Throughout this extended period of isolation for Americans, this newsletter will be a daily look at what it is like to actually live through this moment, until this moment is over. It will feature brief opening remarks from me every day, but will mostly be stories from you about how this is affecting you, your family, your friends … your daily life. (The regular weekly newsletter will continue uninterrupted.) Email me your story at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.
We have reached the stage of this where more and more people have someone in their life who has tested positive for the coronavirus. I actually know several people at this point. (It would be difficult to live in New York City for 13 years and not.) One of the more impressive things Tom Hanks did after his diagnosis was to politely refuse an interview from Taffy Brodesser-Akner—who wrote a wonderful story on him in November—simply because “he's wary of spreading misinformation or false hope or dread.” It has become clear that this predicting how one will or will not recover from this virus is not entirely dependent on factors like age or pre-existing conditions, which makes some of the current “debates” going on all the more insane and ghastly. If you get it over it, it doesn’t mean someone else is going to. Hanks didn’t want to say what his experience was like because, as one of the first public faces of the virus, he didn’t want to anyone to think everyone’s experience with it would be exactly like his. He was, in a way that I’ll confess I was expecting to see a lot more often than I am in this moment, thinking about people other than himself.
Much of the skeptical reaction to the virus so far seems to be from people who still have no personal frame of reference. They don’t know anyone with it. They don’t work in the medical field and see the chaos, or the gearing up for chaos. They don’t live in an area that has been overrun, that feels like the walls are closing in. All statistical indicators signal that is about to change. This is one of the few universally shared experiences of my lifetime; it’s one of the reasons I wanted to share people’s stories through this newsletter. I sense it’s about to become even more universal than it is already. We will see what happens next.
Here are today’s stories. Send me yours at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.
From A Displaced White Sox Fan in the Land of Cheese:
Last Monday I found myself thrust into the role of single dad—figuratively speaking, my wife is alive and well—of a 5 1/2-year-old boy and 2 1/2-year-old daughter while also being told I have to work from home and keep up my 50+ hour an hour week sales job. I love my job and feel compelled to keep giving it my best, which is more difficult by the day. Also being in a sales role that means I'm generally a people person and being confined to my house is basically torture for me. I have to say, I am immensely enjoying spending more time with my kids, but it stresses me out to no end watching my work pile up. So I find myself trying to balance not placing the kids in front of Disney+ for eight hours a day and trying not to work until 1 a.m. every day only to be up at 5am with the youngest.
I don't in the least feel entitled to complain to my wife because her job is 1,000 times more important and stressful than mine at this point. She leads a large team for our whole state in communicable disease outbreak response and is working 12-14 hour days, six days a week to keep on top of this. I would do twice what I'm trying to juggle right now to allow her to do what she does. But it’s still a lot! Even if my complaint is that I had too many phone calls today while the kids wanted to play fucking Uno for the 1,000th time … and hers is she had to report multiple deaths and get on TV and try to give good advice while large swaths of this country ignore common sense.
Also, as a delusional White Sox fan living in WI I'm going to just assume Luis Robert and Eloy Jimenez were about to combine for 100 home runs this year and Kopech and Giolito were about to lead us to the promised land and I will be ordering White Sox World Series t-shirts shortly.
From Ursula, living in Ethiopia:
I am originally from Austria, but together with my family, my husband and our two kids (six and eight), I am currently living in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. We have been living internationally for the last ten years in Tajikistan, Zimbabwe and now for six years in Ethiopia. Both my husband and I work in international development, he works on migration in Horn of Africa and I work on nutrition programs and policies in Ethiopia.
While in Ethiopia there are only about 10 reported cases of COVID-19, there are definitely more and the health system will not be able to deal with a serious outbreak. The government has taken some measures: closing schools and restricting some flights, but since the country relies on foreign currency, Ethiopian Airlines is still flying and only stopped flying to about 30 countries. The government has also introduced quarantine for people arriving, but living in a densely populated place, where people live hand to mouth, not being able to stock up or isolate in small houses which they share with several family members. Locking down the city would dramatically affect the food supply since open markets, which are full of people, are the main source for food. Because the situation is so uncertain and the fear that the system could collapse, most foreigners have left the country. Addis Ababa is a big hub with the African Union and a lot of regional offices of the United Nations, embassies etc.
