I feel fine.

A global pandemic was not on my calendar. Many people in power knew well in advance that this was coming with this severity and they did nothing. My stubborn hope is more forgivably stupidity than the willful sort belonged to our politicians. In a week, cases in the US have quintupled and will increase for the foreseeable future.

This reminds me of 9/11. Before the attacks, we were on a path that I thought I understood and could trust. Then, in the course of one Tuesday morning, that path obliterated. The world changed into something that I, born in the eighties and adolescing through the nineties, could no longer accept. I had to live in it, but it always felt as though I entered the wrong branch in a time travel movie.

I've grown accustomed to the post 9/11 world, but I've never stopped feeling betrayed on behalf of my generation and my students, who will never know what their future could have been. The attack was an unspeakably vast tragedy, but the reaction afterward multiplied it. I thought it rude at best when people said that the terrorists had won because that rattled us enough that we lost ourselves, but didn't they? For a decade at least, 9/11 was the warped invocation for eager fascists.

Now we have coronavirus. I have tried to explain to my students that this is going to dictate the rest of their lives. Some of them do not believe in the best of circumstances that they have futures. They will never get to know what their lives might have been without what COVID-19 will continue doing long into the 2020s. Something that borders on the prologue of a young adult dystopia novel will become their normal.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks on the 9/11, America became paranoid, but we went on living. That I recall, we weren't hoarding toilet paper and waiting in breadlines outside grocery stores. Or, if we were, the government put a stop to the hoarding and price gouging as quickly as they could. After 9/11, with some glaring exceptions, we were trying to get along and help one another. We had lost sense of personal safety that has never returned. We could only heal by trying to care for others.

This is antithetical to what I've seen in the week since Trump announced the national state of emergency. While grocery shopping at my suburban Hannaford, people almost got into fistfights over basic supplies. They have stripped down hand sanitizer and toilet paper as though these are going to save them. (If you hoard 70 bottles of hand sanitizer and 70 people around you do not one, you have 70 people with dirty hands more likely to infect you.) There is little regard for one's neighbors or, it seems, humanity. It is a blind, animal avarice, counterproductive in the extreme.

There is no clarity when the state of emergency will end, though it may be a long while. Any business, band, comedian, artist, theater, restaurant, or author to whom I had ever given my email has explained their pandemic responses. My friends who do shows are afraid that their livelihoods are in danger. It will get worse, I know. Short of an actual miracle, we are about to enter a recession bordering on a depression. Millions will lose their jobs. Millions of others will see their jobs transformed.

I am still intending to go to work at my state-run facility, as there is not a clear statement that I shouldn't. They consider me essential and wanted me there in snowstorms that caused states of emergency. (When I was legitimately sick during a blizzard, they tried to have me written up for insubordination.) I do not think they will feel generous in the face of a global pandemic.

The first time I felt this sort of systemic betrayal, though far mellower, was the death of Princess Diana. I was in my teens, but I could not understand how something like that could be allowed to happen. She was royalty, the beneficiary of a nation worth of wealth and good will. There was no way that the world would allow a princess to die from a car accident (or however we want to phrase what happened to her). When she did pass within a few hours, it upset something thought I understood about the world.

Those who lived through the Kennedy assassination no doubt could sympathize. Something like that could not happen in the world in which we were raised. Two world powers wouldn't engage in a decades long pissing contest that led to children being told that hiding under desks would protect from fallout. The government wouldn't excoriate those who suggested they actually do something about the stochastic terrorism of mass shooters, most radicalized by white supremacy. The government existed to keep its people safe or what was the point of having a government?

The New Orleans residents during Katrina, those who survived, saw things at least this bad. The same with Puerto Rico. Governmental apathy to their plight, an understanding that no one on the higher echelons would do what was necessary to keep its citizens safe.

So many say now how unreal the reaction to coronavirus feels, a sentiment I echo. We have grown complacent. This virus is not a terroristic act. It is a plague. Xenophobes try to blame it on a people, calling it a weapon, but racism will not be what gives us strength against it. We can and should blame the criminal ineptitude of the response on our government, but there is no one to bomb to abate our terror.

