Day 139: Dead Pretty–My Friend Lisa

I can hardly see to write. My friend Lisa is gone. Her boyfriend called to tell me she had darkened and died while he slept. He was hysterical, had no idea she was so ill. I wish he’d called me.

Sure, it’s his fault. I should have known, must have known. It’s obvious that she didn’t want me to visit because she thought she was dying, knew I wouldn’t keep my mask on if I saw her like that. I stayed home, typing for myself and a bunch of strangers.

THE PRIVATE CHAMBER (DREAM OF THE GNOME, Frank Zirbel)

Lisa’s the best woman I’ve ever been with. Anyone she dated would agree. She was beautiful, smart, fun, loving, and kind. Not that Lisa was a Girl Scout—she could be earthy and hot, too, a garden of delights with a macabre sense of humor.

I didn’t know what to say to her boyfriend. I resorted to technical support, tried to be useful, probed to see if he felt ill. He merely feels like death, doesn’t sense any brewing inside. Even as she lies cold in their bedroom.

I didn’t know what to tell him to do with her corpse. Call the city, sure….

Her corpse. How can I type that? The word is a hallucination, an abomination.

He sits near her as I cry for both of them. I’ve broken a bunch of things—cds, dvds, dishes, a book about wine she gave me years ago. I can’t put it back together. The binding split open. I liked the book. I loved her, always would have.

Sneeky watched without judgment or fear while I freaked out and cursed myself. When I began to relax, he padded over to forgive me with a lingering head rub to my calf. That broke me down all over again. He was sad when Lisa and I broke up.

Day 140: Pigs & Birds Didn’t Cook Up this Flu

My world was bleak enough. Now the windowsills on my block are sprouting spiky metal strands, bird barriers that bristle in the sunlight. What’s the point? I prefer to keep a clear view of my former world. It’s bad enough that Sneeky claims the best window.

VICTIM OF A VERY HUMAN DISEASEWorse, New York is full of pigeon corpses. The birds are generally impervious to avian flu. Most are being poisoned. (Others were beaten to death.) Sick morons, who may or may not believe they are achieving something, have thrown millions of New Yorkers into panic by poisoning these scrappy birds. The carcasses are a genuine threat to our health whether or not the birds had flu. No one dares go near them.

I think I see a dead pigeon rotting on the fire escape across the street. Earlier I thought I could smell it, but an eastern breeze spared me.

Few wild birds would have gotten H5N1 if it hadn’t festered in chicken factories.

No Big Deal for Ducks

In East Asia, big chicken farms include lots of ducks—for millions of years the source of influenza viruses that had little effect on other species. As Greger points out in Bird Flu: A Virus Of Our Own Hatching, humans invited the flu to cross the species barrier when we domesticated ducks 4,500 years ago.

Most ducks can carry the virus without symptoms, shedding billions of infectious doses in days. As China expanded duck farming in recent centuries, it forged the reservoir from which most avian flu has been leaping to chickens, and then to people. It’s no coincidence that China has kicked off so many pandemics, not least the Black Death.

The most common transmission mode is the commercial shipping of diseased birds—as edibles or exotic pets—to distant locations. Then, when industrial poultry catch and ferment a virus, migrating birds can pick it up from one pond and drop it into another. The world’s big poultry factories are the equivalent of munitions depots that exchange bombs with passersby (which won’t surprise anyone who believes that swine flu was cooked up in gargantuan, unnatural pig factories). Curious? Read on.

Less than a century ago, the average American ate half a pound of chicken a year. (The Republican Party was really talking big when it boasted that it had given Americans “a chicken in every pot” in the 1920s.) Prices tumbled after Maurice Hilleman at Merck came up with a vaccine to counter a cancer-causing poultry virus known as Marek’s disease. Now we eat an average of a quarter pound a day. To turn this rare luxury into a staple, we created factories in which broilers grow so fast that their legs can’t keep pace. Some become too heavy to walk—not that there’s much space to move—and the weakest are trampled to death when their desperate mates flutter into a panic.

