After the jump, some tales of this very unsettling moment! Just a handful of vignettes from me and the people closest to me. I don't think there's a larger point to this post! It's just what this moment looks like from my perch.
My sister and brother-in-law just returned from a winter spent in southeast Asia, mostly spent in Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. Over the past two months, every bar or restaurant they went to did temperature checks to ensure they weren't symptomatic, made them use hand sanitizer on the way in, and took down their passport info in order to check against lists if they were subsequently to be found to be carriers of COVID-19. The airports they passed through on the way back home had body temperature scanners at checkpoints throughout the airport.
They landed in JFK, where there was no temperature screening, no hand sanitizer, no masks, "not even a question as to whether we'd been somewhere high-risk." This was Thursday night/Friday morning, probably less than 12 hours after President Deals lied that there were rigorous testing procedures in place.
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My friend Kate is having a baby any week now. Her parents were booked to fly over to the UK to be there, with her mom serving as a doula. After President Deals (mis)announced (an incorrect summary of) his (typically xenophobic and counter-to-pandemic-expert-advice) travel restrictions on Europe, they decided to move their flight up to this weekend to make sure they were over there before anything changed. Kate's worried about her dad's health, but he'll unquestionably be safer in a country with the NIH providing care, and where (odds are) actual public health measures will be taken according to expert advice, because that nation-state's chief political narcissist has not crippled the administrative state.
Her parents will be there. The wild baby who's been rattling up a storm will enter a strange and uncertain world. It'll be a time of joy.
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Two weeks ago I returned from Portugal (meaning if I develop symptoms, it'll be an AMERICAN virus, USA USA etc) just as concerns were starting to rise about the virus's European spread. People were mostly calm; at the time, Portugal had no documented cases. A few business bros wore surgical masks in their expedited-service line. Presumably their affluence will shield them from whatever consequences they would otherwise face anyhow.
It had been a lovely, all-too-brief trip, just a long weekend inspired by a cheap fare and a commitment to getting somewhere sunny once a month through the end of winter. It had also been strange; the total cessation of Chinese tourism combined with the late-February low-season vibes to leave the city feeling busy but not overrun. The one day a cruise ship was in port I was in the outskirts of town learning about communities and cuisines that have mostly been pushed out of the touristic core. (Lisbon isn't Dubrovnik yet, but it's on its way.) The virus came up in the abstract, but it wasn't an immediate or omnipresent concern.
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In two weeks, I was scheduled to visit London for another long weekend. See some pals, drop in some charity shops, go on a long run through the royal parks and a longer run along the Thames. Grab a cream scone and some tea. That's obviously off now; the flights haven't been cancelled, but given the rebooking policies and the current advisories, it would be irresponsible to go. I'll use the flight credits to book my return from a London friend's wedding in August. It's fine. I'm grateful there weren't more pressing reasons to go, and that it wasn't a trip-of-a-lifetime booking. That I had booked to go was in itself an outlandishly privileged thing. I'm grateful the airlines are doing their part to help people change plans and help slow the spread.
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About a week ago, as the airlines rolled out flexible-booking policies and airfare plummeted, I told a friend that I felt like those insane stock market gurus who tell you that a downturn is the perfect time to invest. (Arguably this is reasonable advice, but I don't personally feel like starting to give credit to finance bros in the year of our lord 2020.) I've been restrained, largely because of unknown aspects of my personal/professional life in the year to come, but: did I book my new year's trip to Morocco while the booking was good? I regret to inform you that I absolutely did. Something to look forward to if things stay relatively raveled.
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The Big Sur marathon has been postponed. It's the right thing to do; again, I'm glad that organizers are being prudent and cautious. As somebody who had firmly decided never to run more than a half-marathon ever again, it's a bit agonizing to think about having to reset and re-run the 15-16-17-18-mile long runs a second time in preparation for the eventually-rescheduled race, but we'll get there when we get there. I don't know whether I'll still make it to California in April; I have very little faith that President Deals and his team of bobbleheaded enablers will contain things effectively within the next month, so I suppose I'm waiting to see if and when flights get cancelled or made flexible, and what the actual-expert guidance is on travel and social contact in a month.
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Look, this stuff is all weird, and people's responses are all weird too. When I headed to Portugal, Chicago had more verified cases than the entire country I was headed to, but I still got the same worried questions. (I suppose that's not unusual; I once had someone ask if I felt safe traveling to Paris under a year after the Paris terrorist attacks, as if mass shootings were hard to come by here in America.) Kat and Brian got lots of worried questions about whether they would be okay in Vietnam (you know, "Asia") when they were exponentially safer there than they are now that they've returned home. Xenophobia isn't a new thing, and paranoia during uncertain and frightening times is probably a natural thing!
I remain fortunate to be young enough not to be in a high-risk pool even if I contract the virus, and to be in the position of making my decisions based on not wanting to be a carrier or contribute to the spread of the disease. Travel has always been a luxury, no matter the style in which it's undertaken, and it's profoundly insignificant at a personal level to alter or cancel plans if it means making the world a bit safer for those around me. Does a very loud voice in my head keep yelling that if we're told to work remote for the next month it might be nice to do so from Glasgow? Reader, you know it does! But it's fine, and practicing simplicity and patience is always a good thing, in any context.
So, for now, travel is all sort of pause-and-wait. I'm grateful to have a long/exciting future trip to daydream and plan about. And as Chicago has brightened and warmed, I've been grateful to be in the communities I'm in here. I'll do the same things we all should be doing: donating to the nonprofits that need help during moments of economic collapse; buying gift cards to the restaurants and small businesses that we're being discouraged from visiting, to make sure they've got income to get through what's sure to be a brutal month or two (or three or four or...).
And you know. We still have an election to work toward this fall, so that we might - MIGHT - manage to oust a party that has proven that it does not give one good god damn how many people die so long as the cultish mantra of "free markets and tax cuts for the wealthy" is observed at all times and at all costs. We could, potentially, insist that our government be run by people who understand the necessity and value of government before crisis is fully upon us, and who prioritize human life over investment income. Possibly by people who believe in science and allow scientists to cultivate and lead in the execution of policy? Wild-eyed radicals, in short.
We could remember the lesson of this month: that all political policy has a direct effect on human lives, and that people live, die, get rich, or go broke based on who we put in office and what legislation and regulation we pressure them to enact. We could have uncomfortable conversations with people who treat it as a sport, rooting for "their team" without thinking deeply about who they are condemning to poverty and death for the sake of (pretty roundly debunked!!!!) ideology.
Which is a long way of saying: here's hoping that whatever quietude has been imposed on your own life gives you the space to consider larger questions, to contribute, and get involved in making the days to come better for those who desperately need them to be better.
Stay safe out there, you big-hearted cats and ferociously ardent kittens. We loves you, we does.
