Day 134: Fear & Hope Team Up to Torment

I’ve tried in vain to rent, borrow, or buy wheels. I offered friends free shelter in the second bungalow, but no one is interested. They sure want masks though.

I’m on half-rations until further notice because I stashed so much food upstate. Sneeky is noisily aghast at my failure to pinpoint Round Two’s arrival after predicting it for months. I paid for this with a black eye and a very sore nose that remains indented from the mask’s edge. I feel like a cop who got mugged on duty.

LET’S HOPE IT DOESN’T COME TO THIS: A NYC RIOT IN 1863The city seethes with fear. A lot of people are sick. There has been looting almost everywhere, though the streets sound quieter tonight. There probably isn’t much left to steal … in the stores. I’ve come to hate the sound of footsteps and voices in the corridor. Silence never sounded so sweet.

My audience has mushroomed. Welcome back! I’m sure to be more entertaining and informative tomorrow.

I feel so alone. I don’t know what I’d do without Sneeky, my loyal friend. While he senses the disturbance, his gaze says: “We’re still here, relax.”

I’ll be OK. When I was a kid my parents dragged me to see what I expected would be a terminally dull operetta, Dialogues of the Carmelites, about nuns who wind up getting their heads chopped off during the French Revolution. I liked it. That night I dreamed that everyone I knew was lined up at the guillotine. When I tried to join some kids I knew, the guards told me to go away, I wasn’t supposed to be executed. I felt really left out, dejected. The way Crusoe did on bad days, I guess—condemned to survive alone.

Maybe I’m destined to outlast you all.

Day 135: New York Met New Orleans on a Bridge

My neighbors bang on my door at all hours, seeking protective equipment, advice, and assurance that someone knows what’s going on. They want to hear that they’ll be able to get their medication, that there will be food.

How could my responses be heartening? I’m just a masked and goggled face grunting across the seven-inch chain that safeguards my door, keeping one hand out of sight so they can imagine I’m armed. I spend my free time (is there any other kind?) looking out the same windows they have.

GRETNA: A LEVEE OF BULLETS KEPT REFUGEES OUTTheir expressions turn sour. Some hold their ground in the hallway, staring, challenging me to admit that things aren’t really so bad. I know this trick: It can get store clerks to look again for what you want.

I have nothing positive to say.

A very good friend of mine—a onetime love who gave me the lamented Ganesh ceramic that Nina smashed on her way out of my life—may have caught H5N1. ‘Lisa’ left a ragged, fearful message while I was sleeping this morning. When I returned her call, I reached the Irish guy she lives with, who was sick for a while in May. I dined pleasantly at their new apartment a week ago. I get along well with her boyfriend, who knows that neither Lisa nor I want to revive our old romance. (Nina seems to have thought we wanted to.)

I’ve never known Lisa’s confidence to falter, but two people at her workplace are sick. One has vanished into a medical system that can’t or won’t account for him. The other was afraid to try a hospital and doesn’t answer her phone.

I had already provided Lisa and her boyfriend with protective gear and I’ve offered to visit if it might help. He’s open to the idea, but Lisa won’t hear of it. She’s feverish and uncharacteristically high-strung. She’s afraid to miss more work because her company is firing people. I felt terror in their voices. I’d do anything to keep her breathing.

I emailed them links to the best sites, including Dr. Grattan Woodson’s Good Home Treatment Of Influenza. And I recommended that Lisa start taking Relenza immediately.

Hydration: Key to Surviving Flu

Woodson offers very good advice about resting and hydrating flu patients. Lying down reduces our need to breathe deeply, so we don’t draw viral particles deeper into our lungs. We must drink a cup of nonalcoholic liquid at least once an hour when awake. This helps cleanse our system and replenishes fluids we lose to fever.

Patients who cannot eat must consume electrolytes. A quart can be made from clean water, two tablespoons of sugar, a quarter-teaspoon of baking soda, and an equal amount of salt (or half a teaspoon, if no baking soda is on hand). Dr. Michael Greger, who literally wrote the book on bird flu (free at his site), further suggests adding orange juice and mashed banana for potassium, if such luxuries are available. The electrolyte drink must be dripped into a patient’s mouth if necessary. Precision is very important in how much sugar and salt you use, says Mike Coston.

Dr. Greger emphasizes that fever is a good thing. Viruses don’t like heat.

Fever is our way of inhibiting replication, effectively curbing the enemy’s reinforcements. Greger warns against tampering with fever by taking acetaminophen and/or ibuprofen unless a temperature surpasses 104 degrees. If it does, he recommends both, along with cooling cloths and tepid water sponge baths. Aspirin should never be given to children (good thing my stepmom doesn’t read this blog or she’d feel inadequate) because it can trigger a rare side effect.

Otherwise, I don’t know much more than you do. The Internet is still up, so I know New York City is the epicenter for Round Two in America.

