Plague
January 2020BraTenders was busy with Broadway heading into 2020, and January was unusually busy withbrides and wealthy tourists in town to shop. we had been hearing some chatter on the news, aswell as from people we knew who regularly crossed the ocean on business related excursions,about city wide shut downs in China and Italy, and about a new flu-like illness that was sendingpeople to the hospital, or morgue. Some of our vendors in Italy couldn’t deliver productsbecause of these circumstances, and that trend continued for the coming weeks. Shippingdelays started to cause product shortages in multiple industries.In March we first heard about a potential Broadway shut down; the plague had arrived in thestates, and New York City seemed to be a hotbed of illness. On March 12, Covid -19 made itsBroadway debut, and infected several cast and crew members, with one being hospitalized. TheBroadway League finally pulled the plug after days of waffling, and the Great White Way wentdark.I knew that BraTenders would go dark too.We remained open through the weekend, and saw the last few brides with imminent weddings,and Gregg Barnes, a multi Tony award winning costume designer who was working on a smallshow, the opening of which was now in doubt. His leading lady needed some undergarmentsfor her costume, and she was coming in for a fitting. Gregg and I chatted, and marveled at thefact we had known and worked with each other for over a decade, possibly closer to 2, and thatthis could be the last time anyone worked in the theater until the dangerous virus passed.I was scared. the entire planet was in the throes of this new illness, and people in China andItaly, now in India and pakistan too, were dying by the dozens, nay, by the hundreds andthousands, on a daily basis. Surgical and respirator Masks became standard apparel for manywhen venturing outside the safety of their homes. Wuhan then went into total lockdown.It had been discovered that Covid-19 was an airborn illness, and that the virus was contained inthe droplets of exhaled breath. it was believed to live on surfaces, in fabrics, it was everywhere.Humans had to be reminded to wash their hands well, and often, and we were convinced todisinfect anything we handled, such as groceries. i stocked up on Lysol Wipes, Isopropylalcohol and hydrogen peroxide, as well as KN95 masks and nitrile gloves. i burned sageeveryday, and stopped going outside. i relentlessly doom scrolled through social media, andhad nightmares about battles over food and shelter in a barren, corpse laden hellscape.I asked Dawn to come and stay with me on the second night of the lockdown, I was so anxious,in a way I’d never experienced before. Of all the ways I imagined the world ending, plague wasnot on the list. I’ve been a nuclear neurotic since age 9, when the threat of annihilation from theCuban Missile Crisis disrupted my carefree childhood. The Cold War was ever present in ourlives, and then it just seemed like there was one war or conflict after another, until this very day.There has not been Peace on Earth, nor Goodwill Towards Man in my lifetime.Dawn declined to come, saying she wanted to be in her own bed. I remember saying to her,let’s grab all the cash we can from our banks, pack some essentials, buy a cheap car, and headoutta NY, to some rural place that was sparsely populated, and the chance of being infected waslower. I imagined us as Thelma and Louise, riding west across Route 66, to some unknownplace, to stay safe from the plague and start a new, different kind of life out of the city. The nextday when I called her, she informed me she was on her way to Texas to be with some otherfriends. I was crushed. I felt abandoned. and she had lied to me.i was pretty sure that BraTenders was dead. and That NYC, as it existed, and which was undermandatory lockdown, was dead too. The streets were deserted. Times Square, for once in itsraucous and rowdy history, was still and silent. Hospitals were insanely overcrowded, withgurneys lining every inch of available space. The morgues had run out of room, and Corpseswere stacked in supply closets, and along the lengths of corridors, until city-block long freezertrucks were parked outside the loading docks to contain the overflow of deceased.With Donald tRump and his merry band of fools in charge of our government, they spectacularlydenied the pandemic was real, and failed the first responders and health care practitioners onthe front lines. There was a lack of dearth of Personal Protective Equipment for hospitalpersonnel, and nurses and doctors had taken to wearing garbage bags as precautions againstCovid while attempting to treat patients. The illness attacked the respiratory system, ravagedthe lungs, and there were an inadequate number of respirators to help everyone who couldn’tbreathe on their own. Hospitals was bursting at the seams with people seeking treatment.except there was none.Covid was something new. This was a virus that had apparently jumped species at a wetmarket in Wuhan China, from a pangolin, an exotic meat source, to a human according to theprevailing theory. another theory posited that the virus was caused by a lab leak, an OOPSmoment, like Chernobyl. Secretive experiments on bio weapons were supposedly conductedat a U.S.military installation, which had a connection to a Chinese official working at MIT, andalso the WuHan laboratory of infectious diseases. Conspiracy theories ran amok, and to thisday, 3.5 years later, we do not the truth.As of this writing, we are at the beginning of another Covid surge, yet another variation of themutated virus which already has dozens and dozens of strains. Thus far, between 5-6 millionU.S citizens have died from Covid and Covid related illness, with the true impact being closer to
