Cabin fever – a time for reflection or a descent into madness? Day 31

As I end this week after a month of NYC lockdown, I’ve been dwelling on Mahatma Gandhi’s famous quote “freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes”. Never has that quote seemed so subverted as it is now. Being punk’d nightly from the White House pressers would be comedy gold if it wasn’t so serious and impacted public health & safety. I find myself asking the question – are we all now extras in a reboot of the award-winning movie Being There? The main character and simpleton, Chauncey Gardiner, has the world’s ears in his hands unbeknownst to him.

As I sit in the epicentre of America’s pandemic, are we being asked by the highest office in the land to ignore science and data, and boldly agree that the worst is over, time to get back to normal?

When devoid of noise, distractions and stripped of politics, the inconvenient truth of the matter is this:

1. There is no vaccine.
2. There is no ability to mass test and trace those infected yet.
3. Even when a vaccine becomes available, maybe in 12 months, if we are lucky, there will be no way to produce enough for everyone in a short period of time.
4. Oh yeah….COVID-19 can kill you, and when it doesn’t, can potentially leave your lungs badly scarred for life.

With Gandhi’s quote in mind, should we have the freedom to make mistakes in this case? Forgiving that mistakes can only be made in hindsight, should we be allowed to experiment with people’s lives, especially where there are other options? If I had a granny still alive, should I toss her under the bus for the sake of the stock market? “Sorry Granny, my 401k cratered anyway, but you were worth a chance”. Or do I decimate my co-workers health by riding the subway to work asymptomatic? “Sorry boss, I didn’t know, but promise to bring flowers to the hospital…and oh hey, can I have your office now?”. Or gamble on herd immunity as a strategy and accept many more will die? NYC’s dead total 12,800 as of today. In one month. Or should we accept the federal government’s suggested approach and put it in Ayn Rand terms “Freedom: To ask nothing. To expect nothing. To depend on nothing” and make the states go it alone?

I’m as keen to get close to normal as the next guy, there’s very valid reasons to get the economy reopened. And I get that each state is different, but show me a real plan that addresses points 1, 2, & 3 above. Err on the side of caution, then I can dream the dream.

Meanwhile ….. cabin life continues. And in NYC, that’s supersized down to our little apartments. Once a living room, now becomes a space station on a Monday and a scooter park on Tuesday. Bedrooms, now tent cities, flashlights in place of overheads. Bathtubs and shower now Olympic sized swimming pools. My walls would make Basquiat blush and Banksy proud. The coffee table a Broadway stage. Every day, all rooms a giant dumpster. Through all of that, lacking the usual retinue of outside delights, sparks the imagination.  The kids are forced to create in ways they never had before.

It’s also been a wonderful time to catch up with old friends like the Wexford Art’s Centres Liz Whyte. I’d made my “acting” debut, reluctantly plucked from obscurity by Liz and conscripted into her merry band of troubadours performing Scraps of Ireland in NYC in the late 90’s/00’s. She got some of the band back together to entertain us this week with Caca Milis Cois Tin cabaret building community and spirit.

And we, as adults, now have the time for reflection. Stripped of the commercial pretense of everyday life, the “before” life, I can now ask what’s really important to me. What are my real priorities, while facing some of my own uncomfortable truths about myself.  It doesn’t have to be so miserable, so long as I choose to make this time matter. While it may not feel this way now, there will be a definitive end to this. Flattening the curve & social distance is working. Notwithstanding the personal economic fear and peril at hand, we will likely never get another chance at pause again. We are not stuck with a life sentence, but our old life might be very different, if we let it be.

#wearamask #socialdistance #washhands and #flattenthecurve

PS. Thanks for all the messages of support from Friday’s Irish Times article. It made #1 Most Read online. Blush. Apologies to Domhnall Gleeson (met him once in Times Sq with his dad, lovely guys).