Plague Journal (4)

Yesterday, Saturday, was our first weekend day of "Virus Time." As such, we treated it as a day of getting some chores done early and then leisure the rest of the day. On a morning walk, I ran into a neighbor who told me her husband's cancer is back. He's going into the hospital on Monday for his first chemo treatment, but she's not allowed to go with him due to the COVID-19 restrictions.

In the evening we watched a movie, the last thing I checked out of the library before it shut down. John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. Classic noir, until the very last scene the entire film takes place at night or twilight, never in full day. The characters are like rats, they scuttle along dank alleys. The city is depicted as a stultifying place that twists people and makes them crazy. The only daylight and space, in that final scene, is outside the city. Embedded in the narrative is the notion that the world has somehow gone bad, and the streets are filled with monsters.

Not that we do not care for these characters, but they are all pitiful. As many have noted, noir and hard-boiled storytelling has the feel of Greek tragedy, with the inevitability of fate hanging over everything. Even the two kisses have a strange, heartless, uncomfortable feel to them. And when Jean Hagen (as "Doll") struggles to express love toward Sterling Hayden (Dix, the central character), his normally hard-as-steel eyes get a confused look and he mutters, "I don't get it."

Anyway, watching something this claustrophobic may not be for everyone, especially during a time of social isolation.

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Back to the situation at hand. There seems to be a rising chorus of voices on the Trumpian right that wants to put the focus on China. They insist that the virus must be called "the Chinese Virus" or "the Wuhan Virus." One commenter on Facebook said that the coming election will be a contest between those who want to blame Trump, and those who want to blame China. That person was a Trump supporter, and I get the feeling that such a contest would suit him just fine.

I will not comment on just how or to what extent China deserves blame for the spread of this virus, but I fear the further rise of xenophobia, fueled by the president.

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Finally, I have seen a few articles questioning whether the shutdown to the economy will not be a worse and more long-lasting crisis than the contagion itself. I'm not qualified to comment on that, but I don't dismiss these articles out of hand. Here's one that seems pretty well-reasoned, only the most recent one I've seen: We have met the enemy, and he is us.