JOURNAL OF THE CORONAVIRUS YEAR III
(published April 2 on Facebook)
I’ve talked about the similarities of our current pandemic to the Spanish flu and the Black Death, and they are certainly everywhere.
Today a reporter interviewed an EMT in Italy who was called to a home where a ninety-year-old man was in extremis from the coronavirus. When the family was asked who he had gotten it from, the two girls there said, “From our father.”
The father had died two days before and the grandmother the day before.
The girls said they had no tears because they had cried them all already.
It reminded me of what Agniola the Fat had said over seven hundred years before during the Black Death in Italy.
He wrote, “This day have I buried my wife and five children.
No bells. No tears. It is the end of the world.”
We’re seeing lots of ends of the world lately–
–two New Jersey emergency room doctors have died in the last two days,
–and so has jazz great Ellis Marsalis, Jr.,
–and a U.S. Navy aircraft commander has been relieved of his command for writing a letter begging his superiors to send help to his stricken soldiers.
–And the numbers–of cases, of deaths, of projected deaths–just keep going up. And up.
It does feel like we’re living through another Black Death.
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I’ve also been reminded of similarities of this pandemic to the Blitz:
1. The disruption of our daily lives.
The orderly schedules of the British people was completely upended by the Blitz. People found themselves sleeping under the kitchen table or in basements or tube shelters. They went to work in the morning after a sleepless night with bombs falling overhead, only to find that their place of work was closed or bombed out, and when they went home, they found that had been bombed out, too. Everything changed in an instant. Theaters and museums were closed, and the way of life they’d always known disappeared overnight as if it had never been.
2. The shortage of food and supplies.
Rationing was established early on in the war, and as things went on, food shortages became more and more severe. People lined up for hours on the off-chance of getting a nice piece of meat or a couple of eggs, and housewives were encouraged to cook with unusual ingredients. I thought of that when I saw some elk meat in the supermarket last week. It was the only meat there, but there were still no takers (at this point anyway.)
3. The knowledge that when we see or talk to someone it may be for the last time.
ICU units are filling up, there are portable morgues appearing in parking lots, hospitals aren’t allowing any visitors, including family, and today on TV they were telling everyone to make sure they’d filled out a living will. And children (or parents) living far away won’t be able to come to their loved ones’ bedsides (or be allowed in if they get there.) We’re not even allowed to hug people. It’s becoming clear that any conversation we have with our friends or family might be our last.
That’s exactly the way it was in the Blitz. Shopgirls who laughed and talked to their friends during the day at work might find the next morning that they’d been killed, and lovers who said good night at the front door or the entrance to the tube station never saw each other again. Many never even found out what had happened to them. Or they read in the newspaper, “Died suddenly. Of enemy action.” People who lived through that time said they were fully aware of the possible finality of every good-bye and made sure they parted on good terms–and frequently told their loved ones how much they meant to them.
4. The fears that we won’t be able to deal with the isolation and stress.
During the Blitz, columnists and psychologists wrote op-eds fretting that people would panic and/or get used to living underground and would turn into some sort of troglodytes, and I’ve read blogs recently that worry we’ll suffer from depression and turn into hermits. And everyone seemed convinced that people would succumb to despair.
Those fears were completely unjustified–the British responded to the nightly bombings and other deprivations with spunk and humor.
One shopkeeper with a blown-out storefront posted a cardboard sign that read, “If you think this looks bad, you should see our branch in Berlin,” and when a high-explosive bomb went off, destroying most of London’s newspaper offices, the only still-functioning printing press put out an edition the next morning with the headline, “Bomb Injured in Fleet Street.”
We’re showing the same spirit. New Yorkers are banging pots and pans out their windows and on their balconies every night at 7 p.m. to thank the medical personnel trying to save their lives, little kids and retirees (including me and my husband) are sewing masks for nursing homes and emergency personnel, celebrities are performing on-line concerts, enterprising people are setting up GoFundMe bank accounts for medical personnel and out-of-work wait staff, friends and family are calling each other to ask what they can do for each other, ordinary people are turning into heroes, and the internet’s having a heyday, turning out funny and inspiring videos and memes.
Everybody’s rising to the occasion, and, in spite of my having occasional worried thoughts about all of us becoming the crazy characters in Shirley Jackson’s WE HAVE ALWAYS LIVED IN THE CASTLE, we’re doing great. When this is all over, we’re going to be able to say, just like the British, “This was their finest hour.”
Hang in there, everybody.
Connie Willis