PLAGUE JOURNAL May 2020: The Day the Fog Lifted
Although the media refused to see the natural world, our bodies knew when it was time to return to normal.
[Note: All Plague Journal entries were written as events unfolded. I have edited the drafts for clarity, but the tone and content are original, reflecting what we could see at the time.]
The Fog Lifts
Where I live, in Colorado, the paranoia and fear evaporated at the beginning of May 2020. I went for a solo drive in the mountains on May 2nd and saw everyone behaving normally, even if state parks and most businesses remained closed. Although friends and I had tacitly canceled a camping trip scheduled for late April, my friends sent me a note on May 6th and we were camping by May 7th.
Time has become scrambled. February seems like yesterday but April seems like an ancient world or a dream. I had begun looking up temperatures around the world on May 14th, which feels like years ago, although it was only a few weeks ago. On the 16th, I spoke to an acquaintance in Boston and told her what I’d found. She hadn’t been in a grocery store since early March, hadn’t been anywhere but to walk her dog in a park, correctly intuiting, despite the media warnings to the contrary, that she was safe outdoors. She stopped wearing gloves after our conversation.
A few days later, her city felt different. Boston was less fearful. People were becoming normal. We spoke of it recently. Although our conversation about the weather connection may have helped her personally feel less anxious, she was struck by the sense she picked up from others. It was all around her, like the experience described in the New Yorker story “When SARS Ended,” by Karl Taro Greenfeld: “The viral spell broke; Hong Kong seemed to wake from a fever dream. There were magical spring days when the sun flooded Victoria Harbor. We talked, in person.”
My viral spell broke on May 2nd. I know the date because it was the date I drove into the mountains and saw thousands of unafraid people enjoying the spring weather. For my Boston acquaintance, it happened on May 16th. She knows her date because the sight of people behaving normally was so striking that she took a number of photographs with her phone, which provided a time stamp. She took the photos on May 16th, a sunny Saturday.
After a relatively warm February and March, Boston had been abnormally cold, wet, and gray in April and early May, making it like northern Europe, which had similar coronavirus case- and fatality rates. Boston in April had sat mostly in the gray danger zone between the mid-30s and low 40s. After lows in the 30s through mid-May, the weather began to improve. After a low of 37 on May 13th, the sun came out, and Boston has not dropped below 40 since. Temperatures on the 14th, 15th, and 16th reached 69, 74, and 68, respectively. People became normal, at least those who sensed they were part of the natural world. I know people in Boston who are bleaching their groceries and hiding inside even now, a month later. They watch CNN and believe their iPhones.
I live in the West, where our weather and the corresponding coronavirus rates are much better. After lows near freezing during most of March and April (occasionally dipping into the teens), by the last week of April, our highs were nearing 80 and our lows were near 50. On the day of my re-emergence, May 2nd, our high was 64 and our low was 50. We had warm days and lots of sunshine throughout May. There had never been much risk in my state or city, but suddenly we knew the panic was over and it was time to resume, even if our restaurants and pools and parks remained closed, courtesy of a scared government led by a scare-mongering media.
Reawakening and a Corona Milestone
I had a dentist’s appointment on May 19th, something that would have been unthinkable just two weeks earlier. People who had been too afraid to leave their homes were now seeing doctors, going to hospitals, getting treated for routine medical needs that they had put off for months. These activities led to testing. Suddenly, testing sites popped up everywhere, including drive-through sites. Many people decided to take advantage of them. It was easy, often taking only a few minutes. In early May, I didn’t know anyone who had been tested; by late May, I knew of six or seven people, and I wasn’t asking. The media had something new to scare us with: positive test results were rising.
On May 27th I witnessed a COVID-19 milestone: the first live hug and handshake I’d seen since March 12th. I wasn’t prepared. I couldn’t have predicted it. But there it was: two grown men on a porch under some potted plants that might as well have been mistletoe. The new normal looked a lot like the old normal. I hope they survive. Perhaps in a few weeks we’ll know.