess Up, Medium. It’s really quite satisfying.

5. Pixar Movies, Ranked and Updated, Vulture. With Lightyear.

6. What the 2027 All-Star Team Might Look Like, MLB.com. Let’s do some blind guessing.

7. The Thirty: An Ideal HR Derby Contestant For Every Team, MLB.com. Someday I’d love to see Tyler O’Neill in one of these.

8. Your Friday Five, Medium. High five? High five.

PODCASTS

Grierson & Leitch, we discussed the terrible Jurassic Park Dominion, as well as Hustle and M.

Seeing Red, Bernie and I continue to talk about a first-place team. (Though it’s getting tight again.)

Waitin' Since Last Saturday, no show this week, taping this week.

LONG STORY YOU SHOULD READ THIS MORNING … OF THE WEEK

“The End of the Millennial Lifestyle Subsidy,” Derek Thompson, The Atlantic. I like smart, easily understood pieces about why things are expensive. Why is your Uber ride so pricey now? Because it’s finally time to start paying what things cost.

ONGOING LETTER-WRITING PROJECT!

This is your reminder that if you write me a letter and put it in the mail, I will respond to it with a letter of my own, and send that letter right to you! It really happens! Hundreds of satisfied customers!

(I know I am behind on these, but I’m catching up next week.)

Write me at:

Will Leitch
P.O. Box 48
Athens GA 30603

CURRENTLY LISTENING TO

“Albuquerque,” Weird Al Yankovic. So my older son William, perhaps inevitably, has gotten obsessed with Weird Al. (We’ve all been there.) On the drive to camp last week, this song came on and he got so infatuated with it that we listened to it, like, eight times. It has a few lines that Al would probably rewrite 23 years later, but it’s still gloriously silly and makes me consistently laugh. Great chorus too.

Remember to listen to The Official Will Leitch Newsletter Spotify Playlist, featuring every song ever mentioned in this section.

I will see you all back out in the real physical world very soon. And happy eighth birthday tomorrow to this guy:

And Happy Father’s Day, a day early, to this guy:

Best,
Will