I know we’re behind schedule and we are encountering serious logistical problem in rolling out the vaccine, but I’m still ready to make a bold prediction for 2021: when the summer comes, we will no longer have to wear masks! I’ll actually see you smile in three dimensions and without a millisecond delay. Count on it!
The year we’d all rather forget is winding down. There’s only a few hours left and then we will finally be able to close the books on a year that is a good candidate for being one of the worst years of modern human history.
So many crises erupted over the last three hundred and sixty five days it’s hard to remember it all, let alone believe it. But happen they did. And though the year is ending, the trials are not. There are more to come. The planet is still on lockdown, after all.
We will emerge from this, of course. The trauma of 2020 will become a memory and will be replaced by the jubilation of 2021, when we see each other again. When I see you again, it is not the memory of the coldness of your absence that will come to mind, it will be the warmth of your presence that will, once again, take roost in my heart. This will not come as soon as we would like, but much sooner than either of us fears. We will be together again.
In the meantime…
There are many lessons I want to get out of this tragic year but there is one above else that I hope and pray remains permanently ingrained. I am alive because of the competence and benevolence of thousands of people, most of whom I will never meet or have the opportunity to thank. I did not get to this point in my life merely on my own merits and abilities. Many people had to work hard for me live a life of relative comfort and peace. And many of those people are, themselves, deprived of such comfort and peace.
This has always been true, but only lately have I begun to truly understand the reality of this.
I am part of a vast network of kindness, generosity and compassion that has benefitted me greatly. I am by no means the most important part of that network, but I have an important part to play. And that is to contribute to the members of that network and to expand the reach of that network.
The bounties of this life are not evenly distributed. If that wasn’t obvious before, it should be clear now. That is no way for a tribe to survive. Though eight billion and counting we may be, we are nonetheless one tribe. The old boundaries that we once thought marked us as separate and safe have been demolished by something more minuscule than the width of a hair. The fate of the most powerful amongst is tightly bound with the fate of the weakest.
So when I emerge from this lockdown, I hope I remember this above all. When I see you for the first time—in three dimensions and not just in two—I hope I treat you with the compassion and generosity you deserve, for the simple fact that you are a human being and you have a beating heart. I hope I remember that, just like me, you have gifts, you’ve had struggles, you’ve won and you’ve lost. I hope you remember the same about me.
But barring all of that, when we see each other again, free from our prisons, I hope we can sit down, have a drink, laugh and revel in the simple joy of being alive and being with another human being.
Here’s to hoping that this year becomes the worst of our past and the harbinger for the best of our future.
Happy New Year, Humanity!
The vaccine has arrived. The first doses have been given in the United States. Although the logistical problems of delivering the vaccine to at least seventy five percent of the American population will be gargantuan—assuming most people will even accept it—it is not unreasonable to believe that our lives will return to normal by the summer.
And let me be clear by what I mean by “normal”: we won’t have to wear masks anymore; we’ll be able to shake hands with someone we just met; we’ll hug friends and family; we’ll actually see friends and family. The size of our own little worlds will once again expand to all points on earth that can be reached by a flight, instead of the short distance marked by the limits of quarantine.
In the meantime, we are in the midst of the second wave of the pandemic, its ravages accelerating even as we approach Christmas and prepare for the darkness of winter. In the spring I had assumed that by December I would be consolidating and practicing the lessons learned from the trauma of the spring while seeing friends and family in person and shaking hands with strangers. It was a wonderful fantasy. Today I am preparing myself for a hard winter. A very hard winter. The trauma has yet to end.
New York has shut down its restaurants again. Other states in the Union that had resisted any kind of limits during the first wave have now imposed restrictions. We just passed 300,000 dead from covid-19 and next 100,000 lost will come faster than the last. The vaccine has arrived but there will not be enough doses to inoculate even the 25 million or so in the high priority categories: healthcare workers and the elderly.
We know now that there is a light at the end of the tunnel but it is still too far away for us to see. So what do we do until then?
The pandemic has taken away a lot from us. And some of us have lost far more than others—far more than any one of us should have lost. But for those of us that have survived, there is one thing that the pandemic has given us that would not have otherwise had: time. We were given time in the same way that prisoners are given time. We didn’t ask for it, but now we have it. What do we do with it?
This pandemic will end. They always do. This one will end much sooner than previous ones have because of the miracles of science. But if all that happens when this global trauma ends is that we return to the exact same world we left behind, we will lose even more. The world we left behind was more selfish and cruel than it should have been. That world did not value all human lives equally.
