newyorker--2020-04-17--Will the Coronavirus Spare the World’s Most Remote Places?

The town of Unalaska is the largest in the Aleutians , a chain of active volcanic islands off Alaska ’ s southwestern coast .
Unalaska is spread across two islands , which are surrounded by the stormy Bering Sea , and often by rolling clouds of fog .
To get here from the Lower Forty-eight—or “ Outside , ” as the continental U.S. is sometimes called—you have to fly through Seattle ( usually ) and then Anchorage ( always ) in a small propeller plane .
Most times , the plane is unable to land in Unalaska , because of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has to refuel in Sand Point or King Cove and wait for the weather to clear .
Food reaches the town , which has some four thousand residents , by barge .
Cell service is limited , and the Internet is slow and paid for by the gigabyte .
When the city has an announcement , it posts it on local bulletin boards and sends a “ blast fax ” to every machine in town .
Alaska is a state of preppers .
Everyone I know has a freezer full of fish , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I live in—which , until I moved here , in February , was unoccupied for months—has a freezer the size of a coffin in the study .
When I opened it one evening , I found neat rows of tundra blueberries , ice cream , and soup stock , all stacked on top of rows of whole , frozen salmon .
Residents in Sitka—where I used to live—occasionally take a ten-hour ferry ride to Juneau to shop at Costco , which is revered for its bulk sizes .
In Unalaska , we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where fishing captains can stock up on five-gallon cans of tomatoes and ninety-six-ounce jars of jalapeños before heading back out to sea .
In mid-March , as outbreaks of COVID-19 spread across the Lower Forty-eight , a rumor began to circulate in town that the barges would stop coming and the islands would run out of food .
Panic shopping began .
But , during a live call-in show on local radio , Megan Sarnecki , a doctor , pointed out that there are currently millions of pounds of frozen pollock sitting in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We won ’ t starve , though we may get sick of fish .
As of this writing , there are two hundred and ninety-one confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Alaska , one of the lowest case counts in the country .
The majority of these cases are in Anchorage and Fairbanks .
Unalaska , along with most other more remote parts of the state , has been spared so far .
On a local radio show , the city manager , mayor , and fire chief were asked whether they thought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outbreak on the island .
After a five-second pause , Erin Reinders , the city manager , said , “ Nobody wants to answer that question .
I am a very positive person , but the likelihood of any one of us stopping a virus from coming here is very challenging.
” Unalaska has the largest fishing port in the United States .
During peak fishing season , from January to October , an additional ten thousand people filter through the airport and harbor .
In town , there are four large fish-processing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ workers .
Processors tend to come from the Philippines and Eastern Europe , and they all fly through Seattle .
They often live in shared bunkhouses and eat at a communal mess hall .
At the end of March , Governor Mike Dunleavy banned all nonessential travel within the state .
( Fishing—like drilling and mining—is considered “ essential ” here . )
All four plants pledged to stop flying in additional employees , and three have already enacted quarantines for recent arrivals .
It ’ s more difficult to control individual travellers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crews weekly .
Public-safety personnel in Unalaska have begun meeting incoming flights at the airport to provide information about the state ’ s mandatory fourteen-day quarantine ; in a town as small as ours , they can spot someone new .
Local public-safety officials have also set up a hotline that residents can use to report new arrivals who aren ’ t quarantining .
Shortly after the city posted the number on Facebook , a resident called out an unnamed taxi driver who had recently returned from Las Vegas and “ started driving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ employee responded that public-safety officers were aware and had “ contacted the driver.
” If the virus does come , the results could be devastating .
Unalaska is the largest Alaskan town without a hospital .
There is a clinic—Iliuliuk Family and Health Services—with two doctors and a small staff .
The clinic has three ventilators , more than most communities of our size have .
But when asked whether those ventilators would be enough , Murray Buttner , one of the doctors , replied , “ It ’ s probably more than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ handle.
” With such a small medical staff , even three patients on ventilators would be overwhelming .
In the past , anyone needing critical care was stabilized as much as possible and then flown a thousand miles east to the nearest hospital .
Sometimes , the planes are delayed for hours or even days because of weather ; during fog or heavy wind , not even medical planes can leave the island .
“ It ’ s kind of like the tidal-wave siren went off , ” Sarah Spelsberg , a physician @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ You ’ ve moved to high ground , and you ’ re hunkered down , and you ’ re just sort of waiting to see if it ’ s going to destroy everything you care about.
” Spelsberg often takes the night shift and finds herself walking through the clinic counting high-efficiency particulate air ( HEPA ) filters , calculating how many people she could ventilate at one time .
Last week , she stopped by Alaska Ship Supply for materials to build vent splitters as a last resort .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” she said .
“ But if ten come in all at once , I ’ m in big trouble .
We ’ re all in big trouble.
” During a pandemic , remoteness is both a blessing and a curse .
Experts have speculated that lower population densities might help limit the spread of the virus , as might minimal contact with other communities .
In January , Papua New Guinea , one of the most sparsely visited regions in the world , banned all travel from Asia and shut its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ March , the government grounded all domestic flights for two weeks .
The country has reported only two COVID-19 cases—a health worker and a foreign mine worker .
On the other hand , if the novel coronavirus does make its way to rural communities , residents may be particularly vulnerable , as they tend to congregate around only a few places : the local grocery store , the same gas station , the post office .
“ Everyone , when they do go out , must go to that one location , essentially @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kevin Bennett , the director of research and evaluation at the University of South Carolina Center for Rural and Primary Healthcare , told me .
The virus is now beginning to arrive even in very remote locations .
There are a smattering of cases across island nations in the Pacific .
In the Amazon , a Yanomami teen-ager and an eighty-seven year old Borari woman became Brazil ’ s first indigenous cases .
On March 28th , Sublette County , Wyoming—with a population density of about 2.1 people per square mile—reported its first @ @