It’s instructive that when H5N1 started killing turkeys at a huge British establishment, no one noticed. As Ben Bradshaw—Britain’s animal welfare minister—put it, the death rates were “nothing out of the ordinary.”

In fact, flock fatalities are a welcome indicator. When a few chickens suffer heart attacks, growers know that nutrition is going to the edible parts instead of being wasted on organs the birds won’t need because they’ll never be functional creatures. Broilers subsist in piles of dung—immobile, unable to groom themselves, vulnerable to any pathogens that penetrate the big sheds. Egg-layers fare little better. Growers stuff them with cheap antibiotics. This helps train bacteria to resist our miracle medications, giving rise to superbugs that gobble our flesh.

A study in Emerging Infectious Diseases found that 80% of raw chicken in stores in the southern Netherlands carried multi-resistant bacteria identical to those found in hospitals. While the Dutch consume very little antibiotic medication, their farmers dose them through poultry.

In the U.S., Consumer Reports found that 83% of the packaged chicken it tested in stores carried salmonella or campylobacter. The packaging itself teems with microbes. (Attention shoppers: Don’t touch your eyes or noses after comparing weights and prices!)

Avian Flu Subtypes Lined Up for Us

Bird flu is an even greater threat. Since 1999, at least four additional subtypes besides H5N1 have afflicted humans. Human beings are ‘immunologically naïve’ to at least 13 avian subtypes. From a menu of eight genes, flu sure knows how to dish up variety. In fact, some top scientists have suggested we view any influenza virus as a “gene team” that constantly trades with other varieties and other subtypes for new players that can strengthen it.

Even if H5N1 were to vanish tomorrow, we could soon find ourselves coping with an H7N7 pandemic; in 2003, that little bug killed a veterinarian and infected 1,000 poultry workers in the Netherlands. Another one, H7N2, infected four people in Wales in 2007. H5N2 caused the deaths of 17 million Pennsylvania chickens in 1983, turning its victims into what a researcher called “bloody Jell-O”; 23 years later, 77 people in Japan were found to carry antibodies to this “mild flu.” (How would I know how they got them? No one does.) In Hong Kong, meanwhile, they worry a lot about H9N2.

Never heard of those strains? That’s no accident. In 2002, as Greger explains, H6N2 popped up in California’s San Joaquin Valley. Instead of reporting the outbreak, growers packed sick chickens off to markets in trucks that spewed feathers and virus, infecting neighboring farms. They couldn’t wait to sell those tainted legs and eggs.

As a libertarian, I distrust state intervention in commerce. But it makes sense that businesses should clean up the mess they make and charge enough to make a profit doing so. Poultry farmers are operating like the mines and factories that long spewed toxins into our waterways and streets because they didn’t feel like paying to dispose of byproducts.

No one keeps tabs on the medical costs and losses in productivity that result. Heck, the way economic metrics are designed, deaths add to America’s gross domestic product by necessitating economic transactions— when undertakers, coffins, plots, and gravediggers are available.

So lay off the pigeons! Stand up for our free, feathered friends. The virus has already crossed over. H5N1 is now a human disease. We must protect ourselves from other people, not birds. (Masks, anyone?)

Day 141: My Lost Pigeon

People are screaming. First, that I’ve raised prices. We’re still cheaper than the competition, but yeah, we lost a lot of masks. Plus Fitch lost his job—like half my customers.

The loudest complaints concern the poor dead bird whose photo I ran.

Let’s be clear: I like pigeons, though I don’t feed them. So what if the French rather stupidly brought them to North America? (At least they got other Europeans to use soap.) Bear in mind that Shakespeare fanatics brought starlings here. These shed more H5N1 than pigeons or sparrows, though they seem better at resisting it.

