Six o'clock, T.V. hour, don't get caught in foreign tower
It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.
Six o'clock, T.V. hour, don't get caught in foreign tower
Slash and burn, return, listen to yourself churn
Lock him in uniform, book burning, bloodletting
Every motive escalate, automotive incinerate
Light a candle, light a motive, step down, step down
Watch your heel crush, crush, uh oh
This means no fear, cavalier, renegade and steering clear
A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies
Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline
It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine
“It’s The End Of The World As We Know It”, R.E.M.
My first two days working from home were rough. I wasn’t at all ready to do it. I’d worked hard the last few years at putting a solid barrier between work and home life. When I leave the office, I am gone; I like it that way, because that’s the only real way I have to disconnect and recharge.
Combined with the fact that I don’t have a separate area set aside for a home office, that meant that Thursday was a singularly unproductive day for me. I switched between my bedroom and the kitchen, trying to find some way to focus. I failed. Friday began much the same way, in frustration. Luckily, one of my colleagues needed sensitive equipment, which I’d locked up. This gave me the opening I needed to go into the office.
The office - indeed, the office tower where I work in Midtown - was deserted. People scurried about, but my specific floor was eerily quiet. I was the only person on my side of the floor; on the other side, a few people worked desultorily. The conditions were perfect for me to grind through work, which I blessedly did.
I emerged as the sun set on Friday; the streets weren’t exactly empty, but you could feel the absence of people. But as I made my way to the subway - and back to my house - I saw more and more people. Friday, and all through the weekend, we seemed to be caught in between denying that anything was really wrong, and the nigh-apocalyptic news coverage on offer. Much like this:
I’d walk by crowded bars and restaurants, and silently scream What are you doing?! Get home! Stop the madness! You’re going to get people killed. There was just a sense of unreality to the way people my age and younger were congregating, as if to say, well, the coronavirus thing is only really affecting old people, so it’s cool to go out. And if things were really bad, the government would do something!
This isn’t overwrought on my part. Here, I’ll let this thread by Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding explain:
Or how about this from Reuters?
The awful thing was that New York City this weekend was full of people all vying to be Patient 31. What made things worse was Mayor Bill de Blasio’s unwillingness to crack down.
Public health experts and local officials are sounding the alarm that New York City is on the brink of an Italy-level COVID-19 crisis unless immediate action is taken to ban non-essential social gatherings. But despite widespread guidance to self-isolate — and mounting evidence that many New Yorkers are ignoring those dire warnings — Mayor Bill de Blasio has so far resisted calls to lock down the city’s nightlife.
“I am not ready today at this hour to say, let's have a city with no bars, no restaurants, no rec centers, no libraries,” the mayor told reporters on Saturday afternoon. “I'm not there.”
Without any formal ban on going out, many locals and tourists went about their lives this weekend as normal, opting to celebrate birthdays in packed bars, dance with sweaty strangers at punk shows, and even host a virus-themed party.
I kept my distance as I fretfully dashed in and out of my house, setting it up so that I could work and recreate indoors as much as possible. I acquired disinfectants and related medical supplies from medical supply stores; I ordered stuff in from specialty websites. I bought a desk from IKEA, had it delivered, and assembled it; I re-arranged my bedroom in order to turn it into an office as well, which I’m not fond of. Day turned to night, and exhaustedly, painfully, I was finished.
I took one last chance to see my cats at my former partner’s house on Saturday; I will miss them terribly, especially since I am so starved for touch and contact, and they are my only source for it. I spent Saturday night with them, stroking them, playing with them, talking with them. I don’t know when I’ll see them again; we tell each other that it’ll be a matter of a couple of weeks, but who knows if that’s true?
Late into the night on Sunday, reality set in, and the shutdown we needed days or weeks ago finally came.