We tell kids that washing their hands and staying inside are going to keep them safe, but why would they trust that? The world has failed them now as it failed me almost twenty years ago. As it has failed me since in smaller, less direct ways. There are monsters out there far more daunting than anything your parents can imagine, let alone fight.

The government has shut down schools for two weeks to slow the spread and flatten the curve. Even if I were a student today, I would not appreciate time off mandated by a pandemic. (I remember enjoying high school, as I liked some of my classes, most of my friends, and several of my extracurriculars.) A snow day is one thing. The government trying to isolate people by shutting down the world is rather another.

Governor Cuomo has declared that there will be no mandated length of a school year for 2020. Almost every school is closed, with the suggestion that they will not resume until September. Though it is not the primary concern now -- we need to save the population from a pandemic first -- this is a generation who will miss crucial months of education and development. Distance learning and homeschooling (by parents who need to work) aren't going to be enough to bridge the gap.

Emerson College has sent my niece Leelee has home for the semester. The rest of her year will be online classes. As she is an acting major, I am not sure how this will be accomplished. Singing along to show tunes on Youtube?

Marist cancelled Amber's classes for two weeks. There is the implication that this could go on much longer. She says that it is almost as though she should give up school now and start again in two years, as the biochemistry cycle is biannual.

This is going to reshape society. There had been nothing something like this for almost anyone who is still alive, save for a few who survived the Swine Flu of 1918. To think that so much of the world is shut down for quarantine is startling. I don't know when things are going to breakdown more, but I suspect they will in America.

Trump waited much too long. He was scared that this would hurt his re-election. He lied about there being only 15 people infected in America and that it would be zero soon. He lied about having control over this, not that most people thought differently. Americans are going to die because of his rank arrogance and ignorance. No one stopped him, no one shut him down, no one told him no because he fires the people who try.

After palling around and touching several people who tested positive, the president says he has taken a coronavirus test and was negative. Many disbelieve him.

My new friends Amanda and Aaron, along with Kristina, came over for dinner and games. I had invited them days before the national state of emergency was called. Once it was, Amanda sent me a message saying that she would understand if I wanted to cancel. I said I did not. Five healthy people in a room seemed benign.

I did not want to believe in the seriousness of this. I should have cancelled, but I wanted to better cement my friendship with them.

On the day of the dinner, Bard College had its first confirmed case, a faculty member in contact with students and staff. When I went for my daily exercise, I saw Bard kids loitering and wondered if they knew. Still, I found myself cautious around them and gave them a wider berth than I might have anyone else.

I made my friend pan-fried flounder that I had bought that morning, roasted vegetables (or what I could find; the grocery store's produce bordered on nonexistent), and dragon noodles. I felt as though Amanda and Aaron had been my friends for a long time and this was something that we did weekly. While I cooked, they played Cards against Humanity, one of the better ways for people to see if they mesh.

No matter what we are doing, the conversation returned to coronavirus every few minutes. We could not avoid this cloud over us. We are not in the demographic likeliest to be most affected. It is more an awareness that the panic over the pandemic is going to be a persistent problem; we are not going to die. The same cannot be said for our parents or those older. We can talk about it without the level of fear those over sixty with health problems might.

Amanda says that her job is cutting her hours down to one day. Amber's animal hospital reduced its hours to accommodate the inevitability of quarantine. They are only seeing sick patients for the time being to lessen the potential spread. She is fretful that the hospital cannot survive this pandemic. As she understands it, the hospital must take in $10,000 a day. Even then, it operates on a thin margin.

When my friends leave, it is with an acknowledgement from Aaron that he usually shakes hands. I say I am a hugger, but we give a nod of the head.

By the next day, I know I will likely not see them until this pandemic reaches a conclusion (a month? a year? how long?). It is foolish to do otherwise. It was foolish to have this dinner at all, but I wanted to believe things would remain normal.