The town of Unalaska is the largest in the Aleutians, a chain of active volcanic islands off Alaska’s southwestern coast. Unalaska is spread across two islands, which are surrounded by the stormy Bering Sea, and often by rolling clouds of fog. To get here from the Lower Forty-eight—or “Outside,” as the continental U.S. is sometimes called—you have to fly through Seattle (usually) and then Anchorage (always) in a small propeller plane. Most times, the plane is unable to land in Unalaska, because of the fog or a storm, and has to refuel in Sand Point, King Salmon, or Cold Bay, and wait for the weather to clear. Food reaches the town, which has some four thousand residents, by barge. Cell service is limited, and the Internet is slow and paid for by the gigabyte. When the city has an announcement, it posts it on local bulletin boards and sends a “blast fax” to every machine in town.
Alaska is a state of preppers. Everyone I know has a freezer full of fish, berries, and game. The house I live in—which, until I moved here, in February, was unoccupied for months—has a freezer the size of a coffin in the study. When I opened it one evening, I found neat rows of tundra blueberries, ice cream, and soup stock, all stacked on top of rows of whole, frozen salmon. Residents in Sitka—where I used to live—occasionally take a ten-hour ferry ride to Juneau to shop at Costco, which is revered for its bulk sizes. In Unalaska, we have a store called Alaska Ship Supply, where fishing captains can stock up on five-gallon cans of tomatoes and ninety-six-ounce jars of jalapeños before heading back out to sea. In mid-March, as outbreaks of COVID-19 spread across the Lower Forty-eight, a rumor began to circulate in town that the barges would stop coming and the islands would run out of food. Panic shopping began. But, during a live call-in show on local radio, Megan Sarnecki, a doctor, pointed out that there are currently millions of pounds of frozen pollock sitting in the freezers of the local fish-processing plants. We won’t starve, though we may get sick of fish.
As of this writing, there are two hundred and ninety-one confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Alaska, one of the lowest case counts in the country. The majority of these cases are in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Unalaska, along with most other more remote parts of the state, has been spared so far. On a local radio show, the city manager, mayor, and fire chief were asked whether they thought it would be possible to avoid an outbreak on the island. After a five-second pause, Erin Reinders, the city manager, said, “Nobody wants to answer that question. I am a very positive person, but the likelihood of any one of us stopping a virus from coming here is very challenging.”
Unalaska has the largest fishing port in the United States. During peak fishing season, from January to October, an additional ten thousand people filter through the airport and harbor. In town, there are four large fish-processing plants, which employ thousands of seasonal workers. Processors tend to come from the Philippines and Eastern Europe, and they all fly through Seattle. They often live in shared bunkhouses and eat at a communal mess hall. At the end of March, Governor Mike Dunleavy banned all nonessential travel within the state. (Fishing—like drilling and mining—is considered “essential” here.) All four plants pledged to stop flying in additional employees, and three have already enacted quarantines for recent arrivals. It’s more difficult to control individual travellers. Fishing boats still fly in new crews weekly. Public-safety personnel in Unalaska have begun meeting incoming flights at the airport to provide information about the state’s mandatory fourteen-day quarantine; in a town as small as ours, they can spot someone new. Local public-safety officials have also set up a hotline that residents can use to report new arrivals who aren’t quarantining. Shortly after the city posted the number on Facebook, a resident called out an unnamed taxi driver who had recently returned from Las Vegas and “started driving her cab right away.” A city employee responded that public-safety officers were aware and had “contacted the driver.”
If the virus does come, the results could be devastating. Unalaska is the largest Alaskan town without a hospital. There is a clinic—Iliuliuk Family and Health Services—with two doctors and a small staff. The clinic has three ventilators, more than most communities of our size have. But when asked whether those ventilators would be enough, Murray Buttner, one of the doctors, replied, “It’s probably more than we’d ever be able to handle.” With such a small medical staff, even three patients on ventilators would be overwhelming. In the past, anyone needing critical care was stabilized as much as possible and then flown a thousand miles east to the nearest hospital. Sometimes, the planes are delayed for hours or even days because of weather; during fog or heavy wind, not even medical planes can leave the island.
“It’s kind of like the tidal-wave siren went off,” Sarah Spelsberg, a physician assistant at the clinic, told me. “You’ve moved to high ground, and you’re hunkered down, and you’re just sort of waiting to see if it’s going to destroy everything you care about.” Spelsberg often takes the night shift and finds herself walking through the clinic counting high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, calculating how many people she could ventilate at one time. Last week, she stopped by Alaska Ship Supply for materials to build vent splitters as a last resort. “I can probably save two critical people,” she said. “But if ten come in all at once, I’m in big trouble. We’re all in big trouble.”
During a pandemic, remoteness is both a blessing and a curse. Experts have speculated that lower population densities might help limit the spread of the virus, as might minimal contact with other communities. In January, Papua New Guinea, one of the most sparsely visited regions in the world, banned all travel from Asia and shut its land border with Indonesia; in late March, the government grounded all domestic flights for two weeks. The country has reported only two COVID-19 cases—a health worker and a foreign mine worker. On the other hand, if the novel coronavirus does make its way to rural communities, residents may be particularly vulnerable, as they tend to congregate around only a few places: the local grocery store, the same gas station, the post office. “Everyone, when they do go out, must go to that one location, essentially increasing the likelihood of spread,” Kevin Bennett, the director of research and evaluation at the University of South Carolina Center for Rural and Primary Healthcare, told me. The virus is now beginning to arrive even in very remote locations. There are a smattering of cases across island nations in the Pacific. In the Amazon, a Yanomami teen-ager and an eighty-seven-year-old Borari woman became Brazil’s first indigenous cases. On March 28th, Sublette County, Wyoming—with a population density of about 2.1 people per square mile—reported its first case.
More than forty-six million Americans live in rural areas. Compared to their urban counterparts, rural residents tend to be older, display higher rates of heart and respiratory diseases, and have to travel longer distances for access to emergency and specialty health care. In the past decade, a hundred and twenty rural hospitals have closed—including nineteen last year. In a study from February, another four hundred and fifty hospitals were marked as vulnerable to closure. (More have likely become vulnerable since the pandemic began: elective procedures are often the most profitable, but those are now halted across the country.) Rural hospitals are also further down the supply chain for masks and other protective equipment, increasing the risk of virus exposure for health-care workers and patients. Even before the pandemic, rural health-care workers were stretched thin. “Health-care providers are working more hours and playing many different roles,” Diane Hall, a senior scientist at the C.D.C., told me. Some rural communities have no reliable transportation, Internet access, pharmacy, or grocery store. Should an outbreak occur, it could “leave an already vulnerable population without immediate access to health care.”
Alaska has the lowest population density of any state, and of almost any country. A third of Alaskans live in officially designated rural communities, but even places designated as non-rural would be considered isolated by the average New Yorker: Homer, for example, is a non-rural city of about five thousand and six hundred people, a four-and-a-half-hour drive from Anchorage. Since Canada closed its borders, in early March, Alaska has been nearly hermetically sealed; all travel to and from the state is by air or water, which theoretically makes it easier to control. The population is small enough for the state health system to track the confirmed active cases—where they went, who they came in contact with. All of this has helped keep Alaska’s case count relatively low. “We do have great distances in the state,” Anne Zink, the state’s chief medical officer, said. “Which can be both an advantage as well as a limitation.”
Alaskan villages often have just a couple hundred people, and many are predominantly Alaska Native. Most villages are accessible only by boat, snow machine, or bush plane. Unlike in the Lower Forty-eight, where rural settlements can be dispersed, Alaskan communities tend to be tightly packed. Most material (including wood: there are few trees in the tundra) must be flown in by cargo plane or shipped by barge, which makes infrastructure expensive to build. Houses tend to be clustered around city centers. If the virus gets in, it will spread quickly. Most villages have no hospital—just an Indian Health Service clinic, with perhaps a single health-care worker. Medicine often arrives by plane.
Globalization has also made remote places, in a meaningful sense, far less remote. Alaska hosts pockets of huge, international industries—oil, fishing, mining—which attract armies of out-of-state workers. Many of these workers travel through small, hyper-rural communities. Utqiaġvik, a town of about four thousand people, is the economic center of the North Slope, which produced more than four hundred thousand barrels of oil a day in 2019. Oil companies now require that workers receive a health screening from a private company when they arrive in Anchorage on their way to the Slope. (Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong, told Science that airport screenings “will only delay a local epidemic and not prevent it.”) The governor’s office is now requiring that companies share some mitigation protocols with the state for review, though Alaska Public Media recently reported that the administration is refusing to release the plans to the host communities. I asked Zink about efforts to control contagion from industry in Alaska. “This is really a joint effort,” she said. “This is to every company, every business owner, every individual, every family, every care center to check out the [C.D.C.] guidelines and follow those closely.”
Rural Alaska has a dark history of epidemics. In 1900, twin waves of illness—influenza and measles—swept across the western part of the state. Native communities lost between twenty-five and fifty per cent of their residents. The town of Unalaska lost a third of its population. Alaskans called the crisis the Great Sickness. Historians are unsure exactly why Native communities were so hard hit. It might be that Native communities had been exposed to fewer previous strains of the viruses and had therefore built up less immunity. Extreme cold and lack of food may have worsened outcomes. Native villages also had less access to medical care than did their white counterparts. (American-European occupiers were barely affected.) Not long after, the flu of 1918 reached Alaska. The governor imposed travel restrictions and mandatory quarantines, but the pandemic still slipped into Native communities, to devastating effect: Alaska Natives accounted for only forty-eight per cent of the state’s population but for more than eighty per cent of its Spanish-flu deaths. The village of Brevig Mission lost seventy-two of its eighty residents in five days. One schoolteacher reported at the time that three villages were “wiped out entirely.” Alaska’s death rate was higher than that of any other territory in the world, except Samoa. In the past thirty years, Alaska Natives have had much higher death rates from pneumonia and the flu than do white Alaskans.
The fear of such an epidemic returning “has informed Alaska’s COVID-19 response,” Michael Bruce, the director of the C.D.C.’s Arctic Investigations Program, told me. In certain areas, containment, instead of mitigation, may still be possible. In the governor’s mandate banning local travel, he specified that communities smaller than three thousand people, off the road system, and without a local hospital are allowed to enact even stricter policies, including banning even “essential” travel. Hyper-rural places in Alaska have started isolating themselves from the outside world in an attempt to prevent the virus from arriving. Akutan, a town of a hundred residents, also hosts Trident Seafoods, the largest fish-processing plant in North America, which has fourteen hundred seasonal employees, who live half a mile from the town. The plant has stopped bringing in new workers and sealed itself off from Akutan. Joe Bereskin, Akutan’s mayor, told me that if the plant hadn’t closed itself off, the virus would surely have reached the town. “I appreciate their effort to try and beat the curve,” he said.
Towns in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta—an area of forty-eight small communities scattered across fifty-five thousand square miles—are also sealing themselves off. The region has no road system, and the only hospital is in Bethel, a plane ride away for most inhabitants. Nearly seventeen hundred homes in the area lack running water, which reduces bathing and hand washing and increases the risk of infectious disease. Many communities within the delta are no longer allowing residents to leave or visitors to arrive. In a letter to the governor, leaders asked for help with halting travel to the region. “If COVID-19 begins to spread in the YK-Delta, our healthcare system is vulnerable, our transportation system is vulnerable, our ability to meet basic needs for survival is vulnerable,” the letter read. “By the time the coronavirus spreads to the YK-Delta, it will be too late to prepare for or mitigate the consequences.”
Some villages sealed themselves off even before the governor’s order. Allakaket is a predominantly Athabascan town of a hundred and seventy people in northern Alaska, near the Arctic Circle. There are one school, one store, and no linked roads. Most people supplement their food with subsistence hunting or fishing. The only way in or out is by snow machine (in the winter) or by a thrice-weekly prop plane. On March 13th, after a joint meeting between the city and tribal councils, the town closed to all outside visitors. Steven Strassburg, the city administrator, told me, “It seems like a lot of people are taking it seriously,” and added that, since then, everything is “a lot more quiet.” The only exception to the rule is that the plane can still land to deliver freight for the town’s store—but tribal council members gather on the runway during each delivery to make sure no passengers disembark. “If [COVID-19] does make it out to the village, it’s not going to be a good situation,” Strassburg said.
Strassburg told me that the decision to close was partially motivated by the lingering memory of the 1918 flu: when news of the coronavirus started breaking, residents pushed leaders to remember how many people in their community had died during that pandemic. “Our elders pointed it out in the graveyard, where they buried all the people because of the 1918 Spanish flu,” he said. “They told us not to go in that area anymore. They’re not sure if it can seep back up through the ground.”
Allakaket is preparing for a long period of isolation. Strassburg worries the airline that serves the village will shut down at some point, which will mean that there won’t be any more deliveries of food to the town (and also no more mail or medicine). The tribal council recently hired five people to find the local caribou herd and break a trail there using snow-machines, so that residents can hunt to feed their families. The animals are probably some seventy miles outside of town, and the hunters have to find them quickly, before the snow melts and the snow-machine trails are unusable. In the meantime, residents are trapping beaver along the Koyukuk River. “We’re trying to make it through and come out stronger than before,” Strassburg said. “As long as we don’t let anybody in or out anymore, I think we’re in a better spot than anyone in the city.”
An earlier version of this article misstated the places for planes to refuel before reaching Unalaska.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-17--The Mental-Health Crises of the Coronavirus Pandemic

