There Is No Outside Read online

  Such dynamics expose a basic absurdity at the heart of our global society. It is not a system aimed at satisfying our desires and needs, at providing humans with greater amounts of physical utility. It is instead governed by impersonal pressures to turn goods into value, to constantly make, sell, buy, and consume commodities in an endless spiral. Unlike an earthquake or famine, the coronavirus outbreak has not destroyed our capacity to make things; indeed, it has resulted in perhaps the greatest ever accumulation of two of the most useful substances known to humanity, oil and steel. But several weeks of quarantining have decimated their value, tanking currencies, stock market indexes, and personal savings. Instead of enriching us and relieving us of natural wants, this glut of goods is only making us poorer. Given this irrational social system of organizing wealth and value, it is no wonder that so many societies have found it impossible to contain the coronavirus by asking citizens to limit commercial activity.

  Containing the spread of the coronavirus, then, is about more than practicing good hygiene. On trial is a whole global system of profiteering and its structural laws and incentives. What the pandemic has revealed is not just that companies are out to get rich—a story as old as time—but specifically our unprecedented degree of global interdependence in the year 2020. The Saudi oil rigs and the Chinese steel factories are working just fine, but with the US and Europe under quarantine, these industries, and the global economy, may just implode. The international division of labor cannot survive today unless all of its parts remain healthy.

  4. Nationalism Virus?

  After concealing the crisis for much of January and punishing whistleblowers, the Chinese state finally acted to combat the virus in Wuhan while projecting to the outside world an image of exemplary governance. Foreign media accepted this characterization uncritically, as one WHO official declared, “China actually is setting a new standard for outbreak response, and it’s not an exaggeration.” But Chinese citizens were far more skeptical. On February 7, 2020, a 34-year-old doctor named Li Wenliang, who had been initially punished for trying to tell friends about the new coronavirus, died suddenly. His story inspired an outpouring of anger and melancholy on Chinese social media. In early March, Vice Premier Sun Chunlan visited Wuhan for a PR opportunity but was bombarded with public chants that “It’s all fake!” in clips posted online. Social media users pointed out in early February that the daily reported case-fatality rate appeared stuck at 2.1 percent and that if you charted the numbers of cases over time on an X-Y axis, you would get a perfect circle.2

  Meanwhile, American ideologues have tried to convince themselves that the Chinese response was fatally flawed. In authoritarian China, they say, data has been unreliable, communication opaque, and the leaders rule through fear. All valid criticisms. But has the US government response been that much better? After hearing President Trump talk openly about keeping an infected cruise ship at sea in order to depress case numbers, reading about senators who traded stocks based on confidential meetings while publicly denying the virus’s threat, and watching middling bureaucrats comply with White House orders out of cowardice and self-preservation, it is becoming increasingly difficult to draw a bright line between the dysfunctional autocracy and the orderly democracy.

  This week, both sides have devolved into a petty contest of conspiracies. The Chinese state has now banned all US journalists, and Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian has blamed US soldiers for planting the virus in Wuhan in October, moves intended to control the PRC’s international image. In retaliation, Trump went out of his way this week to repeat the phrase “Chinese virus.” But for its part, the PRC government has at least reversed its initial disastrous mismanagement and subordinated its market economy to a robust state-owned sector, hastily producing face masks, medicines, and impromptu 1,600-bed hospitals without consideration to financial losses. At this point, such measures would be a huge relief in the US.

  This is not to equivocate between two radically different and profoundly imperfect societies but to suggest that the spread of the virus is now completely undermining the typical way Americans have long consumed news about China, within a simplistic framework of east versus west. It is unsurprising that racist conservative politicians and media figures obsessively talk of the “Wuhan virus.” But there are many liberal-minded figures who have expressed a subtler kind of American exceptionalism, too.

