UNDER COVID, PT. 9: WHO WAS THAT MASKED MAN?

We're currently living through the sequel.

If you have 75 minutes to spare some evening, lower the shades, turn off the lights, and watch The Killer That Stalked New York, available free on YouTube. It will give you a pretty good idea what's going on in my city now.

Shot entirely on location in 1950 -- you get to see long gone-landmarks like the beautiful original Penn Station and the Third Avenue elevated subway -- The Killer That Stalked New York is a noirish retelling of the smallpox epidemic that swept through the city in 1947. 

While there's the usual fictionalizations to pump up the drama -- as if a smallpox epidemic in the largest city in the USA wasn't dramatic enough -- the terror itself is quite authentic. If nothing else, you'll never drink out of a public water fountain ever again.

They make it seem so easy.

You want to talk about terror? Washing my hands for 20 seconds every time I return home used to be enough. Then I felt compelled to spray Lysol on the doorknob of our apartment. Then I started spraying the doorknobs on the bathroom and hall closet.

Now I wonder, Do I spray Lysol on the groceries, too? I should do that after I wash my hands -- but then I'll have to wash again after touching the avocados! So I should do it before. But then I'll be handling it with my possibly fatal hands! DEAR GOD, WHAT DO I DO, WHAT DO I DO?!

More terror: Last night, the city released a map of current COVID-19 cases by ZIP code. Mine is in the second-highest range, meaning between 182 and 306 in our six block area. So it's no surprise that wearing masks has gone from being the exception to the norm. I got in on the fun for the first time this morning walking to Fairway.

Nothing suspicious about this look.

It's not actually a mask; rather, it's a buff I acquired during our first trip to Iceland. I've been using it as a neck warmer when it isn't quite cold enough for a scarf, but cool enough to require some protection. (My wife can tell you stories about how precise things need to be for me to live comfortably.)

In the year 2019 B.C. (Before COVID), such a look would have been cause for wariness from other pedestrians, and, thanks to an 1845 law, possibly a mild interrogation from a passing cop. Now, it's unusual to see people without masks. Every day, more people are covering their faces with whatever they have handy. And it doesn't look strange.

It's remarkable how quickly I've adjusted to living in a city with people whose faces I can't see, who walk past you as fast as possible, and jump into the street to maintain a six-foot distance. And the latter is perfectly safe because the traffic has been cut by 90%. 

But guess what. No more PETA members shoving petitions under your nose! That alone just might be worth it.

Lightpost ads have gone from promoting babysitting and
 piano lessons to saving lives at a 75% mark-up.

We've come to ignore the closed, gated, or boarded-up storefronts, darkened restaurants and bars, empty theater marquees. You can get a glimpse of what life used to be like when walking along the East River or in Central Park -- even if there, too, the number of people have dropped, the easier to keep far apart. 

That walk in the park has become the last bastion of fresh air exercise. Yesterday, Gov. Cuomo closed all playgrounds in New York state. Will kids resort to playing tag on Zoom?

Gov. Cuomo's daily press briefings have grown in stature in the last week or so. Locally, they're covered live on the local commercial stations, as well as all three news networks. 

Enough with the freakin' ventilators!

That's at least nine channels you can flip through and never lose track of what he's saying -- better than what Trump can do.

That the news networks are covering Cuomo's briefings appears to be proof that people in, say, Wisconsin or North Dakota are actually interested in what the Governor of New York has to say. 

Or it points to my own personal conspiracy theory. MSNBC wants to promote

"I'm still here, goddammit! Now who am I?"

the idea of a smart, steady Democrat in a time of crisis. Fox News wants to throw a monkey wrench in Joe Biden's campaign. And CNN is doing it because the other two are.

Doesn't it bring back memories -- that there's a presidential campaign going on? Man, I'd go back to those interminable  debates in a flash. 

                                                      

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