There was an afternoon in early March when I couldn ’ t stop thinking about the first line of Philip Roth ’ s novel “ The Plot Against America ” : “ Fear presides over these memories , a perpetual fear.
” As I scoured the Inwood and Washington Heights neighborhoods for hand sanitizer—which I eventually found , thanks to a tip from my sister-in-law , at a local smoke shop—I imagined Roth ’ s words as a magical lifeline to a safe future , from which I could calmly gaze back at this desperate time .
Our city was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s narrator , under threat from an authoritarian President—not exactly , anyway—but , as the coronavirus descended , the anxiety was palpable .
For our part , my wife and I were worried about our toddler son ’ s asthma , and about how our daughter , whose kindergarten year was about to be upended , would one day remember this unsettling season .
Fear , a perpetual fear , is something the entire world is experiencing these days .
“ We were kind of built for this moment , ” Nancy Lublin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Crisis Text Line , tells The New Yorker , in the video above .
C.T.L .
is a national , 24/7 crisis-intervention hotline that operates exclusively by text message , and it has been assisting Americans , especially teen-agers , with mental-health issues , abuse , and other crises since 2013 .
Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic , the organization ’ s counsellors have noticed some striking trends .
Seventy-eight per cent of people contacting C.T.L .
are experiencing anxiety , more than double the rate from before the pandemic .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s co-founder and chief data scientist , notes , the increase in anxiety has been accompanied by a change in the way people talk , or text , about it .
“ The language that they ’ re using , ” he says , “ includes words like ‘ fear , ’ ‘ panic , ’ ‘ frantic ’ —intense words of anxiety stemming from coronavirus , and more intense than we ’ ve seen in the past.
” Lublin , who , like Filbin , was interviewed remotely for this video @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a former crisis counsellor with C.T.L.
, says that there have been two distinct “ waves ” of COVID-19 texters .
First came those who were getting in touch to talk about the anxiety they felt as the pandemic took hold of their cities or regions ; that wave is still happening .
The second , she says , is made up of people who have been thrown more directly into crisis by either the virus—those stricken with grief after a loss , or worried about their own symptoms—or the quarantine .
Millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Lublin says , and , unfortunately , home is not universally a nice place to be .
The Times reported on April 6th that a worldwide increase in domestic abuse appears to be an indirect result of coronavirus lockdowns , a trend that lines up with Crisis Text Line ’ s findings .
“ The pain , ” Lublin says , “ is magnified in the most marginalized people.
” Strikingly , right now more than half of “ our texters , ” as she calls them , identify as L.G.B.T.Q.
, @ @ @ @ @ @ @ income of less than twenty thousand dollars .
The percentage who identify as Asian has approximately doubled ; many of these texters report harassment and bullying .
“ People are being particularly cruel about the origin of COVID-19 , ” Lublin says , while noting that the number of self-identified Asians volunteering to be crisis counsellors has also shot up .
What should you do if you are experiencing a moment of crisis ?
Send a text to 741741 , from anywhere in the U.S. , and a trained crisis counsellor will respond @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offer coping strategies designed on the basis of what has been learned from the more than hundred and fifty million messages C.T.L .
has exchanged with people seeking help .
One of the most important things a counsellor can do , Filbin says , is to normalize pain by letting people in crisis know that “ it ’ s normal to feel freaked out right now.
” That is true in any season of any year , not just when we happen to be living through a quasi-Biblical plague .
As C.T.L.
’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ group ’ s counsellors aim to help those in crisis “ move from a hot moment to a cool moment ” —from the clutches of fear to a memory of it .
• How to practice social distancing , from responding to a sick housemate to the pros and cons of ordering food .
• How the coronavirus behaves inside of a patient .
• Can survivors help cure the disease and rescue the economy ?
• The long crusade of Dr. Anthony Fauci , the infectious-disease expert pinned between Donald Trump and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Hong Kong and Singapore in stemming the spread holds lessons for how to contain it in the United States .
• The coronavirus is likely to spread for more than a year before a vaccine is widely available .
• With each new virus , we have scrambled for a new treatment .
Can we prepare antivirals to combat the next global crisis ?
• How pandemics have propelled public-health innovations , prefigured revolutions , and redrawn maps .
• What to read , watch , cook , and listen to under @ @ @

There was an afternoon in early March when I couldn’t stop thinking about the first line of Philip Roth’s novel “The Plot Against America”: “Fear presides over these memories, a perpetual fear.” As I scoured the Inwood and Washington Heights neighborhoods for hand sanitizer—which I eventually found, thanks to a tip from my sister-in-law, at a local smoke shop—I imagined Roth’s words as a magical lifeline to a safe future, from which I could calmly gaze back at this desperate time. Our city was not, like that of Roth’s narrator, under threat from an authoritarian President—not exactly, anyway—but, as the coronavirus descended, the anxiety was palpable. For our part, my wife and I were worried about our toddler son’s asthma, and about how our daughter, whose kindergarten year was about to be upended, would one day remember this unsettling season.
Fear, a perpetual fear, is something the entire world is experiencing these days. “We were kind of built for this moment,” Nancy Lublin, the founder and C.E.O. of Crisis Text Line, tells The New Yorker, in the video above. C.T.L. is a national, 24/7 crisis-intervention hotline that operates exclusively by text message, and it has been assisting Americans, especially teen-agers, with mental-health issues, abuse, and other crises since 2013. Since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic, the organization’s counsellors have noticed some striking trends. Seventy-eight per cent of people contacting C.T.L. are experiencing anxiety, more than double the rate from before the pandemic. Moreover, as Bob Filbin, C.T.L.’s co-founder and chief data scientist, notes, the increase in anxiety has been accompanied by a change in the way people talk, or text, about it. “The language that they’re using,” he says, “includes words like ‘fear,’ ‘panic,’ ‘frantic’—intense words of anxiety stemming from coronavirus, and more intense than we’ve seen in the past.”
Lublin, who, like Filbin, was interviewed remotely for this video, made by Sara Joe Wolansky, a former crisis counsellor with C.T.L., says that there have been two distinct “waves” of COVID-19 texters. First came those who were getting in touch to talk about the anxiety they felt as the pandemic took hold of their cities or regions; that wave is still happening. The second, she says, is made up of people who have been thrown more directly into crisis by either the virus—those stricken with grief after a loss, or worried about their own symptoms—or the quarantine. Millions of people are essentially trapped at home, Lublin says, and, unfortunately, home is not universally a nice place to be. The Times reported on April 6th that a worldwide increase in domestic abuse appears to be an indirect result of coronavirus lockdowns, a trend that lines up with Crisis Text Line’s findings.
“The pain,” Lublin says, “is magnified in the most marginalized people.” Strikingly, right now more than half of “our texters,” as she calls them, identify as L.G.B.T.Q., and almost a third report a household income of less than twenty thousand dollars. The percentage who identify as Asian has approximately doubled; many of these texters report harassment and bullying. “People are being particularly cruel about the origin of COVID-19,” Lublin says, while noting that the number of self-identified Asians volunteering to be crisis counsellors has also shot up.
What should you do if you are experiencing a moment of crisis? Send a text to 741741, from anywhere in the U.S., and a trained crisis counsellor will respond, usually within five minutes. Counsellors offer coping strategies designed on the basis of what has been learned from the more than hundred and fifty million messages C.T.L. has exchanged with people seeking help. One of the most important things a counsellor can do, Filbin says, is to normalize pain by letting people in crisis know that “it’s normal to feel freaked out right now.” That is true in any season of any year, not just when we happen to be living through a quasi-Biblical plague. As C.T.L.’s Web site puts it, the group’s counsellors aim to help those in crisis “move from a hot moment to a cool moment”—from the clutches of fear to a memory of it.
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-17--Patti LuPone, Live from Her Basement

Patti LuPone, Live from Her Basement

Patti LuPone ’ s basement looks like a cross between a penny arcade , a TGI Fridays , and an after-hours piano bar .
You ’ ve probably seen it , too , if you ’ ve followed her on social media in recent weeks .
From her home in Kent , Connecticut , where she ’ s riding out the storm with her husband and her twenty-nine-year-old son , LuPone has been staving off boredom , and entertaining her fans , with virtual tours of her impressive tchotchke collection .
“ Here ’ s Nipper , the RCA dog @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as she pats an oversized porcelain Jack Russell terrier on the head .
Wearing sweats and shearling slippers , she dances around to a Les Paul record from an antique jukebox while she continues naming random objects .
“ Massage table !
” “ Pinball machine !
” “ Piano that I bought when I did ‘ Evita ’ !
Eleven thousand dollars !
It ’ s broken now !
” By the end of the two-minute clip , she is snapping her hands in the air like an enthusiastic Tevye .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ mean she ’ s descended into quarantine-induced madness , or whether her flamboyant goofiness is the only sane response to being stuck indoors .
Either way , the show must go on .
LuPone , who is seventy years old , knows a thing or two about persistence in show business .
She has been acting since the early nineteen-seventies , when she made her Broadway début as Irina in Chekhov ’ s “ Three Sisters.
” She won her first Tony Award in 1980 , for playing Eva Perón in Andrew Lloyd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ According to her 2010 memoir , LuPone invented the iconic hand formation at the end of “ Don ’ t Cry For Me Argentina ” during a photo shoot : “ I raised my arms in a V. I did it spontaneously.
” ) She won another Tony in 2008 for her role as Mama Rose in a revival of “ Gypsy , ” and earned another five nominations .
She also won two Grammys , two Olivier Awards , and , in 2006 , joined the American Theatre Hall of Fame .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ a reputation as a woman unafraid to speak her mind , or , as she puts it , as a “ roaring bitch.
” Her memoir is a delicious soup of score-settling and profanity ; of an aggressive actor she worked with in “ A Fiddler on the Roof , ” she writes , “ I know there are two sides to every story , but believe me , both sides thought he was an asshole.
” LuPone has not mellowed with age—if anything , her vim and vitriol are zestier than ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Skype , as she sat in her sunny kitchen .
Before the pandemic hit , LuPone was starring as Joanne in Marianne Elliott ’ s gender-swapping new production of Stephen Sondheim ’ s “ Company.
” The show , which transferred to Broadway after receiving rave reviews on London ’ s West End , played for just two weeks of previews in New York before the coronavirus shutdown began .
Still , LuPone has other projects cooking ; she will appear in Ryan Murphy ’ s new nostalgia-bait Netflix series “ Hollywood ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wealthy wife of a Golden Age studio executive who hires gigolos for companionship .
She is still planning concert appearances for 2021 .
And , in the meantime , she will be headlining her basement .
“ Company ” was supposed to open in March .
That obviously didn ’ t happen .
Do you know if the show will continue after this is over ?
I wish I did know , because the uncertainty is upsetting .
Nobody knows .
And I was actually talking to my manager last night , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comes back , will people even want to be sitting next to each other ?
” Maybe they ’ ll do social-distancing Broadway , every third seat or something .
Oh , I ’ m sure the producers would love that , the amount of money .
It ’ s haunting to think about all those Broadway theatres sitting empty .
Before it happened , there were rumors going around for about a day that Broadway was shutting down .
And that was shocking .
I mean , I went through 9/11 ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think then they shut down for only two days ?
I don ’ t remember Broadway ever being shut .
At first , the producers told us that we ’ ll be shut down for a couple of weeks .
That was their hope .
But , you know , there ’ s a rumor mill on Broadway .
We heard that people were sick in “ Moulin Rouge.
” And at the Booth , there was an usher that had tested positive for COVID .
It was , like , oh @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the street !
I think March 11th was the last day we were in the theatre .
We were going to open on the 22nd , Steve Sondheim ’ s birthday .
The best-laid plans .
It ’ s very hard .
I keep wondering : Is this aliens sending a message ?
Is this Mother Earth sending a message ?
Is there so much negative energy on Earth right now that we created this virus ?
You do your best to stay positive .
Did you think Broadway was in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
No , actually .
I remember when I was doing “ Gypsy ” and [ the journalist ] Richard Schlesinger came to my dressing room .
That was 2009 , and we had the crash , and [ Richard ] said to me , “ Do you think this is gon na affect Broadway ?
” And I said , “ You ca n't kill Broadway.
” When it ’ s bad times we ’ re needed , and when it ’ s good times were needed .
But what I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just a bunch of trash .
It ’ s become Las Vegas .
I have not seen “ Girl from the North Country , ” which I wanted to see , and I wanted to see “ Hangmen.
” Those really good productions sneak in there .
But I think that there should be term limits on federal and Supreme judges , on anybody that ’ s in the government , in Congress and the Senate , and on Broadway musicals .
Five years , and get out of the theatre .
Theatre @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t exchanging ideas .
You ’ re about to star in Ryan Murphy ’ s TV series “ Hollywood.
” What drew you to the character of Avis ?
Ryan wrote a woman who succeeds in a power situation and makes all the right choices without fear .
She has a real emotional variety .
And then , you know , of course , I look stunning .
Have I seen you do a sex scene before ?
I ’ ve never seen you bent over a stair railing before , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ryan !
I don ’ t know what else to say .
No , I ’ ve never—wait , I did have a sex scene !
In “ Summer of Sam , ” with Mike Starr .
He ripped off my bodice , and I was topless .
I actually got a piece of fan mail , where the fan had a picture of me in “ Sweeney Todd , ” a picture of me as “ Evita , ” and the picture of me topless from “ Summer of Sam.
” I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago and had a sex scene .
You know , it ’ s too bad more people don ’ t think of me for that , because I ’ m game for anything .
The theatre , at least , is a medium that does seem to value aging women .
Totally .
I think theatre is feminine , and film is masculine .
You have that aesthetic distance .
You suspend your disbelief when you ’ re seeing Vanessa Redgrave on stage playing Mary Tyrone , even though she may be twenty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was that permission given .
It could just be the magic of being in the dark .
I don ’ t know , but it is different on stage .
HD is unforgiving .
[ In Hollywood , ] I kept saying , “ Where ’ s the cheesecloth ?
Give me more bounce lights !
”

