ROMEO
Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.
MERCUTIO
No, ’tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a
church-door; but ’tis enough, ’twill serve: ask for
me to-morrow, and you shall find me a grave man. I
am peppered, I warrant, for this world. A plague
o’ both your houses! ‘Zounds, a dog, a rat, a mouse, a
cat, to scratch a man to death! a braggart, a
rogue, a villain, that fights by the book of
arithmetic! Why the devil came you between us? I
was hurt under your arm.
ROMEO
I thought all for the best.
Romeo And Juliet Act 3, Scene 1
A long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, we see a young high school student, let’s call him Tim Starstalker, amble into his first period European History class, bleary-eyed and half asleep because as usual, he stayed up too late the night before watching Late Night with David Letterman doing his homework. Tim Starstalker sits down at his desk and flips open a thick, dusty textbook that’s wrapped in a paper book-cover that he made himself, with the words “Def Leppard,” “Night Ranger,” and an amateurish drawing of Ken Stabler throwing a football scrawled on the front. Tim is tired and bored as he waits for class to start. He desperately needs a pick me up, something to awaken his senses, because it’s almost time to discuss the Tudors, the Medicis, or the Habsburgs, and Tim is concerned that he’ll do a faceplant from the ennui.
He won’t be drinking coffee for another 13 years, so his perkup options are limited. Then he remembers something, something the class discussed a couple of months ago. He flips through the pages of his textbook and comes to an image much like the one above, a morbid picture of half-naked people piled on top of each other, some of them dead, others dying, writhing in the throes of the bubonic plague (that’s “Black Death” if you’re nasty!) They all look fucking miserable.
This disturbing image wakes Tim up. He can almost hear the moaning, the cries for help, the agony of those unlucky enough to not be dead already. He looks closer at their faces and his imagination kicks into high gear as he tries to place himself in the horrible scene:
What were they thinking? What did it feel like to die like that, covered in a bedsheet alone, with no one to comfort you? No one, not even a loved one. No husband, wife, brother, mother who would dare to get within 10 feet of you for fear of suffering the same fate. What was it like to die like a radioactive leper after having spent your last days and weeks in awful solitude, knowing how it was all going to end, and maybe even wishing for death to come quickly instead of prolonging the agony?
And what about the survivors? What was it like to have your entire family wiped out, to be left all alone, without your husband or wife or child? What was it like to live in fear of getting the Black Death? To be quarantined, suspecting everyone around you of being a potential carrier, not talking to anyone, keeping your distance, locking your ass up in your shitty, smoky, wooden house for weeks on end?
The Plague. Black Death. Destroyer of civilizations. Giver of no fucks.
This silent, invisible, serial killer fascinated Tim Starstalker for many reasons, but mostly because it was so indiscriminate in its lethality. The Plague was the Great Equalizer. It killed anyone it encountered. Rich, poor, serf, or lord. If you got it, you were screwed. This egalitarianism struck an emotional chord with young Tim. He liked that this thing was FAIR. It didn’t just kill the lowly and weak. It killed the rich and powerful too. It killed Anne of Bohemia, a Queen of England. It killed Pope Pelagius II. It killed Andreas Karlstadt, a close associate of Martin Luther. It killed Philippa of Lancaster, a Queen of Portugal. It killed Shakespeare’s only son. It killed famous painters and dukes and lords and astronomers and composers. Tim respected this. Not because he wanted people to die, of course. But after months of reading about the mistreatment of the destitute during Medieval Times, if something like The Plague was going to come along, it was nice to see that it didn’t discriminate. It whacked the privileged too.
The Plague was one of the only topics that woke Tim Starstalker up in this boring-as-shit class, which was chock-full of coma-inducing subjects, including the aforementioned Tudors, Medicis, and Habsburgs. When he was not daydreaming of leaving The Shire to travel the galaxy, young Tim would return to that death cartoon, and, from the vantage point of one safe and secure in the modern world of the 20th Century, with its penicillin, Neosporin, and disease-destroying vaccines, he’d try to imagine what it must have felt like to be surrounded by death and disease every day, trying to survive the greatest killer humankind had ever known.