A PIGEON OF INDUBITABLE QUALITYA pigeon once shat on my head at the start of my first and last date with someone who didn’t regard it as good luck. Yet I admire them. When I was very young, my dad rescued an injured pigeon. He built a coop in our basement and freed the lucky bird after her wing healed. I hate the vans that come to New York’s streets to kidnap our pigeons for live-target shooting (see video and story) in Pennsylvania. I oppose the chickensh*t shooting of animals sprung from boxes no less than I oppose gun control.

In the Near East, ancient pigeons were cultivated so their dung could be used for fertilizer, and later for gunpowder. The finest can fly hundreds of miles at 60 mph. Their still-mysterious homing instincts won wars. The CIA once developed a pigeon cam. Pigeons are cooperative lovers, monogamous for life and rarely brutal. Some are truly beautiful—gleaming white with green and violet highlights. Here’s a nice one I photographed last summer in Tompkins Square Park.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered that Nina has vanished. I wanted to make sure she was okay, but she didn’t respond to emails. When I found her cell phone disconnected, I called her office and wound up speaking with someone who started to say she had left the bank, then clammed up when I admitted my interest is personal. I called back to leave word for her blonde office pal from Tennessee, whose name came back to me after two hours of concentration. Her honeyed voicemail message said she was working remotely and would get back to me. Nothing so far. She could be dead by now.

Nina’s email and social network accounts are down, too. (She had defriended me before she moved out, but now she no longer exists for anyone.) I don’t know where she was living since then. I even contacted her condescending old friend ‘Growly,’ who said she hasn’t heard from Nina since they argued about something six weeks ago. She has no numbers for Nina’s family members, none of whom I’ve met.

I know Nina’s mother lives in South Dakota, but “Dustville” evidently isn’t the town’s real name. (Yes, I checked.) Nor do I know her mom’s last name, which reportedly changes frequently. I hope Nina was telling the truth about having antibodies to H5N1.

This is what it must be like to live in a war zone. Imagine not knowing for years if someone you care deeply about is alive or dead. It hurts to picture Nina out there—jobless, out of touch, surrounded by desperate people.

Management Of Dead Bodies In Disaster Situations

Lisa’s corpse still awaits pickup. The Irishman called for counsel but wouldn’t let me come over. I directed him to the Pan American Health Organization’s Management Of Dead Bodies In Disaster Situations. You can download the PDF, which assures that corpses do not pose epidemic health risks. (Since dead people don’t breathe, they tend to be less dangerous than we, the living, are.) Still, he can’t leave her there.

The death toll must be soaring. In 1918 they covered up the mortality rate to keep Americans focused on the War Effort. The Irishman puzzles over our government’s nonperformance. He politely mentioned that his contacts in Ireland and in the U.K. say they haven’t heard of anyone left to rot over there. As our chosen city has forsaken our dead love.

Typically, like some parody of a Jewish mother, I urged him to drink lots of water and to eat at least soup and crackers. He’s fed up with the flu diet. Probably sick of us, too.

Day 142: Latest Pandemic Casualty—Free Speech

New York City has banned demonstrations and imposed a curfew from dusk to dawn. I don’t think it’s legal, but few seem to care. From what I’ve gathered, the cops were already making pedestrians unwelcome at night. They do that a lot in good times here.

There are exceptions: Anyone with identification confirming that they work in health care, transportation, utilities, food delivery, social services, finance, or information technology or provision (which can include couriers) may sample the darkness.

They will hope not to run into anyone looking for emergency medical care. The desperately sick-but-mobile are restrained only by their frailties.

THE 1918 PANDEMIC ENGULFED THE US ARMY, WHICH SPREAD IT EVERYWHEREI kinda feel for the masked men in blue charged with keeping folks off the street. They’ll be sifting through business cards that list strange tech occupations for companies with snazzy, meaningless names, trying to figure out if the bearer should be seized and exposed to other unfortunates in the Tombs. Listen up, youse guys: we need volunteers to frisk self-proclaimed flu carriers! The city intends to set up email accreditation, which might someday be useful.