Patti LuPone’s basement looks like a cross between a penny arcade, a TGI Fridays, and an after-hours piano bar. You’ve probably seen it, too, if you’ve followed her on social media in recent weeks. From her home in Kent, Connecticut, where she’s riding out the storm with her husband and her twenty-nine-year-old son, LuPone has been staving off boredom, and entertaining her fans, with virtual tours of her impressive tchotchke collection. “Here’s Nipper, the RCA dog!” she says in one video, as she pats an oversized porcelain Jack Russell terrier on the head. Wearing sweats and shearling slippers, she dances around to a Les Paul record from an antique jukebox while she continues naming random objects. “Massage table!” “Pinball machine!” “Piano that I bought when I did ‘Evita’! Eleven thousand dollars! It’s broken now!” By the end of the two-minute clip, she is snapping her hands in the air like an enthusiastic Tevye. It is not clear whether her theatrics mean she’s descended into quarantine-induced madness, or whether her flamboyant goofiness is the only sane response to being stuck indoors. Either way, the show must go on.
LuPone, who is seventy years old, knows a thing or two about persistence in show business. She has been acting since the early nineteen-seventies, when she made her Broadway début as Irina in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters.” She won her first Tony Award in 1980, for playing Eva Perón in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s “Evita.” (According to her 2010 memoir, LuPone invented the iconic hand formation at the end of “Don’t Cry For Me Argentina” during a photo shoot: “I raised my arms in a V. I did it spontaneously.”) She won another Tony in 2008 for her role as Mama Rose in a revival of “Gypsy,” and earned another five nominations. She also won two Grammys, two Olivier Awards, and, in 2006, joined the American Theatre Hall of Fame. Throughout the decades, LuPone has earned a reputation as a woman unafraid to speak her mind, or, as she puts it, as a “roaring bitch.” Her memoir is a delicious soup of score-settling and profanity; of an aggressive actor she worked with in “The Baker’s Wife,” she writes, “I know there are two sides to every story, but believe me, both sides thought he was an asshole.”
LuPone has not mellowed with age—if anything, her vim and vitriol are zestier than ever. I spoke to her recently via Skype, as she sat in her sunny kitchen. Before the pandemic hit, LuPone was starring as Joanne in Marianne Elliott’s gender-swapping new production of Stephen Sondheim’s “Company.” The show, which transferred to Broadway after receiving rave reviews on London’s West End, played for just two weeks of previews in New York before the coronavirus shutdown began. Still, LuPone has other projects cooking; she will appear in Ryan Murphy’s new nostalgia-bait Netflix series “Hollywood” (premiéring May 1st) as the wealthy wife of a Golden Age studio executive who hires gigolos for companionship. She is still planning concert appearances for 2021. And, in the meantime, she will be headlining her basement.
“Company” was supposed to open in March. That obviously didn’t happen. Do you know if the show will continue after this is over?
I wish I did know, because the uncertainty is upsetting. Nobody knows. And I was actually talking to my manager last night, and she said, “Even if Broadway comes back, will people even want to be sitting next to each other?”
Maybe they’ll do social-distancing Broadway, every third seat or something.
Oh, I’m sure the producers would love that, the amount of money.
It’s haunting to think about all those Broadway theatres sitting empty.
Before it happened, there were rumors going around for about a day that Broadway was shutting down. And that was shocking. I mean, I went through 9/11; I was rehearsing “Noises Off.” I think then they shut down for only two days? I don’t remember Broadway ever being shut.
At first, the producers told us that we’ll be shut down for a couple of weeks. That was their hope. But, you know, there’s a rumor mill on Broadway. We heard that people were sick in “Moulin Rouge.” And at the Booth, there was an usher that had tested positive for COVID. It was, like, oh, my God, it’s on the street! I think March 11th was the last day we were in the theatre. We were going to open on the 22nd, Steve Sondheim’s birthday. The best-laid plans.
It’s very hard. I keep wondering: Is this aliens sending a message? Is this Mother Earth sending a message? Is there so much negative energy on Earth right now that we created this virus? You do your best to stay positive.
Did you think Broadway was in a healthy place before it went on hiatus?
No, actually. I remember when I was doing “Gypsy” and [the journalist] Richard Schlesinger came to my dressing room. That was 2009, and we had the crash, and [Richard] said to me, “Do you think this is gonna affect Broadway?” And I said, “You can’t kill Broadway.” When it’s bad times we’re needed, and when it’s good times were needed.
But what I’m seeing on Broadway now is really just a bunch of trash. It’s become Las Vegas. I have not seen “Girl from the North Country,” which I wanted to see, and I wanted to see “Hangmen.” Those really good productions sneak in there. But I think that there should be term limits on federal and Supreme judges, on anybody that’s in the government, in Congress and the Senate, and on Broadway musicals. Five years, and get out of the theatre. Theatre isn’t vital if it isn’t exchanging ideas.
You’re about to star in Ryan Murphy’s TV series “Hollywood.” What drew you to the character of Avis?
Ryan wrote a woman who succeeds in a power situation and makes all the right choices without fear. She has a real emotional variety. And then, you know, of course, I look stunning.
Have I seen you do a sex scene before? I’ve never seen you bent over a stair railing before, that’s for sure.
God bless Ryan! I don’t know what else to say.
No, I’ve never—wait, I did have a sex scene! In “Summer of Sam,” with Mike Starr. He ripped off my bodice, and I was topless. I actually got a piece of fan mail, where the fan had a picture of me in “Sweeney Todd,” a picture of me as “Evita,” and the picture of me topless from “Summer of Sam.” I also did a film in Italy years ago and had a sex scene. You know, it’s too bad more people don’t think of me for that, because I’m game for anything.
The theatre, at least, is a medium that does seem to value aging women.
Totally. I think theatre is feminine, and film is masculine. You have that aesthetic distance. You suspend your disbelief when you’re seeing Vanessa Redgrave on stage playing Mary Tyrone, even though she may be twenty years too old for it. There was that permission given. It could just be the magic of being in the dark. I don’t know, but it is different on stage. HD is unforgiving. [In Hollywood,] I kept saying, “Where’s the cheesecloth? Give me more bounce lights!”
You have been involved in several of Ryan Murphy’s projects throughout the years. How did you first meet?
I got a telephone call from my agents saying that Ryan Murphy wanted to do an episode of “Glee” around me. It would have been “Patti LuPone on a plane.” I have no idea what the plot was. I immediately said no: “No, no, no, no! I cannot afford to be Patti LuPone’d out of the business.” I’m not Cher. I’m not Britney Spears. I’m not Madonna. I’m still a working actor. And if I do this, I will be “Patti LuPone” on TV for a long time, and I won’t get work. They were shocked that I said no. I told Ryan, “I'll be in if they want me to be me. . . . but you can’t do an entire episode around me.” So I did the one episode in Sardi’s with Lea Michele.
Going back to the state of the world, how angry are you right now?
I want to take a shotgun and shoot the TV every time that motherfucker opens his mouth. I am appalled. We are broken.
You see, I don’t censor myself. I’ve never censored myself, and that’s probably a very big flaw of mine, but I don’t know how to be diplomatic. I’m an Italian. I think I would feel ill if I suppressed it.


newyorker--2020-04-17--A Chinese Chef’s Tasting-Menu Deliveries, with a Side of Instagram Live

