The People in the Box

On February 17, Dan and I, groggy and jet lagged, landed in Madrid and checked into our hotel in the Atocha section of the city. We were trying to stay awake, in order to get on Spanish time. We planned to get up early and spend the day at the Prado.

Lazing about we turned on CNN International, which was reporting on the virus that had spread in Wuhan, China. Of course, I had heard of the coronavirus. I delight in reading the news the old-fashioned way. Every morning I go down my driveway to retrieve The Washington Post and share it with Dan after breakfast. Also, I have the NYT online, so it’s not like I hadn’t read about the virus, but I assumed it was confined to Wuhan, a city about the size of NYC. The reporter said about 500,000 people had been infected there.

CNN panned to Wuhan’s empty streets, concrete canyons of high rises. Not a soul stirred. The camera followed a white-suited crew enter an apartment building, where they broke down an apartment door and dragged a young couple and their child out. All screamed in terror. According to the reporter, the family had tested positive for the virus. In the next scene the crew strong-armed the screaming family out of their building and to a pickup truck waiting in front. On the truck bed was a metal box, maybe four feet by four feet. The family’s screams filled the empty street and swelled against the gray dome of sky.

One-by-one each family member was shoved into the metal box. Once they were all inside, the door to the box was slammed shut. Instead of muffling the sound, their screams grew more high-pitched. I imagined the family inside the dark box crowded together, holding each other, their breathing ragged, their hearts thudding in unison.
The truck raced away with them and their screams of terror.

That family has haunted me ever since. The CNN reporter said the family was being taken to a hospital. I wished I could have seen them taken inside. Brutal coercion was the way the Chinese government sought to contain the virus. Since then, I’ve read everything I could about covid-19 and how countries are dealing with it.

Covid-19 does not respond well to lies or cover-ups, not by the American government or the Chinese. Once China broke through its denial about having the disease, according to WHO, my major source on the disease, they have done a good job at containment as well as treatment. Containment must come first because few countries have the medical resources, such as the all-important ventilators, for everyone who needs them. Again, according to WHO, the Chinese have treated the sickest with every medical tool in the box, steroids, antibiotics, etc. Thanks to their efforts, a one-hundred-year-old man survived! The forty-something ophthalmologist, who first sounded the alarm about covid-19, did not.

Nowadays the virus is subsiding in Wuhan. You can even get carryout food there. Your order is brought to a central location and placed in a sterile container, where you pick it up. On the receipt for your food, you will see the name and temperature of the person who prepared your food AND the name and temperature of the person who delivered it.

Like many in the US, Italians ignored covid-19, calling it a flu, certain it would not affect them, even as it hit Milan and its environs, which the government eventually closed. But their government’s actions were too little too late. Now the entire country is closed and under quarantine. Newspapers contain 20 pages of obituaries; the dead must wait their turns at crematoriums and cemeteries The reports from Italian doctors are heartbreaking, for there are not enough ventilators for all who need them, so doctors must decide who gets a ventilator and possibly lives and those who will not get one and, thus, are certain to die.

From Madrid, Dan and I hopped a fast train to Seville. As February became March, we strolled the sunny streets of Spain’s southernmost city, filled with the scent of orange trees in bloom. We had a great time, especially at their futbol match, but the scenes from China continued to play in the theater of my mind. Most nights I got up and searched my phone for information about covid-19.

In the meantime, the virus crept across Europe.

On our way back to the states on Air France, we read about a man who was ill with covid-19 in Seville and had recovered. That was the first instance we heard of the virus in Spain. Now Spain is going the way of Italy with people lined up in hospital halls, dying on the floor.

Once we arrived home, we came down with what we hope is the flu. Immediately we emailed our doctors, who told us we’d be fine. The first couple of days back we felt so bad we went out only to the grocery story. Soon we read that the CDC had asked all those who had recently returned from Spain to quarantine themselves for 14 days. Our 14 days were up last week. We take our temperatures three times a day, and thus, far have had none. For that I am so grateful.

We have not been tested because this is difficult to do in the US. There are not enough tests. The CDC is telling doctors and nurses with no masks to wear bandannas over their noses and mouths. As brutal as the tactics in Wuhan were, the misinformation and lack of preparation by our government is more frightening. The only way to keep our hospitals from being overrun is to stay quarantined as we are doing.

According to the CDC, if we follow Italy’s trajectory over two million Americans could die. I cannot help wondering: will I be one of them? Or worse, will someone I love be one of them?