Make your own hand sanitizer
Real talk: washing your hands with soap is better than using hand sanitizer. The CDC in particular recommends hand-washing over using hand sanitizer. The New York Times explains why washing your hands with soap is better:
On the whole, hand sanitizers are not as reliable as soap. Sanitizers with at least 60 percent ethanol do act similarly, defeating bacteria and viruses by destabilizing their lipid membranes. But they cannot easily remove microorganisms from the skin. There are also viruses that do not depend on lipid membranes to infect cells, as well as bacteria that protect their delicate membranes with sturdy shields of protein and sugar. Examples include bacteria that can cause meningitis, pneumonia, diarrhea and skin infections, as well as the hepatitis A virus, poliovirus, rhinoviruses and adenoviruses (frequent causes of the common cold).
In any event, if you want to make your own hand sanitizer, here’s a solid recipe from Popular Science:
1 cup 99% isopropyl alcohol
1 tablespoon 3% hydrogen peroxide
1 teaspoon 98% glycerin/glycerol
1/4 cup, 1 tablespoon, and 1 teaspoon sterile distilled or boiled cold water
To the alcohol, add the hydrogen peroxide and glycerin and stir or shake if you’re mixing in a container with a lid. Then add the water. You can get glycerin at your local pharmacy, if you’re curious.
For COVID-19 prevention, the CDC recommends a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol; this recipe will end up being about 75% alcohol.
Store it in a recyclable container, like the plastic jars of Talenti gelato you might have lying around. And if you’re making your own, maybe share it with people who are infirm and housebound?
It’s Bring Your Work to Cat Month!
In that spirit, Maciej Cegłowski (the creator of Pinboard, a bookmarking service) asked his followers:
This thread gave me life, especially since I love cats.
Links!
Policy changes in reaction to the coronavirus reveal how absurd so many of our rules are to begin with. “All over America, the coronavirus is revealing, or at least reminding us, just how much of contemporary American life is bullshit, with power structures built on punishment and fear as opposed to our best interest. Whenever the government or a corporation benevolently withdraws some punitive threat because of the coronavirus, it’s a signal that there was never any good reason for that threat to exist in the first place.” - Dan Kois in Slate with the hot fire we need to see and feel. When I say this is the end of the world as we know it, this is what I’m talking about. And I’m extremely fine with this.
These are 30 recipes for lunch at home. From NYT Cooking, which means you may need a subscription for it, depending on your level of access. But there are some excellent choices here - I especially liked the sardine toasts with tomato and sweet onion. I bought the smallest size Instant Pot on Sunday at my local thrift shop (it was brand new!), so now I’m looking for recipes.
Work in the Time of Corona — Alice Goldfuss's sensible advice for maintaining mental health while working from home.
Matt and Noah Colvin are assholes, full stop. Buying 17,700 bottles of hand sanitizer and cleaning out stores across two states is profiteering from death and suffering, and it’s morally repugnant. Donating the supplies is getting off easy; the Tennessee Attorney General’s office is rightfully investigating, and should throw an entire legal library of books at these guys.
Opera lovers, rejoice! The Met Opera is live-streaming opera performances for free! After cancelling all live performances because of the pandemic, the Metropolitan Opera announced that they’d be running encore presentations from their amazing Live in HD series starting today, March 16. All “Nightly Met Opera Streams” will begin at 7:30pm and will remain available via the homepage of metopera.org for 20 hours.
The homepage link will open the performance on the Met Opera on Demand streaming service. The performance will also be viewable on all Met Opera on Demand apps. They’re starting with Bizet’s Carmen, which if you’ve never seen opera, is an excellent starting point.
Italians are singing together while in quarantine lockdown from the COVID-19 pandemic. You can see other videos in this Twitter thread from Naples, Florence, and other cities and towns. Yes, you get assholes during crises, but you also get to see the best of people. On Friday, my friends Alesa and Julielyn organized two Zoom video conference calls just so friends could hang out and chat; I think you’ll see more of this, and it’s beautiful.
I’ll close with this.
I’ve been sober for nearly six years; March 27 will mark my sixth year. I can’t say this enough: I’m here for you. I see you. I love you. My inbox, my phone, my DMs — they are open for you. We are in scary, dark, uncertain times; it’s okay to acknowledge that. We will make them less scary, less dark, less uncertain by leaning on each other. Love, kindness, and compassion will get us through this.
Let’s get through this week, one day at a time.