Last December , well before the pandemic , a Greenwich Village restaurant called Lucky Lee ’ s closed , after less than a year in business .
Its opening had been followed by deserved public outrage over its marketing campaign—Lucky Lee ’ s proprietor , an influencer-type nutritionist , claimed that the restaurant ’ s Chinese food was different from the rest in that it was “ clean ” and “ healthified.
” Chinese food has long been misunderstood in this country , and the coronavirus hasn ’ t helped .
Bigots have perpetuated an unsubstantiated claim that the virus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ They have these markets where they were eating raw bats and snakes , ” said the Fox News anchor Jesse Watters on air .
“ They are very hungry people.
” Anti-Chinese sentiment is surging as our own President has assigned the virus a nationality .
This troubles Lucas Sin , the chef at Junzi Kitchen , a fast-casual mini-chain that serves rice and noodle bowls and stuffed wraps known as bings , with three locations in Manhattan .
In March , after New York ’ s restaurants were ordered to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a tasting menu , available for pickup or delivery , entitled “ Chinese Food Is Good for You , ” which included chicken broth perfumed with apricot kernel and red dates , and yams stewed in osmanthus tea .
It was the first in a series he ’ s calling “ Distance Dining : A Crisis Delivery Pop-Up.
” Before the shutdown , Sin , who grew up in Hong Kong , had been hosting ticketed dinners featuring elaborate seven-course meals that examined Chinese food culture and history .
( For one , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ate during his 1972 visit to Beijing . )
The weekly “ Distance Dining ” dinners comprise a more manageable three courses , cooked but cold—to demonstrate how to heat each dish at home , Sin logs on to Instagram Live .
On a recent Friday night , I watched as he mixed a cocktail with gin and calamansi-flavored sparkling water .
Sin had enlisted his colleague L. J. Almendras , Junzi ’ s “ food designer , ” who is Filipino , to collaborate on a menu that explored the culinary influence @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I dug my chopsticks into a tangle of pancit palabok—chewy rice noodles slick with shrimp-head sauce and laced with tender beech mushrooms , smoked herring , and chicharrónes—as Sin explained that the word pancit , which means “ noodle ” or “ noodle dish ” in Tagalog , comes from the Hokkien for “ convenient food.
” Almendras suggested using a stovetop to heat the arroz caldo , a rice porridge they ’ d made with rooster stock , to get it boiling hot .
The porridge ’ s Spanish name is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but the dish had arrived by way of China : it was congee .
A week later , I gnawed on pork ribs in a black-bean-char-siu glaze , topped with a green mojo sauce that Sin had made with Junzi ’ s Puerto Rican culinary director , Anthony Nichols .
On Instagram , Sin pointed out , excitedly , that there ’ s a fine line between mojo , which consists of cilantro or parsley chopped with garlic and salt in olive oil , and the ginger-scallion sauce often served with Chinese @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eating bread pudding , so it was an obvious choice for dessert , soaked in coconut cream and studded with golden raisins .
Because Junzi has investors and suppliers in China , Sin and his colleagues saw , to some degree , what was coming .
“ After a couple of weeks , ” Sin said , “ people who are ordering food go a little crazy .
It ’ s less , ‘ Hey , I ’ m gon na help out my favorite restaurants because they ’ re having a tough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What ’ s new ?
’ Just because there ’ s a crisis doesn ’ t mean you can ’ t cook creatively.
” Sin was ten years old in 2003 , during the SARS epidemic , and the fact that his memories of the lockdown in Hong Kong are hazy , and even happy , makes him optimistic .
In addition to offering “ Distance Dining , ” plus an à-la-carte takeout menu , Junzi is delivering daily meals to health-care workers , funded by donations .
In early March , Sin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home , where things seemed safer .
“ I can ’ t leave , ” he told them .
“ I have too much to do.
” ( “ Distance Dining ” dinners $ 28 . )
♦

Last December, well before the pandemic, a Greenwich Village restaurant called Lucky Lee’s closed, after less than a year in business. Its opening had been followed by deserved public outrage over its marketing campaign—Lucky Lee’s proprietor, an influencer-type nutritionist, claimed that the restaurant’s Chinese food was different from the rest in that it was “clean” and “healthified.”
The menu’s theme changes weekly. The first course in a Puerto Rican-Chinese dinner was baked empanadas filled with red-braised beech mushrooms and leeks, accompanied by a Jinhua-ham dipping sauce. Photograph by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New Yorker
Chinese food has long been misunderstood in this country, and the coronavirus hasn’t helped. Bigots have perpetuated an unsubstantiated claim that the virus arose from a wet market in Wuhan. “They have these markets where they were eating raw bats and snakes,” said the Fox News anchor Jesse Watters on air. “They are very hungry people.” Anti-Chinese sentiment is surging as our own President has assigned the virus a nationality. This troubles Lucas Sin, the chef at Junzi Kitchen, a fast-casual mini-chain that serves rice and noodle bowls and stuffed wraps known as bings, with three locations in Manhattan. In March, after New York’s restaurants were ordered to close their dining rooms, Sin designed a tasting menu, available for pickup or delivery, entitled “Chinese Food Is Good for You,” which included chicken broth perfumed with apricot kernel and red dates, and yams stewed in osmanthus tea.
“Distance Dining” is B.Y.O.B., but every meal comes with White Rabbit, a popular brand of milk-flavored Chinese candy. Photograph by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New Yorker
It was the first in a series he’s calling “Distance Dining: A Crisis Delivery Pop-Up.” Before the shutdown, Sin, who grew up in Hong Kong, had been hosting ticketed dinners featuring elaborate seven-course meals that examined Chinese food culture and history. (For one, he re-created the famous meal that Nixon ate during his 1972 visit to Beijing.) The weekly “Distance Dining” dinners comprise a more manageable three courses, cooked but cold—to demonstrate how to heat each dish at home, Sin logs on to Instagram Live.
“Distance Dining” meals arrive cooked but cold; Sin and his chef-collaborators demonstrate how to prepare and heat everything via Instagram Live. The main course of the Puerto Rican-Chinese menu comprised barbecued ribs, golden fried rice with Vienna sausage, sweet plantains, sweet potatoes, and pickled red onions. Photograph by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New Yorker
On a recent Friday night, I watched as he mixed a cocktail with gin and calamansi-flavored sparkling water. Sin had enlisted his colleague L. J. Almendras, Junzi’s “food designer,” who is Filipino, to collaborate on a menu that explored the culinary influence of Chinese immigrants on the Philippines. I dug my chopsticks into a tangle of pancit palabok—chewy rice noodles slick with shrimp-head sauce and laced with tender beech mushrooms, smoked herring, and chicharrónes—as Sin explained that the word pancit, which means “noodle” or “noodle dish” in Tagalog, comes from the Hokkien for “convenient food.” Almendras suggested using a stovetop to heat the arroz caldo, a rice porridge they’d made with rooster stock, to get it boiling hot. The porridge’s Spanish name is a reflection of centuries of forced European rule, but the dish had arrived by way of China: it was congee.
A week later, I gnawed on pork ribs in a black-bean-char-siu glaze, topped with a green mojo sauce that Sin had made with Junzi’s Puerto Rican culinary director, Anthony Nichols. On Instagram, Sin pointed out, excitedly, that there’s a fine line between mojo, which consists of cilantro or parsley chopped with garlic and salt in olive oil, and the ginger-scallion sauce often served with Chinese barbecue. Both chefs had grown up eating bread pudding, so it was an obvious choice for dessert, soaked in coconut cream and studded with golden raisins.
Dessert was bread pudding, which both Sin, who grew up in Hong Kong, and his collaborator, a Puerto Rican chef named Anthony Nichols, from Queens, grew up eating. Photograph by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New Yorker
Because Junzi has investors and suppliers in China, Sin and his colleagues saw, to some degree, what was coming. “After a couple of weeks,” Sin said, “people who are ordering food go a little crazy. It’s less, ‘Hey, I’m gonna help out my favorite restaurants because they’re having a tough time,’ and more, ‘What’s new?’ Just because there’s a crisis doesn’t mean you can’t cook creatively.” Sin was ten years old in 2003, during the SARS epidemic, and the fact that his memories of the lockdown in Hong Kong are hazy, and even happy, makes him optimistic. In addition to offering “Distance Dining,” plus an à-la-carte takeout menu, Junzi is delivering daily meals to health-care workers, funded by donations. In early March, Sin’s parents suggested that he fly home, where things seemed safer. “I can’t leave,” he told them. “I have too much to do.” (“Distance Dining” dinners $28.) ♦
A Guide to the Coronavirus


newyorker--2020-04-17--Wyoming Primary Election 2020: Live Results, Maps, and Analysis

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Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the state’s Democratic Presidential caucus, scheduled for April 17th, is taking place by mail. The congressional primary is August 18th. Follow the latest election results ahead of the 2020 Presidential election.


newyorker--2020-04-17--Dr. Oz Fears That Coronavirus Comments Could Hurt His Credibility as Expert on Magic Beans

NEW YORK ( The Borowitz Report ) —Dr .
Oz is deeply concerned that his controversial comments about the coronavirus could damage his hard-earned credibility as an expert on magic beans , Dr. Oz confirmed on Friday .
“ I ’ ve worked long and hard to establish myself as the world ’ s leading authority on the magical weight-loss powers of green-coffee-bean extract , ” Oz said .
“ It ’ s horrifying to think that my stature in the field of magic-beanology could vanish overnight , like unwanted pounds.
” Oz pleaded with viewers not to judge him @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , rather , to consider his entire body of medical work , including his pioneering research into the fat-burning superpowers of raspberry ketones .
“ A few ill-considered remarks don ’ t change the fact that I ’ m the same Dr. Oz who recommended curing restless-leg syndrome by placing a bar of lavender soap under your sheets , ” he said .
“ And should one slip of the tongue erase all the times I ’ ve promoted astrology , faith healing , and psychic communication with the dead ?
I should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defended his unimpeachable scientific record , Oz acknowledged that the coronavirus controversy has left him badly shaken .
“ In my darkest moments , I wonder if people will ever believe me again when I tell them that umckaloabo-root extract cures the common cold , ” he said .

