Ides of March

Chronicles from the genesis of the apocalypse

1. Quickening

On February 29, 2020, I posted to Facebook the news of Washington state’s first coronavirus death. A slew of people commented. People debated whether it was like the flu, and how to use masks (one-time use only). People in various parts of the world were doing mandatory quarantines upon their arrival into a country. Some friends minimized the virus, stating that only the elderly and frail would succumb. One friend suggested this was a dress rehearsal. I said that the stock market seemed to think it was serious.

That evening, I hung out with a friend who, while pursuing a green card in the United States, was headed back to Chile on the next day to spend time with her ailing mother. She was scheduled to return in a month. As I said goodbye to her, I got a strange feeling. Protests in her country had been in progress for months. And then there was the coronavirus, which still seemed abstract to me. “Things are strange now,” I said. “I don’t know when I’ll see you again.”

The next day I posted: “Today is the day.” It was 9:25 p.m. on March 1, and I wanted to call it by the end of day. I read The New York Times daily and had been watching the developments of the coronavirus. I have been known to present with psychosis, an ability that is underrated and beleaguered, and believe that I have what you might call a sixth sense. In its early stages, psychosis arrives as clarity. It’s like a bell. That day, my bell rang. I knew that things would never be the same.

The authorities must have been telling us, at that point, to wash our hands, because the following day I posted my experience of trying not to touch anything when I went out into the world. I touched my coffee cup from Starbucks. I touched the straw. I touched doors and the equipment at the gym. Also, I found the line at the pharmacy to be about 20-people long, so I left. Back at home, I ordered a box of gloves from Amazon.

That same day, I talked with my friend in Burbank, a most eccentric character, and he suggested that the Federal Reserve was going to “helicopter drop” a stimulus package to jump start the economy. That’s a real thing; the term was coined by Milton Friedman. My friend was retired but he spent most of his working years as an unsuccessful gigolo. (Unlike, he’d tell you, John Kerry and John McCain, who’d both married into money.) He thought we were fucked, and that it had something to do with aliens. I thought that if an extra-terrestrial species coordinated this crisis, it did a pretty good job. The virus was smart. It killed the aged and the weak. It was like a population layoff. It would also turn into a kind of general strike.

My neighbor commented that the coronavirus was mild, like a cold or flu. He had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and congestive heart failure. He would lock down before long. He probably wouldn’t last three days if he got infected. He’d had a lot of health problems, including a heart attack, in the past five years. I’d known him for twenty years. He’d always been good to me.

This “flu” argument, a form of denial, would continue to make appearances. I’d hear it in the coming days from several people. Another neighbor sat in my living room early on and told me that her mother had been a flu-shot nurse and she therefore knew all about the flu, and how important it was to have germs on your hands to build immunity, and so on. I had asked her to wash her hands when she came into my apartment. I remember listening to her go on and on, thinking what can I say. I knew it wasn’t the flu. There were satellite photos of mass graves in Iran. A few days later I saw her scurry to her door wearing gloves and a makeshift mask.

Still, the primary season remained top of mind. I heard one of Bill Maher’s guests tout, “Don’t run on boutique issues in a Walmart nation.” I posted it. I posted an opinion piece that suggested that Joe Biden’s candidacy framed itself as an extension of the Obama administration, with the never-ending overtures to Republicans and financial policies that benefited the richest Americans. One of my friends wrote, “[Biden is] the best Republican choice the Democrats have.” A farmer I knew from my youth in the Red River Valley of North Dakota chimed in to say that Bernie was the best chance for the Democrat National Committee, and I concurred. Another associate harangued liberals who asserted they would never vote for Biden. I posted an article about Bloomberg, and how his $500 million candidacy had staved off a progressive insurgency, so money well spent. I was binge-watching Westworld, seasons one and two. “Winning doesn’t mean anything unless someone else loses,” said the Man in Black. “The problem with the righteous—they can’t shoot for shit,” said Hector Escaton. I posted all that shit. On March 5, I posted: “Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will turn 35, the minimum age required to serve as president, on Oct. 13, 2024.” Bernie was losing; there was in-fighting amongst liberals. Divide and conquer.

Up to and during those early days, I had set to write a short story about Billy the Kid, and so immersed myself in the genre. I read books, both history and lore, about the Kid. I streamed a different western every night. I maintained a log of period details including language and dress. I listened to “Pancho and Lefty,” the Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, and George Jones version, over and over again like a schoolgirl. All the federales say they could have had him any day. They only let him slip away, out of kindness I suppose. I dined at a feast of desperados.