I scoff at the notion that someone brought the virus from that prison in Sao Paulo (where the pandemic reignited in the Western Hemisphere). People are desperate to identify a foreign flu vector, as if no American could have brought the virus back from a business trip, a sinful escapade, or both. The preferred narrative is that an alien brought H5N1 here. It invites us to blame both outsiders and the government (for letting them in).

Hope-Simpson would have smiled politely and said that nothing could have prevented Round Two. We were well-seeded months ago.

Barricades on the Bridge

I’m astonished that New Jersey closed the George Washington Bridge the day flu came back. I was stuck just blocks from that hysterical parade of pedestrians trying to cross, including drivers who had abandoned their cars. Thousands of New Yorkers managed to reach the dense suburbia that tops the Palisades.

Then a line of New Jersey State Troopers blocked the bridge with shipping containers, tear gas, clubs, and tasers.

You’ve all seen the streaming cell phone videos. The worst was posted by a flugitive while masked cops took turns bashing wads of blood and flesh out of his friend’s head. (How did this brave guy grab and post those shots so near the action?) The troopers’ savage defense of the Garden State against the late Columbia University sophomore who happened to be from Montclair, N.J., was playing on hundreds of thousands of screens around the world before the brutes could catch their breath.

We still don’t know if a tourist from Las Vegas tumbled over the side of the bridge while the crowd ebbed and flowed. She’ll wash up or she won’t.

Protesters are enduring a defiant vigil in high winds under the great suspension cables, surrounded by cops from two states who don’t want to touch them. Suburban police in Long Island blocked the Long Island Expressway until New York’s governor threatened to send our state troopers after them. The media find it inconvenient to cover any of this in person. I see only copter shots and talking heads. Are reporters afraid to go there—or are the cops blocking them?

I think of Gretna, La., whose cops fired toward Hurricane Katrina refugees on a bridge as they tried to escape New Orleans. (On a different bridge, police shot and killed people.)

As for the president’s national military alert, I want to know if it’s intended to help us or lock us in. A little clarification is in order. All we hear are orders amid so much disorder. It sounds like dogs barking furiously at phantoms.

Day 136: A Pandemic World—Without Money

New York needs money. No, not a traditional budget blowup: We’re suffering a life-threatening liquidity crisis on the simplest level.

WE HAVE NO CASH HERE!

WE NEED AN ARMY OF ATM STOCKERS & FIXERS (Shane Becker) The whole city shut down at once. A lot of people are getting fired for the duration, many without severance. I count seven friends whose jobs are gone, including the calculating Fitch. He wants to know how people are supposed to file for unemployment benefits at offices that are closed. What about welfare payments? Or food stamps? Sure, do it online. Let’s hope those servers are sympathetic. I doubt many workers are tending incoming applications.

For those fortunate enough to remain employed, who will process their checks? We see gleaming, empty towers. The suburbanites who staff offices either got out or are still trying. They’re not tending accounts in an enterprising spirit.

Bank service looks pretty spotty on my TV. ATMs ran out of money the first day—not counting the ones that were pried open.

There can’t be much for sale in stores. We won’t even be able to get a black market going without cash. Do we have to invent our own scrip? Even I’m starting to miss my nearest Chasebucks Coffee Bank, at least conceptually.

Day 137: Flu Solutions Are Far From My Window

I’m still holed up. Thanks for your concern. I appreciate that a gun might feel useful, but I wouldn’t have shot the guys who took my masks. They weren’t threatening my life.

Sneeky and I are back at our windows. I wish he would talk. Or trade views with me. (Mine overlooks the fire escape.) He’s good at spotting things. When his neck extends, I crane mine, hoping it's more than a pigeon. My block has started to smell like Naples. Not far away it sounds like Kabul on a slow night.

The bald man is back to his games. Perhaps he never quit. The woman he lives with plays louder now, or my hearing has sharpened. They inhabit different dimensions of the same space. I’ve never seen them communicate or share. It looks and feels like science fiction … until I recall living that way not long ago.

NOT QUITE THE STUFF OF ROMANCE: SEIZED " VIAGRA" (DHS)Our local correspondent reports that the LES DIY is setting up shop again. She asks when I’ll come around to help. She and some of you inquire about Lisa’s status. I’m not sure. Her boyfriend says she seems weaker but feels better. He is giving her Relenza and hydrating her. He’s way more reliable than any hospital staff would be right now. The problem is that he doesn’t have a ventilator. He’ll call me if Lisa starts gasping. Not that I have a solution.

I watch public service ads on TV, broken up by inane specials like Avian Flu: Are We Flying Blind? Paid commercials are scarce. Locally, they push only stuff that can be consumed at home by history’s biggest captive audience. The Mormons are back with free Bibles. (I ordered one; it’s as good a time as any to catch up on a colorful credo.) And of course there are innumerable quack infomercials about bird flu.