Yes, it was Plague porn. Tim was not proud of himself.
Depending on which site one googles, The Plague, which came about when a bacteria carried by rat fleas jumped to human beings — probably on some decrepit merchant ship that was a lot dirtier than the ones you saw on Outlander — killed an estimated 75 to 200 million people in the 14th Century. That’s 30-60% of Europe’s population at the time, an INSANE number of people. On the low end, it’s more than 10 times the number of people killed in the Holocaust. On the high end, it’s just under 2/3 of the current U.S. population. Those numbers are almost impossible to fathom.
(Sidenote: I lived in New York City for 18 years, and every time I saw a rat scurrying in wet garbage in the middle of the subway tracks, I thought of The Plague and how that one fucking rat, or more precisely, the tiny, diseased fleas hiding under the hairs on its back, could have wiped out the entire human race a few centuries ago. And every time I read about an outbreak of The Plague — yes, it still exists — it freaks me out a little. It’s been nearly eradicated by insecticides, antibiotics, and a vaccine, but it’s still around, and eventually it may become drug resistant. In 2017, there was an outbreak of The Plague in Madagascar that infected thousands of people and killed 170 of them. That outbreak was preceded by two others, one in 1995 and another in 2014. So The Plague is still killing people in some parts of the world. It’s not gone. It’s just biding its time for a future World Tour.
But… one fucking plague at a time, please.
I sit here typing this in the middle of what is currently a six-week, keep-your-ass-in-your-house quarantine that was imposed in the State of New York due to a coronavirus pandemic that so far has infected [Checks Coronavirus Tracker] 2,330,772 people around the world and killed 160,747 of them. No, it’s not the Black Death. Far from it. But ’twill serve, as Mercutio would say. ‘Twill serve. For several weeks now, I’ve tried to crystallize my thoughts about this virus and my new reality in this little writing corner of mine. It’s been hard to focus because this experience is totally unprecedented and all-consuming.
As a dark-humored being in times of trouble, I find myself returning to that place often these days. The thing that makes me laugh and shake my head in disbelief is that only a couple of months ago, I was totally oblivious, just meandering through life with no clue what was coming. Post-divorce, my plan from here until the nursing home was to stay employed, stay in shape, get laid once in a while, maybe meet a tolerable person at some point, research Italian real estate and dual citizenship, and save my money for retirement so I don’t have to work until I’m 80 and survive on Frisky’s and water. I was feeling pretty good about life, so good in fact that last December I bought a couple of tickets for a long-delayed return trip to Italy, where M. would finally be able to meet the other 60% of my family and see Domodossola, where half of my heart resides.
Then… while visiting my mother in Florida in early February, the word “coronavirus” percolated into my consciousness when I received a panicked Facebook message from one of my aunts in Italy who sounded terrified about this virus that was making the rounds in the region where she lives and killing a lot of people. The same region I was supposed to visit in June.
Meh. I poo-pooed it. So did my mother. (Finally, something we agreed on.) I googled H1N1 and came to the conclusion that this thing would run its course in two months and my trip would occur as planned. Big deal. She’s overreacting. I’m still going to Italy. As long as my family stayed safe and healthy, all was good.
Wrong, Fuck-o. Oh, how wrong.
Now, a mere two months later, coronavirus has infected millions of people around the world, and nearly two hundred thousand people have died. Thousands more will die before it’s over. It’s tragic and horrible. People are dying alone. People are saying goodbye to loved ones on fucking iPads. Fuck. Me. That’s what gets me the most. Having someone I care about die alone, or to have to die alone yourself, is just heart-breaking. Something I would never have imagined possible before this virus came along.
The speed with which everyday life has changed in a matter of weeks is head-spinning. The world has literally stopped. And yet, with all this surreality and confusion and angst, this modern plague has brought me clarity on few things that I’ve been taking for granted in life. Sunshine on my face. Clean air. Just walking outside. Shopping in stores at my leisure. Having a drink at a bar. Having a meal cooked for me in a restaurant. Kissing someone. I cannot wait to do those things again.