NEW YORK (The Borowitz Report)—Dr. Oz is deeply concerned that his controversial comments about the coronavirus could damage his hard-earned credibility as an expert on magic beans, Dr. Oz confirmed on Friday.
“I’ve worked long and hard to establish myself as the world’s leading authority on the magical weight-loss powers of green-coffee-bean extract,” Oz said. “It’s horrifying to think that my stature in the field of magic-beanology could vanish overnight, like unwanted pounds.”
Oz pleaded with viewers not to judge him based on a few unfortunate comments but, rather, to consider his entire body of medical work, including his pioneering research into the fat-burning superpowers of raspberry ketones.
“A few ill-considered remarks don’t change the fact that I’m the same Dr. Oz who recommended curing restless-leg syndrome by placing a bar of lavender soap under your sheets,” he said. “And should one slip of the tongue erase all the times I’ve promoted astrology, faith healing, and psychic communication with the dead? I should hope not.”
But even as he defended his unimpeachable scientific record, Oz acknowledged that the coronavirus controversy has left him badly shaken. “In my darkest moments, I wonder if people will ever believe me again when I tell them that umckaloabo-root extract cures the common cold,” he said.


newyorker--2020-04-17--The Coronavirus and Climate Change, the Great Crises of Our Time

Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert explain how and why President Trump is rapidly rolling back environmental protections—weakening auto-emissions standards and the controls on mercury released by power plants , among other actions—in the midst of the worst viral pandemic in more than a century .
Carolyn Kormann interviews a disease ecologist who hunts down viruses among cave-dwelling bats , and who blames human activity for our exposure to deadly novel viruses .
And the historian Jill Lepore has an appreciation of Rachel Carson ’ s early writings about the ocean .
If Carson had not died at fifty-six , she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whistle on climate change decades earlier ?
Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert on the Pandemic and the Environment The two writers discuss how and why the Trump Administration is aggressively deregulating the environment , even during the national emergency of the coronavirus pandemic .
How Has COVID-19 Changed Our Relationship with Nature ?
People from around the country describe how being quarantined has affected the way they perceive the outdoors .
Into the Bat Caves Where Coronaviruses Begin Carolyn Kormann interviews Jonathan Epstein , a disease ecologist , about the search for viruses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Silent Spring , ” Rachel Carson fell in love with the ocean .
Her early writings about the sea and its creatures contain the seeds of what made her so widely influential .

Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert explain how and why President Trump is rapidly rolling back environmental protections—weakening auto-emissions standards and the controls on mercury released by power plants, among other actions—in the midst of the worst viral pandemic in more than a century. Carolyn Kormann interviews a disease ecologist who hunts down viruses among cave-dwelling bats, and who blames human activity for our exposure to deadly novel viruses. And the historian Jill Lepore has an appreciation of Rachel Carson’s early writings about the ocean. If Carson had not died at fifty-six, she wonders, would she have blown the whistle on climate change decades earlier?
Bill McKibben and Elizabeth Kolbert on the Pandemic and the Environment
The two writers discuss how and why the Trump Administration is aggressively deregulating the environment, even during the national emergency of the coronavirus pandemic.
How Has COVID-19 Changed Our Relationship with Nature?
People from around the country describe how being quarantined has affected the way they perceive the outdoors.
Into the Bat Caves Where Coronaviruses Begin
Carolyn Kormann interviews Jonathan Epstein, a disease ecologist, about the search for viruses in their natural habitat.
Rachel Carson Dreams of the Sea
Before “Silent Spring,” Rachel Carson fell in love with the ocean. Her early writings about the sea and its creatures contain the seeds of what made her so widely influential.


newyorker--2020-04-17--What I Miss Most About Movie Theatres

What I Miss Most About Movie Theatres

The changes that the cinematic ecosystem is going through as a result of the coronavirus are shaking the very core of the movie industry .
Movie theatres in New York and L.A. have been closed for four weeks , and , even with widespread talk of reopening the economy , it ’ s hard to imagine viewers gathering in close proximity in movie theatres again until a COVID-19 vaccine becomes widely available .
AMC , which owns six hundred and thirty theatres in the U.S. , is currently at risk of bankruptcy , while Disney , a business that depends @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theatres to theme parks and cruises , recently brought back from retirement its longtime C.E.O .
Bob Iger , to help deal with the current crisis and face the industry ’ s potentially long-term changes .
Film festivals , which are crucial launching pads for most movies of artistic merit , may have trouble returning , not only because they involve large numbers of people gathering in theatres but because many attendees must travel to attend them .
This year ’ s edition of the Cannes Film Festival , which had been scheduled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will almost surely be cancelled .
Yet before the pandemic struck the United States , the movie business was in the midst of major changes already , ones that struck independent and international films particularly hard .
Producers were finding it harder to secure theatrical releases for their films , because fewer viewers seemed likely to take a risk on spending for tickets to the unknown when they could watch something reliably familiar at home for free ( i.e.
, nothing above the price of a subscription ) .
The past few years @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a special onus on critics , whose highlighting of out-of-the-way movies from the glut of the stream and the margins of one-off theatrical screenings became all the more crucial to help those films find an audience .
Now , with film festivals closing down and the entire system at risk , the obscurity of the undiscovered grows ever deeper , and the struggle for ambitious and unusual work to be recognized at all grows ever more precarious .
Streaming is , in general , a great leveller : with theatrical releases , some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and others in just one art-house venue , whereas any movie put online—whether it ’ s a new blockbuster , a venerable classic , or an unduly obscure independent or international film—is similarly widely accessible ( with the asterisk that many require subscriptions to particular platforms ) .
Streaming is also a leveller of the old with the new : revivals are a small subset of what ’ s in theatres , but they ’ re the very iceberg of streaming , with the handful of films being newly released as its tippiest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , has its own peculiarities .
I ’ ve found myself , in streaming land , feeling often as I did in the days of video stores , where the sense of being so overwhelmed by enticing options that I couldn ’ t choose at all often gave way to the feeling that my local haunt ( The Video Room , a cinephile capital that closed in 2019 ) had every film on offer except the one that I happened to want to see at the moment .
At the same time , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of finding , on streaming sites , movies that I didn ’ t think I ’ d get to see again for years , such as Maryam Goormaghtigh ’ s “ Before Summer Ends , ” an independent French docu-fiction , from 2017 , about three Iranian men—playing versions of themselves—on a bittersweet road trip through rural France , which I first saw the following year , in a special series at Lincoln Center , and which has never had a U.S. theatrical release .
As a representation of the history of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unreliable , precisely because it most often does depend on what has been previously released in theatres with some success , or at least has been acclaimed at festivals .
One of the great ongoing achievements of programmers at repertory houses and museums is the recovery of the past—and the exploration of the present .
What I miss most about movie theatres right now isn ’ t the physical experience of the big screen and the dark room and the carved-out , shared block of time ; it ’ s the programming of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( For instance , I first saw three films that I ’ ve been desperate to revisit in recent days but can ’ t find streaming—Juleen Compton ’ s “ Stranded ” and Fronza Woods ’ s “ Killing Time ” and “ Fannie ’ s Film , ” which aren ’ t on any service—thanks to the far-reaching offerings at BAM and Metrograph , respectively . )
Many theatrical runs of this sort are sharply limited—a week or two for many distinctive films in first run , and often just a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ film dropping online does so with little actual urgency , because it will ( in general ) remain available there for an open-ended period , whereas a theatrical release is an emergency ( a welcome one ) .
Repertory at home , the revisiting of classic films , the recollection and the rewatching of beloved ones from all times , has a newly prominent role in this time of confinement .
I recall a line of Nietzsche ’ s that says something to the effect that history comes to the fore when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ d add that the present day also seems unmanageably complex , as well as outrageous and infuriating , and the retrospective view provided by old movies has the power to reinforce mental and soulful foundations .
I ’ ve put together a couple of lists of movies to stream in recent weeks , and I feel connected to that process in an unusual way .
In general , I don ’ t think of lists as definitive monuments but as portraits of priorities at a given moment in time .
Now memory itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ ve been noticing strange and deep-buried reminiscences coming to the surface of my mind .
List-making represents and reflects what comes to the fore—and shares it with others .
With collective spaces closed for now , and no coffee shop or water cooler or movie-theatre lobby in which to chat about movies , that sharing is more important than ever .
One movie I ’ ve been thinking about is “ The Clock , ” Vincente Minnelli ’ s whirlwind wartime romance , from 1945 , in which a soldier on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visits New York and chances to meet a secretary ( Judy Garland ) .
They go together on a hectic tour of the city and , of course , fall in love , amid its teeming and vibrant public life , which is filled with epiphanic encounters and wondrous connections .
In addition to the movie ’ s celebration of the urban throng , I ’ m drawn right now to the long scenes of dialogue in which the soldier , a Midwesterner , speaks to his new friend at length about life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , his friends , his neighbors , his seemingly commonplace yet deeply personal fund of experiences and observations that have marked him indelibly—that make him who he is .
I take these scenes to be movingly , painfully emblematic of life in wartime , of the soldier ’ s impending mobilization ; it ’ s as if , meeting a sympathetic stranger , he ’ s uploading his memory to her in case he doesn ’ t survive .
It ’ s a reminder of the pressing desire , even the duty , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exalt , and to pass along what ’ s precious , while it ’ s available .