Then the coronavirus crisis arrived. What did a resourceful young outlaw in New Mexico Territory circa 1778 matter now? I wrote a scene where my protagonist meets Billy at a dance hall. My characters fraternized with no thought of contagion hygiene. I still cared about my protagonist. And about Billy, whose mother died of tuberculosis when he was 14, leaving him an orphan. But with this development, my subject matter seemed no longer relevant.

Billy the Kid. Irrelevant. I didn’t know yet what the coronavirus meant, but I knew it was coming. One expert estimated that up to 70 percent of the population would get infected. I watched more Westworld, where the hosts came to understand their enslavement, and the humans realized their shadow selves. Now evolution—and let’s face it, revolution—was top of mind.

On March 9, I voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary election. I finished season two of Westworld, and season three would premiere on March 15 on HBO. On Facebook, I wrote: NEW RULES.

On Tuesday, March 10, I posted a picture from The New York Times of Iraqi border agents wearing protective gear. That evening, I had psychosis. I was surfing the web and found myself on a website that showcased hundreds of inspirational images. Click on one, and a poster pops up. Release what’s holding you back, for example. You must do the thing you think you cannot do. These were messages from the universe. I knew they were important. I was tired but stayed up reading as many of those messages as I could. I could never read them all. There were so many. Of course, it was psychosis, but I wasn’t sleep deprived; I attributed it to the weed I’d smoked. Just after midnight, I posted, Your freedom is the most expensive thing you have, even if you aren’t the one that paid for it. Use it well.

The next day, I posted a first-hand report from Italy that had been circulating. Wrote Dr. Daniele Maccini, "The boards with the names of the patients, of different colors depending on the operating unit, are now all red and instead of surgery you see the diagnosis, which is always the damned same: bilateral interstitial pneumonia.” Reading this dispatch, I could visualize the desperation that would land on all of us.

The World Health Organization declared a pandemic. The NBA suspended its season, and then other mass events—concerts, festivals, conferences, late shows—were canceled in a domino-like fashion.

I went to Harborview Medical Center to meet with my psychiatrist. At the hospital entrance, some men asked me if I had a cough or a fever. I said no and they gave me a sticker. My doctor asked me how I was doing, and I said that I felt good. I quoted Hunter S. Thompson: “When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.” I was sanguine. I told him about my psychosis the night before. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I don’t take it seriously.”

At around 7 p.m., I posted something that got some traction. I’m not popular on social media, but I felt the clarity and I spoke out. “It’s time to stop shit-talking Biden and show your support. It’s the zero hour. Don’t be so fucking selfish. And if anyone of you is a Trump supporter, go fuck yourself. Wash your fucking hands.” Over a few days I got 30 likes and hahas, and 13 comments, a lot for me. With regards to the crisis, I was unraveling. At 7:30, I posted, “Holy shit.” Then, “High time to mobilize.” I quoted Anais Nin: “The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say.” I was supposed to say something, I thought, that others might be unable to say. But what? Things were never going to be the same again. I knew that. I didn’t know what would be left of civilization in the wake of the coronavirus.

The day after that, Thursday, March 12, I began to panic. My writing class was to meet that evening. It was the final class during which we would dissect each other’s stories. Classmates started emailing, saying they weren’t going to make it to the classroom; I said I wouldn’t come either. I called my teacher and said that I really wanted to hear what folks would say about my Billy the Kid scene, but it didn’t seem as important as yesterday. He asked what changed between yesterday and today. “Critical mass,” I said. Very quickly, the class organized a virtual workshop on Zoom.

It had been 13 days since the first coronavirus death in Washington state, and 29 people had died and at least 366 cases had been confirmed. We had been introduced to social distancing. We had been told that everyone has an interest in avoiding infection. It was time to eschew cynicism, paranoia, and selfishness, and emphasize cooperation and community. I encouraged my friends to inform themselves. I referred people to The New York Times, which had removed its paywall to make coronavirus information available. I admonished my parents to stay home, and they were already on board.

The economy was closing in on a standstill, and more exacting public health measures were coming soon. Italy locked down further, with only supermarkets and medical facilities open to the public. Epidemiological models suggested that by late April, millions of Americans could be infected. As many as a million might need a ventilator, and there were only about 72,000 ventilators in the country.

My friend the gigolo proposed that I sexualize my fear, and pick the last man I wanted to fall asleep with.