  The same night Rudy Gobert’s positive coronavirus test was announced, ESPN cameras caught Dallas Mavericks owner and Shark Tank star Mark Cuban reacting in real time, snapping his upper torso backwards and yelling to others, “Did you see this!?” Later asked what he was thinking, he said: “This is crazy. This can’t be true. I mean, it’s not within the realm of possibility. It just seems more like out of a movie than reality.” The same day Cuban made these comments, China had already logged over 80,000 total cases and in Italy alone 196 people had already died. What other signs was he looking for? Cuban’s incredulity embodies a broader attitude that became increasingly apparent among Americans last week: that in spite of clear, mounting scientific evidence of an inevitable pandemic, they were not only naive but even in arrogant denial about its possibility in their own country. There are few clearer displays of American exceptionalism than the way institutions and corporations—sports leagues, local governments, concert venues—paid lip service to consulting experts and authorities while betraying in their actions that they did not think a pandemic was inevitable or even probable.

  Common to all these responses was an underlying American belief that the coronavirus was a distinctively Chinese problem. Virus epidemics? City closures? Those were things that happened “out there,” in the poor and non-white countries but certainly never over here. Now, such myopic east-west thinking has proven self-sabotaging, as the US government has revealed itself as extraordinarily unprepared for the outbreak and as so many American citizens have proven to be socially irresponsible to a staggering degree, attempting to price gouge for hand sanitizer and packing restaurants and bars long after the numbers have begun ascending the same steep path as Italy and Iran before them. Viruses transcend borders. They make a mockery out of powerful politicians and nationalist hubris.

  It is worth underlining again how the story of the spread of the coronavirus to this point cannot be disentangled from the role of the market in our world today. It is those most intimately dependent upon the market for their daily survival who are most at risk of infection. And if you map the nodal points of travel and trade with China (Seattle, Seoul, Qom), you will discover the locales first hit by the outbreak and through which the pandemic continued to spread. For those on the frontlines and in the most precarious economic positions, the virus and the market are inseparable, almost synonymous. What the latter hasn’t yet destroyed through decades of austerity, the economic impact of the former now threatens to.

  By now, the numbers of new deaths and cases inside Asia are far outweighed by those outside. Can we still plausibly call this the “Wuhan virus”? It is clear that no matter its origins, it is now a global virus, and the threat of its spread will test the collective capacity of the entire world to act responsibly and distinguish between long-term goals and short-term interests. Above all, the next few weeks will act as a referendum on the irrational system of politics and profiteering that we have installed in the 21st century—a system that thus far is failing us now, at precisely the worst moment.

  2

  Living Inside

  The virus comes to visit

  Rachel Ossip

  March 28, 2020

  I’m just tired. Stressed, worked-up. And the cough? I’ve been getting a cold anyway. It isn’t chest pain, it’s anxiety over the state of things, some shadow of a panic attack. We drove up from the city yesterday, and it’s colder in the woods, has been snowing on and off, the house is drafty, the heat is dry—that’s why I’m sneezing, why I shivered. We go to buy groceries and I slump over the cart, letting the carriage hold my weight. But this ex
haustion is existential, not physical; the runny nose must be allergies.

  My head pounds, a raging ache, so I lie down, just for a nap. I wake hours later, shaking, and finally reach for the thermometer: 99.4. It’s low, but undeniable. We call the department of health hotline, and a friendly voice tells me to call my primary care doctor, who tells me to … call the department of health. Friends send texts: Alternate Ibuprofen and Acetaminophen, then follow up hours later in all caps—DON’T TAKE ADVIL!!—linking to claims from the French government, later debunked or at least softened, that Ibuprofen makes the virus worse. I get out of bed only to change shirts after the last one soaks with sweat, or to pee.

  I dream that I paint my face in slick oil colors, some futurist camouflage, and still worry, pettily, about the pimples that may result. I dream that I lose my phone in a big box store but know it must be near: I hear my playlists looping over the intercom. I dream I can’t remember the name of an artist whose show opens tonight, am searching frantically through calendars in my phone to find it, then remember all the galleries are closed, the shows are canceled. I dream I am staring out a window, watching snow fall in fistful flurries, drinking glass after glass of water, achingly thirsty, sneezing up little bits of blood, only to realize I am awake. I think, melodramatically, of how much more I want to do with my life.