Sold in Britain: Counterfeit Meds

The Web pulsates with spam for Relenza and Tamiflu. The best pitches come from vendors in Britain, a center for informal pharmaceuticals—many of them counterfeit—because taxes, greed, and contempt for the citizenry make Brits pay more for medicine (as with most goods). Not only do the natives comprise a big market for discount meds, they speak English with verve. So they sell lots of them.

Most counterfeit drugs are manufactured in China (which also makes most of the vitamins Americans consume). Much of the rest is made in India and Egypt. Many contain the required chemicals, though not necessarily with the ordained proportions. In normal times, it’s good business to keep bootleg pill-heads alive and clicking.

But Relenza (or Tamiflu) buyers aren’t likely to come back for more. They’ll soon either be immune to H5N1 because they’ve just survived it or they’ll be past needing anything. So the Internet antiviral is frequently 100% bogus. When it’s only partly fake, it’s likely to speed the flu’s resistance to these shaky weapons. Let’s hope it’s not harmful or deadly. (European Union inspectors once nabbed ‘heart attack’ pills composed of brick dust that was painted yellow and glossed with furniture polish.)

At home, startup companies announce research breakthroughs as fast as they can get our hungry media to publicize them. How many different technologies have claimed to vanquish H5N1 since March? Where are they?

Down on Wall Street, trading electronically in fits and starts. Fitch awaits confirmation on a sale he made days ago; the shares vanished from his account but the cash credit never appeared and now he’s getting margin calls. The financial community is a mess. How does a firm ensure regulatory compliance when its entire workforce is telecommuting? Inside information is flowing through private email accounts and calls on unsecured phones. Documents that need to be shipped and papers requiring a signature must be quarantined—even irradiated to kill microbes—before they can be delivered to the telecommuters.

The market is in a grand dive punctuated by euphoric upsurges that seem to flop as soon as the smart money has cleared out. Even when investors are healthy, programs account for most trades. I wonder where their sell triggers are set. It might not take much to flush the market, erase trillions of dollars in an hour.

Day 138: Flu York City—We’re All Foreigners

They’re taking the big view on network TV, trying to suggest H5N1 can be contained in the Big Apple: Our very own pandemic!

Too bad for them there’s a growing list of other infected places. Is it poetic justice that New Jersey’s capital just announced a swath of likely flu victims? I sincerely hope it’s a false alarm that gives Trenton more time to prepare for our reality.

There are sinister suggestions that the new strain reached New York City via illegal immigrants, as if the Department of Homeland Security screens incoming viruses. (More likely, Hope-Simpson’s seedlings are sprouting—Americans who were infected over time by latent carriers are becoming active spreaders.)

ELLIS ISLAND, NY: RECOGNIZE YOUR GRANDMOTHER?Nevertheless, some out-of-town radio chatterers persist in hailing New Jersey’s rudeness as a timely move that may have saved everyone else. Sinful New Yorkers will take the hit from God for y’all. Danged nice of us, I say!

Without actually doing anything, the Feds hold secret teleconferences with various governors who want to bar each other’s citizens. (Might they postpone elections?)

Every day people die by the tens of thousands overseas, and Americans dream of avoiding the bug. There are people all over this country who don’t know they’re carrying H5N1. Most were born here.

Domestic travelers have panicked. Roads are full, flights rerouted, planes, trains, and buses jammed. (Looking for reasons to stay put? Watch that video of the Chicago cops tasing the hungry women besieging a donut stand at O’Hare Airport.) If you live in a quiet zone and want family members with you during Round Two, you’d best gather them fast. I’ve blown it so badly that I’m tempted at least once every seven minutes to try to head home to my folks. It’s too far—and far too late.

Friendly Words of Warning

My Fellow Americans, New York’s travails are your future.

Consider a longtime buddy who sorely yearns to join us (little suspecting he’ll merely wind up in my blog under a cute pseudonym if he makes it). He was researching species extinction in Kenya when the flu reignited. He has bags of protective gear, but can’t travel. He’s alone and frightened in Mombasa, hoping to snag an illegal berth on a boat to a place with better international links. The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi has washed its hands of Americans who ignored the warnings. No food, water, medicine, transport, or advice.

I hope for my friend’s sake that Kenyans don’t start blaming foreigners.

Here, the usual suspects stage demonstrations against the city, state, Feds, and various businesses. Their demands are shameless: They want a freeze on layoffs and they want more medicine, hospital beds, ventilators, food, funeral services, and garbage collection. They even call for more cops, though the response hasn’t been uniformly grateful. Today the cops bashed and busted people at City Hall while they let others yell in Times Square. One reporter tried to question the inconsistency. The police commissioner ignored her. Maybe he thinks chanting spreads particularly dangerous microbes.