As the coronavirus closes cinemas and film festivals, the obscurity of undiscovered movies grows ever deeper. Photograph by Burt Glinn / Magnum
The changes that the cinematic ecosystem is going through as a result of the coronavirus are shaking the very core of the movie industry. Movie theatres in New York and L.A. have been closed for four weeks, and, even with widespread talk of reopening the economy, it’s hard to imagine viewers gathering in close proximity in movie theatres again until a COVID-19 vaccine becomes widely available. AMC, which owns six hundred and thirty theatres in the U.S., is currently at risk of bankruptcy, while Disney, a business that depends mainly on public assemblies, from movie theatres to theme parks and cruises, recently brought back from retirement its longtime C.E.O. Bob Iger, to help deal with the current crisis and face the industry’s potentially long-term changes. Film festivals, which are crucial launching pads for most movies of artistic merit, may have trouble returning, not only because they involve large numbers of people gathering in theatres but because many attendees must travel to attend them. This year’s edition of the Cannes Film Festival, which had been scheduled for May, has been postponed and will almost surely be cancelled.
Yet before the pandemic struck the United States, the movie business was in the midst of major changes already, ones that struck independent and international films particularly hard. Producers were finding it harder to secure theatrical releases for their films, because fewer viewers seemed likely to take a risk on spending for tickets to the unknown when they could watch something reliably familiar at home for free (i.e., nothing above the price of a subscription). The past few years have, as a result, placed a special onus on critics, whose highlighting of out-of-the-way movies from the glut of the stream and the margins of one-off theatrical screenings became all the more crucial to help those films find an audience. Now, with film festivals closing down and the entire system at risk, the obscurity of the undiscovered grows ever deeper, and the struggle for ambitious and unusual work to be recognized at all grows ever more precarious.
Streaming is, in general, a great leveller: with theatrical releases, some movies are shown in three thousand multiplexes and others in just one art-house venue, whereas any movie put online—whether it’s a new blockbuster, a venerable classic, or an unduly obscure independent or international film—is similarly widely accessible (with the asterisk that many require subscriptions to particular platforms). Streaming is also a leveller of the old with the new: revivals are a small subset of what’s in theatres, but they’re the very iceberg of streaming, with the handful of films being newly released as its tippiest tip.
The online cornucopia, however, has its own peculiarities. I’ve found myself, in streaming land, feeling often as I did in the days of video stores, where the sense of being so overwhelmed by enticing options that I couldn’t choose at all often gave way to the feeling that my local haunt (The Video Room, a cinephile capital that closed in 2019) had every film on offer except the one that I happened to want to see at the moment. At the same time, I’ve had the pleasant surprise of finding, on streaming sites, movies that I didn’t think I’d get to see again for years, such as Maryam Goormaghtigh’s “Before Summer Ends,” an independent French docu-fiction, from 2017, about three Iranian men—playing versions of themselves—on a bittersweet road trip through rural France, which I first saw the following year, in a special series at Lincoln Center, and which has never had a U.S. theatrical release.
As a representation of the history of the art form, streaming tends to be unreliable, precisely because it most often does depend on what has been previously released in theatres with some success, or at least has been acclaimed at festivals. One of the great ongoing achievements of programmers at repertory houses and museums is the recovery of the past—and the exploration of the present. What I miss most about movie theatres right now isn’t the physical experience of the big screen and the dark room and the carved-out, shared block of time; it’s the programming of the city’s great movie houses. (For instance, I first saw three films that I’ve been desperate to revisit in recent days but can’t find streaming—Juleen Compton’s “Stranded” and Fronza Woods’s “Killing Time” and “Fannie’s Film,” which aren’t on any service—thanks to the far-reaching offerings at BAM and Metrograph, respectively.) Many theatrical runs of this sort are sharply limited—a week or two for many distinctive films in first run, and often just a day or two for revivals. A film dropping online does so with little actual urgency, because it will (in general) remain available there for an open-ended period, whereas a theatrical release is an emergency (a welcome one).
Repertory at home, the revisiting of classic films, the recollection and the rewatching of beloved ones from all times, has a newly prominent role in this time of confinement. I recall a line of Nietzsche’s that says something to the effect that history comes to the fore when the present day seems thin. I’d add that the present day also seems unmanageably complex, as well as outrageous and infuriating, and the retrospective view provided by old movies has the power to reinforce mental and soulful foundations. I’ve put together a couple of lists of movies to stream in recent weeks, and I feel connected to that process in an unusual way. In general, I don’t think of lists as definitive monuments but as portraits of priorities at a given moment in time. Now memory itself is something of a priority, and I’ve been noticing strange and deep-buried reminiscences coming to the surface of my mind. List-making represents and reflects what comes to the fore—and shares it with others. With collective spaces closed for now, and no coffee shop or water cooler or movie-theatre lobby in which to chat about movies, that sharing is more important than ever.
One movie I’ve been thinking about is “The Clock,” Vincente Minnelli’s whirlwind wartime romance, from 1945, in which a soldier on a forty-eight-hour leave (Robert Walker) visits New York and chances to meet a secretary (Judy Garland). They go together on a hectic tour of the city and, of course, fall in love, amid its teeming and vibrant public life, which is filled with epiphanic encounters and wondrous connections. In addition to the movie’s celebration of the urban throng, I’m drawn right now to the long scenes of dialogue in which the soldier, a Midwesterner, speaks to his new friend at length about life in his home town, his family, his friends, his neighbors, his seemingly commonplace yet deeply personal fund of experiences and observations that have marked him indelibly—that make him who he is. I take these scenes to be movingly, painfully emblematic of life in wartime, of the soldier’s impending mobilization; it’s as if, meeting a sympathetic stranger, he’s uploading his memory to her in case he doesn’t survive. It’s a reminder of the pressing desire, even the duty, to remember, to cherish, to exalt, and to pass along what’s precious, while it’s available.


When SARS Ended

In the spring of 2003 , my family and I were living in Hong Kong , in a colonial-era flat near Victoria Peak , the mountain that dominates the city ’ s skyline .
The previous year , just to the north , a coronavirus had emerged that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome , or SARS .
The virus , called SARS-CoV , had jumped the species barrier in a market , travelling from bats to civets to people .
Its mortality rate was around ten per cent .
Initially , the Chinese government covered up the epidemic , threatening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Then , as the infection spread , it imposed a drastic crackdown on all social interaction .
The national May Day holiday , when hundreds of millions of people travel around the country on vacation , was cancelled , and the Rolling Stones called off their concerts .
Hong Kongers enacted social isolation even before it was ordered , and many expats departed , including my wife and daughters .
By March , the city felt deserted .
Night clubs were closed , restaurants abandoned , shopping malls desolate .
The drive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then east along Hong Kong Island to my offices in Quarry Bay , usually a half-hour struggle through some of the densest traffic in the world , was now a fleet five minutes .
For those who remember SARS firsthand , the unfolding of the current COVID-19 pandemic has been eerily familiar .
The new coronavirus appears to have spilled over in Hubei Province , a few hundred miles north of Guangdong Province , where SARS emerged ; China ’ s decisions—the initial coverup , the cancellation of Lunar New Year celebrations , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past , too .
( Its measures appear to be working ; as of this writing , the spread of infection in mainland China has slowed dramatically . )
Los Angeles , the city where I live now , looks the way Hong Kong did then .
On Saturday night , I walked down to Sunset Boulevard , the city ’ s iconic thoroughfare , and stood in the middle of the street .
The signals went from green to red to green again ; no cars came .
Happy cities may be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cities in the grip of disease share a common emptiness .
Hong Kong had been in crisis even before SARS .
In 1997 , Great Britain had handed the city over to China , in an agreement known as One Country , Two Systems .
After reunification , Shanghai threatened to become China ’ s new financial capital , and people in Hong Kong worried that they would soon be living in “ just another Chinese city ” ; its real-estate markets began a precipitous decline , and restrictions on civil liberties threatened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a knockout blow to a city already reeling .
I was in Hong Kong because I edited Time Asia , an international edition of the newsweekly with a staff of sixty-two and bureaus around the region .
When SARS broke out , we couldn ’ t work from home—the Internet wasn ’ t good enough .
Instead , we watched from our offices as the green-and-white-roofed Star Ferry boats travelled , empty , across Victoria Harbor .
Each afternoon , we waited for the Hong Kong Department of Health to release its numbers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guessing how many new cases there would be .
The idea was to get close but not go over ; an optimist , I always lowballed .
We were trying to make light of a reality that had become terrifying .
Hong Kong ’ s hospital system had crashed .
Hundreds of front-line health workers had been infected , most of them through so-called super-spreader events .
In the first , a mainland doctor , Liu Jianlun , had treated a patient in Guangdong who would later become known as the Poison King @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be traced back to him .
After meeting the Poison King , Liu , who was in Hong Kong for a wedding , checked into the Metropole Hotel , went shopping on Nathan Road , and then returned to the hotel , where he vomited ; the next day , he admitted himself to Kwong Wah Hospital , warned the attending physicians that what he had was highly contagious , and lost consciousness , ultimately infecting a half-dozen doctors and nurses .
A larger cluster of cases at Prince of Wales Hospital , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ visited the Metropole , resulted in more than a hundred hospital workers falling ill .
Some of the standard treatments for patients in respiratory distress—including the use of nebulizers , humidifier-like devices that turn liquid medicine into a breathable mist—ended up spreading the virus through the wards .
These stories and others deepened our dread ; the government ’ s obfuscation compounded it .
We learned that officials had been hiding cases , moving patients out the back doors of hospitals while World Health Organization inspectors came in the front .
We suspected @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was worse than what we did .
We imagined vast wards of the infected , gasping for breath .
The Hang Seng Index , which tracks stocks listed on Hong Kong ’ s exchange , shed fifteen per cent of its value between January and April .
After a prankster falsely suggested that the city was going to be sealed off , some A.T.M.s briefly ran out of cash .
Then , as if things couldn ’ t get any worse , on the first of April , Leslie Cheung , the openly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ starred in “ Happy Together ” and “ Farewell My Concubine , ” leapt from the twenty-fourth floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel .
Cheung had always felt like a lucky charm for Hong Kong—a beloved and approachable celebrity we could see drinking in Lan Kwai Fong on any given night .
Cheung ’ s death—he had suffered from depression—darkened our already dour moods .
Barely visible from my office windows was Amoy Gardens , an orange-and-beige housing complex .
Nineteen buildings , each about thirty stories tall , housed about nineteen thousand @ @ @ @ @ @ @ notorious epicenter of the virus—the place , it was said , where SARS had gone airborne .
On March 14th , an infected man visited his brother ’ s apartment ; a week later , the complex had three or four cases ; the next day , six or seven more .
Soon , more than sixty new cases a day were emerging at Amoy Gardens , until there were nearly three hundred and thirty , many of them in block E , where the brother ’ s unit was located .
What @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was its banality .
It looked exactly like every other housing estate in Hong Kong .
As television anchors solemnly intoned over footage of the apartments , with their 7-Eleven , McDonald ’ s , and ParknShop downstairs , one couldn ’ t help but think that what was happening there could happen anywhere .
( Later , it would turn out that the design of the drainage systems in the apartments had facilitated the spread of SARS . )
Meanwhile , in our offices , we wore protective gear .
Talked about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Outside of work , we lived solitary lives .
Every social event was postponed into the indefinite future .
I ate dinner alone in my flat , its diamond-necklace view of the city eerily dark .
My lunch each day consisted of Chicken McNuggets .
I had thought it through and concluded that , from slaughter to preparation , the McNugget process was such that no nugget risked contact with potentially virus-bearing human flesh .
The industrial workers wore rubber gloves and masks ; the nuggets were deep-fried in boiling oil hot enough @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus inactive .

