In the morning, I wake and think about what we can do to make the day as safe and as pleasant as possible. Very early on, it became clear that there was no gain in contemplating what the future would hold. I have not been on the subway, nor taken a bite of food prepared in a restaurant, in five weeks. I have not set foot outside of the house, other than to take out the garbage, in two weeks. Here in New York City we remain at the top of the apex, with hundreds of our friends and neighbors dying each day. The most minor of disappointments amid all else, but still. Tonight we would have been at Au Petit Fer à Cheval in the Marais, eating steak and tarte tatin. Family trip-the kids have never been out of the States. Yesterday was the day we were supposed to leave for a week in Paris. That’s a 9/11 flashback I’ve been having them a lot lately. I was struck by how strange that sounded, and then how strange it was that it sounded strange. I went outside this morning to take out the garbage and heard a sound I hadn’t anticipated-a plane overhead. We’re a month in now how many more to go? Photograph by Jonathan Morse Life in the bunker, day 30: New York has been enduring the equivalent of 9/11 every four days. Today we have others on the front lines: medical personnel, of course, and police, but also teachers, daycare workers, subway and bus operators, grocery clerks, delivery people – all of them performing essential services for the city, all of them grossly underpaid and underappreciated, many of them black and brown, who together have suffered and died far out of proportion to their numbers. On 9/11 and the days after, our heroes were firefighters, police, medical personnel, construction workers. We have already lost more souls than we did on 9/11, and that number will unquestionably grow much higher. The death toll in New York City-at least the official death toll the unofficial is surely much higher-now stands at 4,009. A New Yorker dies of Covid-19 every five minutes. Life in the bunker, day 25:ĭisjunction: Tasty bowl of oatmeal, crossword puzzle, French study. It will get worse, we’re told each day, until it gets better the only question is how strong the wind will be, and how long it will continue to howl. The streets are mostly quiet, and nearly everyone wears masks, as though the entire city has become an intensive-care ward. Outside, one hears the unnervingly regular wail of ambulances like air-raid sirens. The morgues of the city are overflowing already, our dead stored in makeshift holding facilities. We’re right in the middle of it now, it seems, the hurricane swirling all around us. Remember when we used to complain about 2019? Life in the bunker, day 23: Taking a late-afternoon stroll with my wife just now, walking in the middle of the street to maintain distance from someone approaching on the sidewalk, I suddenly flashed back to a memory I hadn’t thought of in years: how in the 1970s, at night on deserted NYC side streets, we used to walk in the middle of the street to avoid muggers who might leap out from doorways.įears calling to each other from across the decades. We’ll all be permanently marked by this crisis, the way our grandparents were by the Great Depression. (It’s her favorite movie she watches it over and over.) I love the movie as well, but watching it this time I was struck by how I reflexively flinched at the violations of social distancing: strangers holding hands while dancing, hugging, sitting beside each other on trains, etc. Last night we watched Little Women again with our 14-year-old daughter. Me: We’re lucky that we can stay at home. Life in the Bunker: A New York City Coronavirus Diary, March 12–JDay 1:
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