Paris Under COVID-19
BY KELLY COGSWELL
I shouldn’t be reluctant to
say it, but I am. I’m having
a hard time with all this…
This what, really? The tiny
little virus that dropped unthinkingly
into the human world has
created so many waves I don’t even
know where to start.
One of my problems is simple
fear — that the Girl or I will get
sick, and die, or just be really disabled.
Ana had the fl u two years
ago and it took her months to recover.
And COVID-19 is so bad it
shouldn’t even be compared to the
fl u. In the worst cases it touches
every part of your body with symptoms
ranging from the terrifying to
the ridiculous, destroying up your
lungs, interfering with blood clotting
so maybe you get a stroke, or
dementia. Then there’s the loss of
smell, a weird rash on your toes,
like a kind of taunt.
What’s really messing with my
head though, is the growing sense
I live in an alternative reality. That
I’m nuts.
The sensation’s not new. Really
pay attention to the world for long
periods of time, you see all these
layers of things that nobody else
wants to, either because it’s depressing
or infuriating. So mostly
you end up shutting your inconvenient
trap, and, eventually, your
eyes, if you want to stay sane. But
right now I can’t. And I want to
scream like Cassandra when I go
out into the streets where maybe
only 20 percent of the people are
wearing masks, and I can practically
see the web between them,
how even one infected person will
touch him and him and him and
her and her and them. Who will in
turn contaminate others in a vast
cascade until, failing a miracle, the
city, still in the throes of a massive
epidemic, is hit by a virulent second
wave.
Nobody else seems to care. The
sun is shining. The cafés will open
soon. Coming back inside today, a
barefaced guy from upstairs that I
hadn’t seen for months asked how
I was doing as I hustled past. And
when I just shrugged, he smiled
reassuringly, “It will be over soon.
Don’t you think so?” he pressed.
With the COVID lockdown lifted in Paris, the streets and cafés are once again bustling.
“Maybe another six months at
most?”
I shrugged some more, “Nothing
will change until we get a vaccine.
And six months would be pretty
quick.”
“Yeah, production issues,” he acknowledged.
“But still.”
He smiled some more, and we
both moved off, me in my mask,
him with his entire face on display
complete with lips and nose that I
have lost. I spent the next half hour
enumerating to myself all the impediments
to an effective vaccine
and herd immunity, among them
the strength of the anti-vaxxer
movement, which is almost as big
in France as in the US, and why so
many people here die preventably
every year from the garden variety
fl u.
So, yeah, I have the occasional
panic attack sometime around 4
a.m. Not bad enough to get excited
about. Just a pounding heart, that
sense of unreality, the same impending
doom as when I was afraid
Trump would be elected, plus the
faint soupçon of the shame you get
from living in a female body carrying
its unwritten sign declaring,
“feeble-minded, worrywart, girl.”
Which is probably my reputation
in the building, when, after watching
the body count mount in Italy,
but before the lockdown started in
France, I had the gall to write the
co-op board and express concern
that it might be dangerous for the
REUTERS/ CHARLES PLATIAU
doctor on the fi rst fl oor to use our
common hallway stairway landing
as an extension of his waiting
room, forcing all of us to run the
gauntlet of six or seven, coughing
sweating people, hanging out
P E R S P E C T I V E : A D y k e A b r o a d
while they waited for him to open
his doors.
Only one person from the board
ever got back to me — two weeks
later — a woman basically telling
me to trust the good doc. Didn’t I
know how eminent he was? Didn’t
I see him on the telly? He himself
was so generous and thoughtful
and kind that when somebody ratted
me out, he took the time to call
my voicemail and inform me that
I was absolutely despicable, before
suggesting I was not only hysterical,
but xenophobic and a germaphobe.
He was right of course. Men always
are. Thanks to my uterus, I
do feel hysterical and germaphobic
every time I go out and see all
those people chatting in Covidean
clusters. I also admit to a growing
fear of all those people foreign
to me, in this foreign country, like
that bull’s-pizzle of a doctor who is
going to get us all killed. I am even
despicable, sometimes imagining
when I see his open door, of pushing
him down the stairs, though
it won’t do much harm, him being
invulnerable, as it seems so many
are.
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