On a more macro scale, I’m afraid to say that I’ve been taking modern civilization for granted for way too long. It has become readily apparent that the line between normal life and complete chaos in the United States of America in 2020 is a lot narrower than I thought. 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the past few weeks. That’s 22 million new people who aren’t earning an income and who no longer have employer-sponsored health care during a pandemic (if they had it all). In a country with 393 million guns in circulation, it’s not hard to imagine what could happen if the status quo continues for a few more months and people can’t feed themselves or their families. People will get desperate. It’ll make Venezuelan food riots look like Disneyland. But I’m gonna put that potential worry on a shelf for now.
I’ve also learned that we’re not suffering from just one plague right now. There are several.
Plague No. 1: The first one is obvious. It’s the virus itself. This pandemic pulled the emergency brake on every economy in the planet, grinding them all to a complete halt. Before it’s done, 200,000-300,000 people will be dead, and that’s with extreme mitigation in most countries: social distancing, shelter-in-place, national quarantines, shut-down economies. If it had been left unchecked, who knows how many people it would have killed.
COVID-19 has also enfeebled two of the most powerful countries on earth, China and the United States, dressing them down like a pissed-off Tony Soprano ripping Richie Aprile a new one:
“You two, you think you’re tough? Think you’re strong, with those modern armies, those big economies of yours? Think you’re better than those pissant countries you lord over like they’re nothing? Well I’m here to show you stupid FUCKS that you’re no better than they are. It’s an illusion, motherfuckers! You’ll see. Some of those little bitty countries, the South Koreas, the New Zealands, and the Icelands, they’re gonna be better than you at dealing with me. They’re keeping it TIGHT. And you? You’re lying to your own people about me. Your weapons, your smart bombs, your planes and submarines are useless! Go ahead, try to bomb me! You spent so much money on that expensive shit, and you kept ignoring what comes naturally, baby! How’s your national security now? Here you go, here’s a few months of social distancing, quarantines, homeschooling, and 20% unemployment. Let’s see how THAT works out for you arrogant fucks. Wait, did I say a few months? Maybe I’ll stick around for a year or two. I really don’t know right now. I’m too busy letting my freak flag fly! I’ll get back to you when I feel like it, you stupid assholes! Hahahaahaha!!!“
Like The Plague, COVID-19 does NOT. GIVE. TWO. FUCKS. It does not care who you are, what you do, where you live, what car you drive, whether you’re in the First World or Third World, or how miserable or fantastic your life was before it came along. It’s a gotdamn steamroller. Rich or poor, Democrat or Republican, ISIS terrorist or Seal Team 6 sniper, COVID-19 has its own code, bitch. It’s got its own personal hitlist. It will kill you no matter who you are. You don’t get more egalitarian than that. Like The Plague, it’s FAIR.
But on closer examination, this virus is not really fair at all. Entire groups of people are at far more risk than others. If you’re old or infirm, you’re at greater risk of getting it. If you have a low-income job, most likely you’re not able to work from home, so you’re going to be out in the world more, riding public transportation in cities where the virus is blowing up, exposing yourself to other people, and increasing your risk of contracting it. If you’re a health care worker, you’re forced to choose between doing your job and helping people, or protecting your own health and the health of your family. If you have a low income and no health care, or shitty health care, and you get this virus, there’s a significantly higher chance that it’s going to kill you. As I read in a WaPo article this morning, COVID-19 is not the Great Equalizer, it’s the Great Revealer. It’s laying bare our weakest links and revealing many sad truths about this plutocracy of ours.
Plague No 2: Fear. COVID-19 has introduced every single human being on the planet, including human beings who thought they were impervious to such things — actors, athletes, news anchors, Boris Johnson, Senator Rand Paul, Chris Cuomo, Tom Hanks — to an Instant Mortality Experience.
The freakiest thing to me about COVID-19 is how ridiculously contagious it is and how randomly it is visiting death on different types of people. Most are older and have pre-existing conditions, but young and healthy people are getting sick and dying too. People who run marathons. Fitness trainers. People in way better shape than me. You just don’t know what’s going to happen if this invisible monster taps you on the shoulder and says “You’re up, MoFo! Turn your head and cough!” You might get common flu symptoms and be back on your feet in a few days, or you might get three weeks of fever, followed by pneumonia, followed by intubation, followed by a ventilator. A ventilator that’s in short supply, to the point where you might not get one at all. And if you’re “lucky” enough to get one, you have a 50/50 shot at best of coming off it alive.
