Last Thursday I was riffling through several New Yorker stories, and was fascinated by a contemporaneous long essay about the Covid plague, by noted science-fiction writer—and “avowed Democratic Socialist”—Kim Stanley Robinson. It was published on May 1, 2020, with the headline “The Coronavirus Is Rewriting Our Imaginations: What felt impossible has become thinkable. The spring of 2020 is suggestive of how much, and how quickly, we can change as a civilization.” This was in the thick of the panic, and, as one would assume from the now-73-year-old intellectual, it’s partly an excuse to promote his strident views on climate change.
Robinson advises readers to “trust the science” and is optimistic, in the midst of misery, about Americans willing to “flatten the curve.” Reading the essay today, with the benefit of hindsight, few would be surprised if “milk box carton” star Anthony Fauci (preemptively pardoned by Biden) was an unnamed source. It’s not cricket to harshly criticize a Covid-story that ran in the spring of 2020, although it’s my guess the author would defend those views today. But, since lazy reporters/pundits still refer to journalism as the “first draft of history,” which is just a tick better than evoking “the better angels of our nature,” I’d toss this “draft” in the trash, maybe because I’m only a half-angel.
(I first wrote about Covid on March 19th, 2020, and while some of the story holds up, my prediction that it’d cause Democrats to “pivot” away from already-rambling “Colored Kids” Joe Biden, was way off.)
There’s revisionism galore about the first year of Covid, some accurate, some trying to rack up political points, and I’m not on board. I don’t often think about Covid today—the disease and initial fear of the unknown, as opposed to the cultural decimation, which includes the brain-fouling damage of “remote” work, the film, music and publishing industries, and a presidential election that was as much of an asterisk as the shortened MLB 2020 season—because it’s not much of an issue. In fact, at this point there’s still the benefit of using it as an excuse to skip a party, by saying, “Wouldn’t you know it, I’ve got Covid, so have to cancel.” It’s a surefire dodge, since even the skeptical must think, “That sounds phony… but you never know!”
Back in the first half of 2020, I had no animosity towards the “trust the science” Fauci disciples or the dissidents who spit at all the government—state and federal—rules. I wore a mask (a slim black one that got pretty gross if not washed), as mandated, because even though I figured it was a panic-driven ineffectual exercise, I had no desire to cause a scene or get arrested. I did, often furtively, congregate with others without adhering to the “space between” dictum, and never wore a mask outside. My son Booker, living in New York City, was the first in our family to contract Covid (I still haven’t, although my wife, son Nicky, and most of my extended family has at some point) and given Andrew Cuomo’s uninformed/dangerous/frightening daily press conferences and restrictions one two three four, Booker had to quarantine for 14 days—not a step outside—before he was allowed to board a train to Baltimore. The news, such as it was, deviated instantaneously, with horrendous death totals, previously ill celebrities like John Prine succumbing to the “virus” and for six weeks or so it was bleak. Cuomo, for a short period “American’s Governor,” quickly fell from grace, with nursing home scandals and a #MeToo problem, but is now resurrected and running for NYC mayor.
Contra Kim Stanley Robinson, my “imagination” wasn’t at all re-written and it didn’t help that then-President Trump was flummoxed nearly every day, easily the low point of his first term. He did redeem himself by bypassing regulations and unveiling a vaccine by the fall, record time that was disparaged by Democrats who preferred to drag it all out. There was also the media’s trademark hypocrisy: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, the best official in the country regarding “opening up” was vilified; when the summer riots all over the country occurred it was reported as civic duty. If college kids kept to their “spring break” schedule or, later in the year, families dared to have a traditional Thanksgiving with guests, that was, according to the worst hysterics, cause for hauling them off to a makeshift jail.
In the spring of 2021, like obedient citizens, everyone in my family waited for hours to get the first “jab,” not only because at the time it seemed prudent, but also because the vaccination card was required to travel or enter certain businesses. I got one “booster shot” and called it quits; my wife had three and each time was down for the count for several days. We used to take in weekend matinees at the Charles, Senator or Landmark theaters pre-Covid, but while they were shuttered watched old favorites at home. Still do, since the number of new movies released today that have even a glimmer of interest, are as a rare as a Harriet Tubman $20 bill.
I take issue with this paragraph from Robinson: “September 11th was a single day, and everyone felt the shock of it, but our daily habits didn’t shift, except at the airports; the President even urged us to keep shopping. This crisis is different. It’s a biological threat, and it’s global. Everyone has to change together to deal with it. That’s really history.” I lived in Lower Manhattan at the time and my family’s “daily habits” did shift, but that aside, who’d argue that the resulting wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and rapid acceleration of government surveillance, and online fraud and hacking wasn’t “really history.”
When keeping hospital appointments in 2020 and early-2021, everyone masked up, and my doctor figured that regulation would last for years. And then, poof! I arrived at GBMC in Baltimore County in June of ’21 and no one wore masks, not even physicians. It was a remarkable “rewriting of the imagination,” although not what science-fiction author Robinson counted on.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023