We were planning on staying for now since we planned on leaving Ethiopia anyway in the summer and are afraid that if we leave now, it will be difficult to come back and arrange the whole move of all our things. Also we don't really have a place to go yet and would like to maintain a "normal" routine as possible for our children.
Living in a low- or middle-income country, things like empty supermarkets, blocked roads, and states of emergency are part of the everyday life. Is it because of imported goods stuck in customs, sugar rationing, another attempted coup that closes school, or blocked roads because somebody important is going across town? Could be any or all. And toilet paper, let me tell you, is such a precious good that in some places you are only handed two small squares – if you are lucky. There is a nasty part of me is thinking “now finally you know what it’s like…”, but another part of me is also scared. Scared that the safe haven of my childhood in the West, where I went when I just need everything to work, does not work quite so well right now. So such obstacles are just part of life in a poor country. What is also part of life as an expat is saying goodbye. But it is a part of my life that I never got used to, to say the least.
Saying goodbye to friends you have known for years over the phone or from three-meter distance, my children never being able to say goodbye to their school, their teacher, their friends, is what makes this situation unbearable to me. There is always a high level of uncertainty in every goodbye, but now everything is uncertain, the when, the how, the “can I still get that hug in 10 days when you are out of self-isolation before you jump on the last plane out?” Somehow, we will get out of this on the other end. I just hope we all learn something from this and if nothing else at least that there are more important things in this world than toilet paper …
From Michael A. Kurtz in Charleston, South Carolina:
To all outward appearances in Charleston, besides some empty shelves at the Mount Pleasant Whole Foods, life continues like normal. Couples play catch with their dogs in the park outside my window. Frat boys blast Darius Rucker and toss a nerf football back and forth. The enormity hasn’t hit here yet. On my runs it seems like the whole town is simply happy to be outside. Lawn crews trim edges, and construction workers continue renovations on century old homes. In Charleston, there seems to be only a handful of seasons--brutal heat and humidity, fickle winters, and idyllic falls and springs. How could a silly disease, that’s basically the flu anyway, affect us now that the fleeting slice of beautiful spring weather has arrived?
I received the text from my brother three weeks ago: “Looks like the end of the road... in half an hour or so if her breathing rate does not decrease...”. My grandmother Gerry (short for Geraldine, she hates the name Geraldine), hospitalized from pneumonia and now battling sepsis on a quarter of a lung, was dying. When confronted with the choice between intubation or death by a well-meaning doctor, Gerry stubbornly replied, “we all have to die sometime”. My mom, out of the country at the time, was frantically trying to fly back. She had given the OK to not resuscitate.
But Gerry’s vitals recovered. An ambulance delivered her into Mom’s living room in suburban New Jersey, swaddled in a thin hospital blanket and accompanied by her beloved aide Loita. The hospice nurse told us she had maybe three weeks. Three weeks passed, and Gerry got stronger every day. In the first few days home, when Gerry was barely conscious and still breathing with assistance, my grandfather Bill had repeated that it would take a miracle from God. Miracle delivered.
Everyone now is cautiously optimistic. But in the back of all our minds we wonder: Did Gerry just survive her third bout with pneumonia only to get double tapped by coronavirus? I sit in my room with the park outside my window back in Charleston, SC, and I am furious. Angry that invincible college students packing bars on Saint Patrick's Day put my Nana at risk. Fuming at the feckless leadership that has inevitably landed us in such a crisis. Irrationally pissed at the neighbor who, during a global pandemic, still mows his lawn outside my window at 8 am.
Send me your stories of this moment in history at williamfleitch@yahoo.com.
Best,
Will