  It’s Wednesday and I’ve had a fever since Monday afternoon, though it’s stayed low, peaking at 100.8. My girlfriend starts running a fever too, so we split into separate bedrooms and I listen anxiously for her labored coughing through the wall. I am worried and relieved in equal measure with each gravelly hack: the cough sounds gruesome, but it’s good to know she’s breathing. On the other side, she listens too—for my cough, for my thermometer that beeps every few hours, wishing she could see the number. I keep my eyes closed even when I’m awake and listening, to dull the sensory intake—headaches are the worst part, with pressure from both sides like my head is in some metal clamp, squeezed by an industrial compactor. My jaw is clenched, my back aches from lying in bed.

  I sign up for a Teladoc service at 9:30 AM, but they’re “experiencing a high call volume due to the novel coronavirus.” I keep my laptop open to the video waiting room as I half-sleep half-sweat through further fever dreams. At 4 AM, I receive a phone call: Would you like to switch to a phone appointment? Our video calls are backed up. OK, I croak. The doctor calls back at 5:30 AM, but I miss the call by a ring in my stupor. I receive a follow-up email: “We attempted to contact you for your visit, and we’re sorry we missed you. Your visit request has been canceled but we recognize the extended wait time you’ve experienced … Thank you for your patience.”

  We are living inside the virus twice, I scrawl in a waking moment, by which I mean the virus is going on around us and we are also in its haze. In some ways, it’s a relief to be removed from the sociocultural panic by force of nature. I try to take further notes, but the pen feels too heavy. I try to read, but my eyes blur. I tell myself this is OK: It is OK to slow down, OK to hold on. To sit with the silence. Time warps like a bad drug trip, further days slip by.

  The night the fever breaks, I wake in the dark with a wet hairline, slide from bed, lie prone on the floor, stretch—downward dog, child’s pose—and cry. The next morning I feel, not well, but so relieved I could run, dance, if only I could breathe better. I am lucky, I am young. Nausea comes in successive waves, my appetite is nonexistent. My body feels thin like it hasn’t since I was teenaged: clavicle, ribs, pelvic bones announcing themselves through my skin. I wave my arms, which float, ghostly light. My mind feels shriveled, and I imagine the gray matter pickling.

  I make tea: mate, which tastes like water; peppermint, which tastes like water. I smell the teabag, bite it: nothing. I bite a lemon: a twinge of sour. Peanut butter tastes like sugar, lettuce tastes vaguely bitter. Mint lip balm tingles without taste or smell. I google: Loss of smell/taste a symptom of covid? and the British have claimed, Yes, it is, in an article dated that morning. Is everything a symptom? I force down a tasteless smoothie that seems to run, unchanged, through my body in mere hours, then google diarrhea a symptom of covid? Yes, it is.

  The virus tours my organ systems, wreaking havoc at each checkpoint. My girlfriend likewise personifies it, thinking of the virus as a sci-fi invader. She tells me she imagines it taking up temporary residence in her brain, the command center, maneuvering a joystick across her sensory receptors. But while I find the illness harrowing, she finds it tedious, yet clarifying: “Being sick is boring. All I do is sleep, drink water, sometimes juice. Lie in bed for a day, and then another one. Take a steam shower and lean against the wall so I don’t collapse. But I am not bored, as every moment has meaning. My purpose is infinitely clear: to get well.”

  And, fortunately, we start to. The virus shows a gracious side, grants reprieve, and the sickness grows mundane. An occasional cough, and ongoing fatigue, but the heaviness of the fear lifts. I sleep less, the days take shape again. My girlfriend’s fever also breaks: I play canary to her miner, harbinger of the sickness but also its respite. I leave the house for the first time in a week. Five minutes down the dirt road, I pause, gasping, clutching my lungs. Is the tightness worse today than yesterday? Should I be worried? Or is the tightness precisely because I am worried, not the virus itself but its psychosomatic correlate?

  I worry about my lungs, about my girlfriend, about my 76-year-old aunt down the street, about my boomer parents across the country and my immunocompromised friends in New York and my healthy friends in New York, my friends who work in the service industry who have lost their jobs and my friends who are doctors and nurses, security guards and building attendants, and can’t stop working. My girlfriend hasn’t been ill in a decade, and she remains somehow serene about the illness itself, trusting her strong, WASP-athlete’s body to perform healing with the grace and efficiency it performs everything else. We fight about the utility of worrying; she says there’s no point, that all we can do is rest and wait, be kind to ourselves. I tell her she was cocky, her bravado inappropriate given that she, too, got sick. She shrugs—everyone gets sick. We are just lucky it was mild. She laughs off the night she felt briefly paralyzed and her thoughts shifted into French, all the normal, sickness-delayed operations running in a long-neglected language.

