On Day 07, I talked with Shawn on the phone. Both of us see no way this quarantine ends in two weeks, but rather we foresee it stretching on through the summer, if not beyond. The American response has lagged behind Korea’s, for example, and that of several other countries. The American government, now hollowed out and full of hucksters and scam artists, is scrambling not to find a cure or vaccine but to find a way to profit from such a discovery made elsewhere. The governors of our states have taken up the mantle of leadership and have brought various measures to bear, while some state governments continue to sit on their thumbs. This approach most closely resembles the Italian approach, and so Shawn and I and a few other people I know that are watching closely expect America to endure a much broader, much more visibly painful version of what has happened in Italy. A few things could stem the tide: a vaccine could, a clear picture of how infection spreads could do it, well-thought measures by our federal leadership could do it, but so far none of these have happened in the US. For that reason, we used our phone call to make a plan for moving our photography classes online. So far it’s just a proposal for Jeanne, but she being herself, she probably has all this planned out already. Maybe she’ll write back today.
As I always write these the day after, as they are a memory exercise, I’ll share some news headlines from today to use as a marker in time. I expect to look back at most of this writing and marvel at how short-sighted I was.
Coronavirus jumped from 100 cases to 225,000 cases in just three months - BNO News
Coronavirus cure hope aas 79-year old man successfully treated with experimental drug - Telegraph
Numbers coming from Lombardy don’t mean anything anymore, hospitals, on the verge of collapse, refuse to test symptomatic patients and many people are dying at home, says Italian biologist Enrico Bucci - Il Post.it
Jared Kushner is reportedly leading a chaotic coronavirus “shadow” task force after telling Trump in the outbreak’s early days the crisis was overblown - Business Insider
Unions call on Quebec to shut down construction sites to protect against COVID-19
WHO walks back advice on ibuprofen, having told people with coronavirus symptoms to avoid it and take paracetamol instead - Business Insider
Burr recording sparks questions about private comments on COVID-19 - NPR
Susan Collins’ Obama-era vote against pandemic funding comes back to haunt her - The Daily Beast
New controlled clinical study conducted by doctors in France shows that Hydrochloroquine cures 100% off coronavirus patients within 6 days of treatment - Tech Startups
White House aides reportedly learned of the coronavirus test shortages from the media - The Week
Italian doctor dies of coronavirus after working without gloves due to shortage - Euro News
Trump reportedly almost tweeted that Tom Hanks had died from the coronavirus after misunderstanding reports about the actor being “discharged” from the hospital - Business Insider
So imagine that the picture painted by all these headlines - you should be feeling it in your gut and seeing it in the slump of your shoulders - just persists for weeks on end while you are relegated to your home, a fish in a barrel for bad news. Of course, half the US isn’t getting any of these updates; they are being told that the global quarantine measures and the hundreds of thousands of infected and the ramping number of deaths won’t, for magical reasons, affect them. And so they go about their days normally, and will no doubt be surprised when they or people around them start coughing.
To leaven the load I go outside. I walk alone and take pictures, touching nothing. I find myself nervous to walk through an area where I have seen other people, for fear that their breath has dissipated into the air, hanging there like a silent infectious miasma. Even so, I am calmed by the rise and fall of my body and the feeling of the ground beneath my feet. You may have noticed that the global pandemic is on my mind, and for that reason the pictures all have to do with it in various ways. The pictures seen here reflect my state of mind, and the action of me turning this event over again and again, trying to understand it. To do this, I break quarantine.