It’s the scariest game of Russian Roulette I’ve ever seen, and everyone has to play. No exceptions.
So it’s been interesting to watch people battle Plague Numero Dos. We all handle it differently, but you really find out who you are at moments like this. One day everyone’s living normally, going to work, going to the grocery store, and the next day, everyone’s in survival mode, hoarding toilet paper, Purell, and dishwashing gloves like they’re gold; strategizing a grocery run like it’s a Walking Dead search party; giving you the hairy eyeball if you get too close to them on the sidewalk; taking a pass on elevator rides if there’s two other people in there already; and washing their friggin’ mail with plastic gloves and Clorox spray.
It’s nuts, and it could get much much worse before it’s over.
Plague No. 3: Presidential incompetence. If you still think that politics don’t matter, if you still think that presidential elections are ideological purity tests and that the “lesser of two evils” is for compromising losers, if you’re still not paying attention and you’re not informing yourself about the world around you, the leaders we elect and the decisions they make and don’t make: PLEASE. GO. FUCK. YOURSELF.
I’m not doing a deep dive on how badly the Trump Administration has botched this pandemic since January. I’ve exhausted myself on the subject on Facebook and believe it or not, I am trying to make these blog novellas of mine shorter and more concise (and failing, clearly). But it was botched, in a criminally negligent way that is costing thousands of American lives.
Criminally negligent? That’s a bit extreme, isn’t it, Tim Starstalker? No, I don’t think it is. If this were a situation where someone did their best to prepare and they were blindsided by something truly unanticipated, I would be more forgiving. But this wasn’t that. This was the total opposite of that. Trump had the best available information from his intelligence agencies in late December/early January. His people knew what was coming. They told him, and he failed to act. Worse than that, aided and abetted by his personal propaganda channel, Foxycontin, he downplayed the danger and gaslit the American people for two months. He LIED about the seriousness of this virus when he knew better. He did it on purpose because he thought it would benefit him politically.
Was some amount of denial involved? Perhaps. But a president’s delusion during a pandemic is gasoline on a wildfire. It’s criminally negligent because it shows a willful disregard for human life. Job 1 for any president is to protect the American people. Trump did nothing to protect the American people from this pandemic from January through mid-March except impose two half-baked travel bans on China and Europe, both of which were implemented too late to be effective, and were full of holes in any case. The virus was already here by that time, and he exempted returning American citizens from the ban. American citizens who very possibly had the virus themselves but couldn’t be tested because WE HAD NO FUCKING TESTS.
Two months later, the most “advanced country in the world” that perpetually jerks itself off about how powerful and special it is, STILL doesn’t have enough tests. We are Number 1 in the world in infected and dead people, and we’re Number 38 in the world in per capita testing of our citizens. We’re behind Italy, Spain, Germany, South Korea, and Norway. We’ve tested a paltry 1.1% of the American population. We don’t need to test everyone, but how about 2% of the population? Is that too much to ask two months into this shitshow? How about 20%? How about 40%, which is closer to what we need to be able to live normal lives again? It’s pathetic.
Pandemics require central organization and a rapid response. Every day lost means lives lost. Literally almost anyone else would have done a better job than this stupid motherfucker: Jeb Bush, Mike Pence, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, Lindsey fucking Graham. None of those people — some of whom I despise — would have put their own self-preservation before American lives. Okay, maybe Lindsey fucking Graham would have, but probably not on a Trumpian scale.
Trump is just like Romeo up there.
First Romeo incompetently bumbles his way into a swordfight between Mercutio and Tybalt that Romeo should have been fighting himself. (Trump’s snake oil political rallies and golf excursions in February. Lying about the problem and kicking the can down the road).
Then he denies Mercutio was even seriously wounded: “Courage, man; the hurt cannot be much.” (“It’s a hoax!” “It’s the flu!” “It’ll disappear by April!”).