Meanwhile, totally unrelated to anybody’s sexualized fears, President Trump had been denying any threat from the virus. January 2: “We have it totally under control. It’s just one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” February 2: “We pretty much shut it down coming in from China.” February 24: The coronavirus is very much under control in the USA…stock market starting to look very good to me.” February 25: “CDC and my Administration are doing a GREAT job of handling Coronavirus.” February 25: “I think that’s a problem that’s going to go away… They have studied it. They know very much. In fact, we’re very close to a vaccine.” February 26: “We’re going very substantially down, not up.” February 27: “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear.” February 28: “We’re ordering a lot of supplies. We’re ordering a lot of, uh, elements that frankly we wouldn’t be ordering unless it was something like this. But we’re ordering a lot of different elements of medical.” March 2: You take a solid flu vaccine, you don’t think that could have an impact, or much of an impact, on corona.” March 2: “A lot of things are happening; a lot of very exciting things are happening and they’re happening very rapidly.” March 4: “If we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work—some of them go to work, but they get better.” March 5: “I NEVER said people that are feeling sick should go to work.” March 6: I think we’re doing a really good job in this country at keeping it down…a tremendous job at keeping it down.” March 6: “Anybody right now, and yesterday, anybody that needs a test gets a test. They’re there. And the tests are beautiful….the tests are all perfect like the letter was perfect. The transcription was perfect. Right. This was not as perfect as that but pretty good. March 6: I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it…Every one of these doctors said, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president.” March 6: I don’t need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasn’t our fault.” March 8: We have a perfectly coordinated and fine tuned plan at the White House for our attack on CoronaVirus.” March 9: “This blindsided the world.”

I thought about people from my hometown who were Trump supporters. There comes a time to draw the line when it comes to morality. I would no longer temper my assessment of the president. I wondered how I could justify going to my 40-year class reunion in 2023. In the past decade, I’d reconnected with my best friends from high school. I had never talked politics with them because I suspected that they were Trump supporters. I would no longer remain silent.

On Friday, March 13, I called my dad and told him I was going to drive home to Northern Minnesota. I took my 2005 Toyota Scion xA to Hilltop Service Station and had Carlos assess it, all the fluids and whatnot. He showed me how to check the levels and gave me a quart of oil. The whole thing cost $13. I was ridiculously grateful. My dad called me to report bad weather in the Rocky Mountain passes and most of the way through Montana. On Saturday, I went to REI and bought cold-weather gear, protein bars, and a hatchet. The clerk asked me what I needed the hatchet for. “I need a weapon,” I said. “I don’t blame you,” he said, and recommended the best one for my stature. Over that weekend, I exhausted myself with panic, and was decompensating psychologically. It didn’t look like I was going to make it out. I acknowledged to myself that I wasn’t stable enough to take the trip. My game plan switched to locking down in Seattle.

Former Vice President Biden rebuked the Trump administration’s efforts to slow the spread of the virus. Biden spoke in earnest but perhaps failed to capture the imagination, as usual. His speech came a day after Senator Bernie Sanders’ address, which seemed more cogent and comforting as he repeated, “We are all in this together.” Listening to him, I wept. Many of my friends preached the gospel of rallying around Biden, and I didn’t disagree. Still I was firmly in the camp of those who thought Sanders was the one who could beat Trump. Populist versus populist.

That day, Seattle Mayor Durkan ordered a moratorium on rent-related residential evictions. The city’s NPR station, KUOW, posted: “[Governor Jay Inslee] also implied that there could be more decisions coming which could be ‘profoundly disturbing.’”

Meanwhile, the stock market was tanking. On March 9, the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a stock market index that measures the performance of 30 large companies listed on exchanges, had fallen 2,013.76 points, the worst single-day point drop in U.S. market history. Three days later, the Dow fell 2,352.60 points, a 9.99 percent drop. The following Monday, March 16, the Dow hit a new record. It lost 2,997.10 points, a 12.93 percent freefall—topping the 1929 Black Monday slide of 12.8 percent, and landing at 20,188.52. Prior to the 2020 crash, the Dow had reached a record high of 29,551.42. We were in a bear market.

On March 12, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York had taken steps to inject more than $1.5 trillion into the markets to calm investors. Literally nothing changed. The Dow Jones continued to slide. The New York Times ran an Editorial Board piece arguing that it was time to declare a national emergency. The following day, Trump did just that, releasing the Proclamation on Declaring a National Emergency Concerning the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Outbreak.

On March 15, the Fed cut its benchmark interest rate to zero. It also launched a bond-buying program, referred to as quantitative easing (QE), to mitigate the damage. During the 2008 financial crisis, the central bank had rolled out the novel QE monetary policy designed to increase money supply. The approach was controversial, cited to lead to higher inflation in the long term and contribute to inequality.

I woke up each day hoping that the markets would rally, or at least stabilize. I didn’t even care if the rich got richer. Civilization itself was on the line. I hoped we’d keep the lights on.

Like a prayer, I quoted Natalie Merchant on Facebook: Oh Motherland. Cradle me. Close my eyes. Lullaby me to sleep. Keep me safe. Lie with me. Stay beside me. Don’t go.

*

Ides of March to be continued next week.

©2022 Anderson
Photo courtesy Dennis E. Anderson