If my life returns simply to what it once was once I am vaccinated and can transact daily life without fear of infection or infecting anyone, I truly will have lost all that time. I will have been given an extra year of time without anything to show for it.
We all paid so much for the education that was this pandemic, we should come out of with lessons of great value. What should those lessons be?
Lebron James has once again risen to the highest level of his profession, winning his fourth championship ring. Even before the victory that clinched the title, Lebron was already one of the most recognizable human beings on earth. He has a fortune of half a billion dollars. He is in the rarified company of those who are considered the best to have ever plied their craft. And, yet, this is what he said on Sunday, after he received his trophy: “I just want my damned respect.” I find that very, very remarkable.
With a little extra effort, I can simulate the experience of drenching my lungs in acid. All I have to do is speed up as I run. My pace right now is a blistering ten minutes forty-three seconds per mile. If I dare to push my pace above that of a slow, geriatric trot, I will experience the aforementioned burn. This is the last remaining effect of my covid-19 infection from six months ago. In other words, six months after infection, my recovery is still incomplete.
Pardon the mild bragging for now since I need to provide some context. At my fastest, I ran a little over thirteen miles at a pace of seven minutes and forty-five seconds. A pace I can only maintain for a minute today I was recently able to maintain for over an hour and a half. The night I experienced my first symptoms—a fever I tried to dismiss—I had been at the gym hours before, doing rounds of push-ups, strict pull-ups, stricter toes to bar and leg lifts. Within two days of that and the day before the official lockdown in New York, my fever spiked to 102.5F. My illness hit its trough just as the crisis crested in New York. With refrigerated trucks situated outside hospitals, waiting for the overflow of bodies, I was trapped inside, for the simple reason that I didn’t even have the energy to sit up.
If I stop to consider the worst part of the experience, I have options to choose. The extreme fatigue was not pleasant. My bed was the only part of the world I saw for weeks. The days seemed endless. The length of the illness was also horrible. From the first symptom to the last traces of the fever, it was three weeks. My cough persisted past that and I didn’t realize at the time that the coughing was emblematic of the damage being done to my lungs. The illness also came in two waves. I thought I was getting better after four days and then I experienced a second phase that was worse than the first.
I experienced intense but short lived pain towards the end, likely due to dehydration, itself due to a severe loss of appetite. Pain to that degree had once compelled me to call 911 so I did so again when the pain was at its worst. The paramedics arrived, all covered up in hazmat attire, unwilling to enter my apartment. They examined me from a distance and recommended that I not accompany them to the ER because I was safer at home. They described the hospital as a petri dish, with covid-19 propagating throughout the entire ER. In time, their advice proved wise. At the time, being turned away by a place I once considered the safest place in New York was terrifying.
On the day of my first symptom, I did seventy-five push-ups, among other exercises. Three weeks later, my first attempt at exercise produced three push-ups, my arms shaking like leaves in high wind. Days after that I attempted to walk a mile. I used to run ten miles without a moment’s thought. That first mile that I walked proved more challenging then ten miles used to be. Two months after the end of my bout with covid-19, I tried my first jog. I could only sustain that slow pace for three quarters of a mile before I had to stop and walk. And it felt like there was a small beast riding my chest, pouring acid into my lungs.
Now six months later, I’ve recovered a good percentage of my strength. The prison style workouts during lock down helped. The small beast on my chest has been gone for months, but I can still make the acid come back if I try too hard—and too hard isn’t very hard at all.
Some people don’t believe in the severity of this illness. Some even seem to think that the illness is a hoax. The damage to my lungs should convince otherwise. Unlike influenza, SARS-COV-2 scars lungs. It’s damage that I assume will heal in time and allow the return of my normal speed, but that’s an assumption and a hope, not a certainty.
I write this now not just as record of my experience but as a reminder and a warning. As the virus spread silently at the beginning of this year, we did not take it seriously. It has felled almost 200,000 in the United States so far. the most of any country in the world. Any cursory reading of the history of pandemics would provide the sobering lesson that pandemics come in waves. The so called Spanish flu came in three major waves, the first coming in the spring of 1918, the second and most lethal one coming in the subsequent fall. As temperatures drop, memories of the crisis fade and exhaustion sets in, we are in danger of repeating the same mistakes our forbears made a century ago.
Let this be a warning. Remember, I had the “mild” version of covid-19. Six months later, I’m still contending with its aftermath.
“Whatever you choose for a career path remember the struggles along the way are only meant to shape you for your purpose. But if you are willing to take the harder way, the one that has ultimately proven to have more meaning, more victory, more glory then you will not regret it.”
— Chadwick Boseman, from a 2018 commencement speech he gave at Howard University