In the spring of 2003, my family and I were living in Hong Kong, in a colonial-era flat near Victoria Peak, the mountain that dominates the city’s skyline. The previous year, just to the north, a coronavirus had emerged that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS. The virus, called SARS-CoV, had jumped the species barrier in a market, travelling from bats to civets to people. Its mortality rate was around ten per cent.
Initially, the Chinese government covered up the epidemic, threatening and silencing the physicians who issued warnings. Then, as the infection spread, it imposed a drastic crackdown on all social interaction. The national May Day holiday, when hundreds of millions of people travel around the country on vacation, was cancelled, and the Rolling Stones called off their concerts. Hong Kongers enacted social isolation even before it was ordered, and many expats departed, including my wife and daughters. By March, the city felt deserted. Night clubs were closed, restaurants abandoned, shopping malls desolate. The drive down Kennedy Road to Gloucester Road and then east along Hong Kong Island to my offices in Quarry Bay, usually a half-hour struggle through some of the densest traffic in the world, was now a fleet five minutes.
For those who remember SARS firsthand, the unfolding of the current COVID-19 pandemic has been eerily familiar. The new coronavirus appears to have spilled over in Hubei Province, a few hundred miles north of Guangdong Province, where SARS emerged; China’s decisions—the initial coverup, the cancellation of Lunar New Year celebrations, the rapid, gigantic mobilization—have echoed the past, too. (Its measures appear to be working; as of this writing, the spread of infection in mainland China has slowed dramatically.) Los Angeles, the city where I live now, looks the way Hong Kong did then. On Saturday night, I walked down to Sunset Boulevard, the city’s iconic thoroughfare, and stood in the middle of the street. The signals went from green to red to green again; no cars came. Happy cities may be happy in their own ways, but cities in the grip of disease share a common emptiness.
Hong Kong had been in crisis even before SARS. In 1997, Great Britain had handed the city over to China, in an agreement known as One Country, Two Systems. After reunification, Shanghai threatened to become China’s new financial capital, and people in Hong Kong worried that they would soon be living in “just another Chinese city”; its real-estate markets began a precipitous decline, and restrictions on civil liberties threatened its nominal sovereignty. SARS felt like a knockout blow to a city already reeling.
I was in Hong Kong because I edited Time Asia, an international edition of the newsweekly with a staff of sixty-two and bureaus around the region. When SARS broke out, we couldn’t work from home—the Internet wasn’t good enough. Instead, we watched from our offices as the green-and-white-roofed Star Ferry boats travelled, empty, across Victoria Harbor. Each afternoon, we waited for the Hong Kong Department of Health to release its numbers. We kept a betting pool, guessing how many new cases there would be. The idea was to get close but not go over; an optimist, I always lowballed.
We were trying to make light of a reality that had become terrifying. Hong Kong’s hospital system had crashed. Hundreds of front-line health workers had been infected, most of them through so-called super-spreader events. In the first, a mainland doctor, Liu Jianlun, had treated a patient in Guangdong who would later become known as the Poison King, because of how many cases could be traced back to him. After meeting the Poison King, Liu, who was in Hong Kong for a wedding, checked into the Metropole Hotel, went shopping on Nathan Road, and then returned to the hotel, where he vomited; the next day, he admitted himself to Kwong Wah Hospital, warned the attending physicians that what he had was highly contagious, and lost consciousness, ultimately infecting a half-dozen doctors and nurses. A larger cluster of cases at Prince of Wales Hospital, originating from an airport worker who had visited the Metropole, resulted in more than a hundred hospital workers falling ill. Some of the standard treatments for patients in respiratory distress—including the use of nebulizers, humidifier-like devices that turn liquid medicine into a breathable mist—ended up spreading the virus through the wards.
These stories and others deepened our dread; the government’s obfuscation compounded it. We learned that officials had been hiding cases, moving patients out the back doors of hospitals while World Health Organization inspectors came in the front. We suspected that what we didn’t know was worse than what we did. We imagined vast wards of the infected, gasping for breath.
The Hang Seng Index, which tracks stocks listed on Hong Kong’s exchange, shed fifteen per cent of its value between January and April. After a prankster falsely suggested that the city was going to be sealed off, some A.T.M.s briefly ran out of cash. Then, as if things couldn’t get any worse, on the first of April, Leslie Cheung, the openly bisexual Cantopop crooner and actor who had starred in “Happy Together” and “Farewell My Concubine,” leapt from the twenty-fourth floor of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Cheung had always felt like a lucky charm for Hong Kong—a beloved and approachable celebrity we could see drinking in Lan Kwai Fong on any given night. Cheung’s death—he had suffered from depression—darkened our already dour moods.
Barely visible from my office windows was Amoy Gardens, an orange-and-beige housing complex. Nineteen buildings, each about thirty stories tall, housed about nineteen thousand people. The complex had become a notorious epicenter of the virus—the place, it was said, where SARS had gone airborne. On March 14th, an infected man visited his brother’s apartment; a week later, the complex had three or four cases; the next day, six or seven more. Soon, more than sixty new cases a day were emerging at Amoy Gardens, until there were nearly three hundred and thirty, many of them in block E, where the brother’s unit was located. What was terrifying about the Amoy Gardens cluster was its banality. It looked exactly like every other housing estate in Hong Kong. As television anchors solemnly intoned over footage of the apartments, with their 7-Eleven, McDonald’s, and ParknShop downstairs, one couldn’t help but think that what was happening there could happen anywhere. (Later, it would turn out that the design of the drainage systems in the apartments had facilitated the spread of SARS.)
Meanwhile, in our offices, we wore protective gear. Talked about hand washing. Kept our distance. Outside of work, we lived solitary lives. Every social event was postponed into the indefinite future. I ate dinner alone in my flat, its diamond-necklace view of the city eerily dark. My lunch each day consisted of Chicken McNuggets. I had thought it through and concluded that, from slaughter to preparation, the McNugget process was such that no nugget risked contact with potentially virus-bearing human flesh. The industrial workers wore rubber gloves and masks; the nuggets were deep-fried in boiling oil hot enough, I hoped, to render any virus inactive.
At the time, many of us pinned our hopes on the “seasonality” of the virus. Infectious diseases often become more or less potent depending on the time of year; respiratory viruses—influenza in particular—are known to be seasonal. Other coronaviruses, like the ones that cause the common cold, ebb as the days lengthen and the sun rises higher in the sky. If there’s a flu season, we asked, why couldn’t there be a SARS season, too?
Marc Lipsitch, a Harvard epidemiologist, has written a widely discussed blog post on the question of whether the new coronavirus—SARS-CoV-2—could be seasonal. Lipsitch explains that seasonality depends on four factors: the environment (some viruses survive best in dry, cold air); human behavior (people cluster differently in summer and winter); the human immune system (in general, it’s weaker in the cold months); and the dynamics of disease more generally (an epidemic that begins in one season tends to end in another). Seasonality, in other words, isn’t just about weather. It’s a complex phenomenon, in which environmental, epidemiological, and human elements intertwine.
“Seasonality is a universal driver of almost all of our infectious diseases,” Micaela Martinez, an infectious-disease ecologist at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health, told me. Martinez’s research focusses on identifying the causal mechanisms behind seasonality. It’s possible, for instance, that, for certain diseases, circadian rhythms matter: because the location of some immune-system cells in the body varies depending on the time of day, longer days could change how the immune system responds to an infection. (Many of COVID-19’s worst symptoms—fever, inflammation, fluid in the lungs—are the result of inappropriate immune-system responses.) Martinez stressed how much is unknown about the biology of seasonality. “I hope for seasonal decline,” she said. But, in the case of SARS-CoV-2, seasonal factors could be outweighed by the scale of the outbreak and the ease with which the virus spreads.
Both SARS-CoV and SARS CoV-2 are RNA coronaviruses. “Fields Virology,” the standard medical-school text on the subject, notes that “coronaviruses mutate at a high frequency because of the high error frequencies of RNA polymerases.” (RNA is a single long strand; unlike double-helixed DNA, it has no second strand to check its errors.) “When you have a mutation, there tends to be a survival disadvantage for the virus,” Charles Prober, a pediatric epidemiologist at Stanford University, told me. It’s possible, therefore, to imagine that SARS-CoV-2 could mutate its way into a seasonal decline. As an “optimist,” Prober said, he was hoping for such an outcome. There’s room for luck in an epidemic. It’s also possible, through bad decisions, to squander a lucky break.
We didn’t know it yet, but that week—the week of Leslie Cheung’s death—was the point of maximum hysteria and fear. In early April, while we were betting on the number of new cases and wondering about the extent of the coverup, Hong Kong passed its inflection point, with the number of new infections sinking below that of cleared cases. As April turned to May, and warmer days commenced, we looked around and realized that we were still alive.
What had actually happened? In retrospect, it seems likely that several factors converged. We had all effectively self-quarantined (or, in the case of my wife and daughters, actually departed). Schools had been closed for more than a month. Everyone in the city had been wearing surgical masks, without exception; on television, even government officials appeared in scrubs and full protective gear.
The medical system had adapted, too. Prior to SARS, some hospitals had become lax, relying on antibiotics for infection control instead of maintaining disinfection as a steady state. What worked against SARS, I wrote later, in my book about the outbreak, “China Syndrome,” were “Florence Nightingale-style proscriptions: protective layers of masks, goggles, gloves, galoshes, and gowns. Sealed wards. Quarantine. Ventilation. This was not Nobel Prize-winning medicine. Yet it was effective.” Modern hospital systems aren’t accustomed to swarms of critical respiratory cases. But Hong Kong’s hospitals, after becoming overwhelmed, had adjusted.