Then Mercutio tells him that uh, yeah, I got fucking stabbed, dumbass, and now it’s going to kill me, and why the hell did you get between us when you didn’t know what the hell you were doing? And Romeo’s like: “I thought all for the best.” (“We were on top of it from the beginning. I had a travel ban on G-ina and all of Europe. We’re doing a great job, the likes of which the world has never seen!“)
Then, after the damage is done and his friend Mercutio dies, Romeo goes apeshit, scapegoats Tybalt for his own fuckups, and kills Tybalt, making a bad problem worse. (“It’s the W.H.O.’s fault! It’s G-ina’s fault! It’s the Democrats’ fault! It’s Fake News’ fault! Cut all their funding NOW!“)
Finally, Romeo, a wanted, lovesick man on the run, sees Juliet, the object of his affection, lying in a death-like state due to a potion she took to avoid marrying Paris. He thinks she’s dead, so he poisons himself and exits stage left permanently. Then she kills herself. (“Re-open the country! LIBERATE Michigan! LIBERATE Minnesota! LIBERATE Virginia!“)
Just one royal fuckup after another.
That’s where we are right now. One royal fuckup after another. One fuckup begat more fuckups and more death. The biggest fuckup ever to hold such power, Trump, botched this from the jump for his own selfish reasons, and now people are paying the price with their lives.
So politics matter. Elections matter. I hope to God that in the next election, people vote for competence. Blind, misguided tribalism is literally killing us.
Which brings me to the final plague:
Plague No. 4: American ignorance and abject stupidity. I’m not sure when it started, but at some point ignorance and stupidity became virtues in this country. Facts and the truth became irrelevant and negotiable. People stopped believing in science and started believing in lies, propaganda, and conspiracy theories. The United States has become so blindly tribalist, that there’s a group of people who, despite overwhelming evidence around the world showing us what will happen if they get what they want, are demanding that the country “re-open” to commerce and business as usual when the virus hasn’t even peaked in most places. Some of these people, a far smaller number than remotely justifies the media coverage they’re getting, are protesting against the governors of Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio and Virginia, all of which, suspiciously, are swing states. They have RIGHTS, damn it! They want their FREEEEEEE-DOOOOMMMMM. Their freedom to get sick and die, and get the rest of us sick.
I’m of two minds about this. I know these fake “protests” are not organic, grass-roots events. They’re obviously astroturfing, organized Trump campaign rallies — rallies that he needs right now because he can’t campaign outside of his Propaganda Pressers. Like a flaccid balloon, he’s losing air fast in national polls because most people with eyes, ears, and brains recognize how badly he fucked up the handling of this pandemic. It’s not hard. There’s ample video of him lighting himself on fire with incredibly damning statements in February and March. The campaign commercials write themselves. I know most of this “open the country” is ginned up bullshit for his donors and ever-shrinking base. I mean all of those protesting fuckwads look the same: white, middle-aged, ignoramuses dressed in MAGA clothes. A slight tell, right? May Darwinism do its work on those idiots.
On the other hand, propaganda and disinformation are powerful things. The Plutes are bleeding money right now. They want the country to reopen ASAP, and if it costs a few thousand lives, well, that’s the cost of doing business in the good ol’ U.S. of A. As Bill O’Reilly said the other day: Most of the people dying were on their last legs anyway. (Josef Mengele would be so proud of you, Bill!) Even though they believe what Billy O believes, most of the Plutes and their apologists are not putting it as starkly as him, because they’re not stupid. No need for that when they have politicians and Foxycontin to do their messaging for them. At a time when this virus is still killing close to 2,000 Americans a day — almost a 9/11 death toll a day — the Stoopids and the Ignorants and their enablers are running rampant. It makes me want to break shit.
Plague No. 4 may not kill people the way coronavirus does, but it’s an accelerant for all of the other plagues and a death toll maximizer. Ignorance kills.
As the Ghost of Christmas Present said to Scrooge in A Christmas Carol:
“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it!”
I see that written which is Doom too. Every damn day.