  Of course my worrying makes it worse, but it’s not as if one can just turn off a venerable, inherited tradition, refined over the course of generations. My mother calls, frantic, and begs us to go to the hospital. I try to patiently explain that going to the hospital, if not absolutely necessary, would be the worst thing we could do, adding to the nurses’ burden and potentially exposing other patients. I remember what a tree told me once, in a different hallucinatory dream: There are other ways to care about people than worrying about them. You can just ask them how they are.

  I text friends and ask them how they’re doing. I play virtual card games with others I haven’t spoken to since college, attend a Zoom birthday party. Musician friends sing me to sleep over the phone, send videos to wake up to; Artist friends post daily paintings, send pictures of blooming magnolias. I can read for an hour at a time, then slowly more. I didn’t bring enough books, or my nail clippers. With how much I’ve fantasized about packing up for some disaster—how strategically I’ve placed the box in which I’d throw my notebooks in the event of a fire or flood—I’d never imagined the scenario in which I didn’t know that’s what I was doing, that I would think I was just leaving for days instead of weeks. Though, of course, my notebooks are still there, and I’ll go back to Brooklyn—I just don’t know when. I FaceTime my roommates, ask them to water the plants.

  Our bodies heal, because we are lucky, and our rhythms resume. We stop tracking symptoms and instead count the days until we can safely reenter public life. Though of course, there isn’t much public life to enter. In the cloud, everyone wonders aloud: When will things go back to normal? But will they? Now, mostly recovered, my girlfriend starts to worry too: Wil
l there be lasting symptoms? Will our sense of smell and taste return? Will we be marked? And what will New York look and feel like on the other side? I feel a surge of longing for all it has offered, for its vices and crevices, for the proximity that is its deranged pleasure, its grating hardship, and its present danger. There is so much ongoing, so much of it getting worse, that worrying about the future seems surreal.

  Out here, we watch fingerling branches sprout tips of mauve and green, and rarely see another person pass. We walk the same path down the dirt road each afternoon, moving more swiftly as our strength returns. Ambient, wider worry shoulders out the concentrated concern of the past days—or, now, weeks. Has it been two weeks already? Still I catch myself pausing, blinking, staring, half-expecting to wake up, sweaty, from this dream.

  3

  Coronavirus and Chronopolitics

  What matters now is the balance of authority in everyday life—between young and old, worker and boss

  Gabriel Winant

  March 23, 2020

  In 2018, the Massachusetts Nurses Association (MNA) fought a long, bitter campaign for an initiative called Question 1, which would have capped the number of patients who could be under a nurse’s care: up to five non-urgent stable patients at a time for one nurse; only one in critical or intensive care. The proposal would have compelled hospitals to hire thousands more registered nurses (RNs), and it polled well initially. When I canvassed for it, I found that it was remarkably easy to win over voters. Do you know any nurses? (Yes, almost without fail.) Do they seem tired? (Yes, almost without fail.) Do you want a tired nurse for yourself or your loved ones? (Of course not.)

  The hospitals of Massachusetts responded to the initiative with a fierce $25 million campaign fronted by a management entity, the “Organization of Nursing Leaders,” which sounds to the casual listener like an organization of practicing nurses. ONL blanketed the state with ads warning of hospitals that would have to close under the financial burden; skyrocketing health care bills; and the overall decline of the quality of care under all the red tape. To politicize caregiving would only create a giant mess. Nurses themselves appeared to be divided. Support plummeted steeply over the course of the fall. I realized we were dead when I canvassed a woman in Cambridge who turned out to be a retired nurse and former MNA member herself. She was white and quickly self-identified as queer; she had a Black Lives Matter sign in her neat yard, where she was gardening when I strolled up to her house. On the question, she was on the fence. The proposal, which once looked like a winner, wound up with only 30 percent of the vote in November.