I don't feel well, but my symptoms do not match COVID-19. No fever, no cough, just a little rundown and irritable. I could have a cold, as could Amber, but neither of us is making a big deal about it. We do not want to be the people in the zombie movie shot in the face because we have an unrelated scratch.

I am not ready to live my life as though nothing is ever going to be the same. Seeing friends was my necessary normal, making them food my delight. We are not sick yet. We are not infected. Unlike Italy, our country had not yet closed. We may only have weeks before this happens, following the trends. At that point, I do not know what happens. I do not think it will involve having friends over.

We told Kristina that she should use us if she needs help, but the implication was that she was the only one we would offer this. We would keep our distance from everyone else.

Amber teases me that we shouldn't kiss, but there we will both be under quarantine if one of us is infected. We share our cereal bowl most mornings, one eating after the other, are always cuddling, and usually shower together. We are horrible vectors for the other.

It will take us a while to find what our new normal will become. Like 9/11, some things are going to change permanently. We will be more cautious around others. Not in the way of racists -- they went after The Middle East for 9/11, East Asia now -- but that any of us could harbor infection. Small businesses may not be able to survive this. Broadway is closed. Churches are not holding services. There was a $1.5 trillion stimulus for banks that seems not to have done any good beyond prolonging the inevitable for an hour. Our economy is tanking. Steven Mnuchin said that there may be 20% unemployment, and they are considering $1000 a month checks to every citizen to slow the descent. In declaring a national state of emergency, Trump freed up $50 billion for all the states. $1 billion per state is not going to do much of anything.

Every day -- and there have not been as many as it feels -- a new factor of the pandemic occurs to me. ICE is still seizing people straight from hospitals and holding them in cages. The closest analog seems the most extreme, but I am reminded that treatable diseases destroyed many thousands of Jews in concentration camps. We are creating human petri dishes to feed the coronavirus.

Even the people who recover sometimes have lung fibrosis that reduces their pulmonary functioning 20-30%. This does not discriminate on age (aside from small children, it seems).

I feel unprepared, in that I do not know what I should be preparing. I am not about to hoard, but I worry about what will happen if I cannot get groceries once shipping grows less frequent. This is speculation. Perhaps it will remain fairly normal, the hoarders relaxing into their $300 of toilet paper stored in their living rooms. Trump wanted us to go to work irrespective of this (until he walked that back) and spend money. W said similar things after 9/11. Everyone we saw then didn't potentially contain a tiny terrorist that could kill our parents.

If we put aside the manifold killed as a result of 9/11, all those innocents bombed who were in no way involved with the attacks, Covid-19 has almost triple the body count at present. This can only increase as infections take hold. If this lasts into 2021, as is a realistic prediction, that 9000 could take on another zero. No one has a clear handle on the estimate as there are far too many factors to consider in this holistic web.

Amber put on a YouTube video, commenting that now we must watch serious news. All our late-night shows, candy-coated distillations of the news, are on hold with no clear idea when they will return.

The straight news program we watch seems like the beginning of a horror movie. I hate this analogy, but there is no better one for the sharp and humorless discussion of a pandemic. It is terror to listen to a newscaster talk about all these deaths with no cure. This is what would play over the opening credits of the zombie outbreak.

When 9/11 happened, a few friends-of-friends (and many since) have said that it looked and felt like a movie. We retreat to fiction because it gives us a world of heroes in the rubble, someone who can punch the villain and retrieve the antidote. The efforts of a few dedicated actors can save the day. Disasters of this caliber are supposed to appear from the keyboard of a hack readying the next summer blockbuster, but not our newsfeeds. Now that we must live through one (again), we look to the horizon for a James Bond to save us at the last minute. The World Health Organization telling us to wash our hands, the national government declaring a state of emergency and ordering us to remain home in front of Netflix, doesn't give us the catharsis we need to hope for a bloodless win.

There will not be a clear win. This is a war of attrition against an enemy incapable of knowing we are dying in fear.

Soon in Xenology: Magical thinking and witchcraft. Probably more about COVID-19, since, you know, the world is ending and everything.

last watched: Broadchurch
reading: Sex and Rockets