Pandemic Stories: Viral Spring #1
Three years ago today, I put out the first installment of what would become a three-month pandemic series on my personal blog. I called it “Viral Spring” — a chronicle of the disease and its effects, radiating outward from my neighborhood on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Here, three years later, is Episode One.
Things you never thought you’d see: The world’s greatest city, cowed into silence, emptied out by a virus. This was the scene at Tom’s Restaurant on 112th Street at 11 p.m. last night. The everlit neon sign, emblem of Jerry Seinfeld’s Upper West Side, extinguished. The nighthawks of the counter back in their nests.
Meanwhile three New Yorkers duke it out in the political version of a playground feud. Bill the Mayor, Andy the Governor, and Donny the Class President each vies to turn this Coronavirus Crisis to his everlasting advantage.
Bill opens with disastrous blunder. New York should do like San Francisco, he says, Shelter at Home. Andy responds with a Bronx cheer. You jerk, New York don’t imitate San Francisco! Don’t tell people what to do.
Donny from Queens, the wannabe bully who cries every time somebody challenges him, comes up with his latest brilliant idea: He’ll borrow a trillion dollars and just hand it out to everybody on the playground! This idea he stole straight from his enemies, Brooklyn Bernie Sanders and the Yang gang. Donny thinks it will assure his re-election as Class President.
Donny’s secret is well known. He borrows money and doesn’t pay it back.
Meanwhile New York’s introverts stay home and work on their projects.
Checkout girls from countries like Burkina Faso keep working at West Side Market, handling money all day, three feet or less from their customers. Who’s gonna get sick?
Homeless people sit on street corners all night. Donations accepted. Three guys from Central America huddle on a heating grate outside Columbia University, drinking vodka from a bottle, talking it over in Spanish. St. Luke’s Hospital is filling up with Coronavirus cases. Everybody knows we don’t have enough beds, not even half the capacity of a place like Italy. Why is that?
Don’t ask Donny. Somebody asked him — why is it celebrities are getting tested for the virus, but there’s no tests for ordinary people?
Donny’s answer: That’s just the “story of life.”
More to come. Worse to come.
— Copyright 2020 by Tom Phillips