A new local blog, The Tribulation Beat, says makeshift prisons are being created in the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Queens. At least one consists of tents. No concentrated camping in my yard, says Manhattan! (Hurts real estate values.) No word from FEMA as to plans for those camps people are always going on about.

So help me, I did find a U.S. Army “ Civilian Inmate Labor Program” that authorizes creation of labor camps and prisons for civilians on Army bases; if that’s not freaky enough, Halliburton subsidiary KBR was contracted to support “establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities ... in the event of an immigration emergency, as well as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency, such as a natural disaster.” So said KBR’s PR. Best of all, there are jobs to be had: Become a U.S. Army Internment/Resettlement Specialist (31E).

Need I mention again that experts always agree that locking people up won’t stop the pandemic? In 1918 the flu broke out fastest and worst in crowded military bases.

Rejecting calls to criminalize the shaking of hands or cheek-to-cheek, kiss-kiss greetings, a city council majority urges us not to touch and jacks up penalties for spitting. The latter took guts: A lot of New York voters expectorate with conviction.

Turning to the demand side of human circulation, the city has banned sporting events. Also verboten are political rallies and assemblies, instantly the subject of free-speech lawsuits. Elections are big business. Politicians who support postponing them are playing with fire. They could lose TV face time for threatening to deprive the networks of lucrative attack ads—and television and the Web are all that remain to campaign on during a pandemic.

I don’t see how this can be enforced, but the subways are closed to riders who lack surgical or N95 masks. The city’s stockpile frequently runs out at individual stations. Crafty folks have apparently started selling used paper masks to wannabe riders. Not recommended, but New Yorkers are always in a hurry. (Getcha masks here, used only by great-grannies who survived the Great Pandemic.)

Schools shall remain closed until further notice. Precocious kids will live off the land. There are mountains of garbage and brigades of rats. The sewers are clogging up.

Churches, synagogues, and mosques are requested to close, with mixed results. Some are setting up videoconferenced services on the Web. Others continue to assemble the faithful. How can elected officials stand up to the religious establishment when even agnostics are praying for the flu to relent?

Funerals ‘Discouraged’ as Corpses Proliferate

Funerals are still permitted, though “discouraged.” Web ceremonies will become standard procedure, so long as the Internet holds up. Soon there won’t be coffins. I hope New York has enough body bags. I wish I had one for Lisa.

Weddings are effectively banned; the city reassigned the clerks who give out licenses.

Homelessness is more vexing than ever. It might amount to state euthanasia to cram vagabonds into the Tombs. Might as well give them tainted blankets and let ‘em die peacefully in the useless ATM parlors.

The commercial interests closed fast on Round Two’s opening day. Bars, restaurants, gyms, and most stores remain shut.

A lot of the city’s police, firefighters, sanitation workers, and paper pushers live in the suburbs and couldn’t get to work if they tried. Wisely, the city is sending fleets of school buses upstate to pick up suburbanite public workers. Some don’t seem to be home.

I gather that only drugstore chains and food markets and hardware stores are welcoming the rare passersby into rooms of empty shelves guarded by extremely large men who are presumably armed.

I have no idea what anyone is doing for money. I haven’t left my apartment.

It feels hot and sticky and hopeless tonight. The city pleads for us not to use air conditioning unless we are feverish. Who can tell the difference? Some of us dread what a blackout might bring. Others keep their AC going; you can tell by the closed windows and the drip drip drips from above.

Tomorrow will be hotter, stickier. Part of me is relieved that I don’t have to share this sweatbox with my crusty Ninotchka. The rest of me fears for her. I pity anyone who’s alone—no Sneeky, no blog with lively readers—in this city. It’s so bleak here.

Day 143: Toast to Friendship—& Food

I apologize for overlooking the hospitals. It is said they are okay. An acquaintance who works for a newspaper reports that this isn’t quite true. You wouldn’t know it to read his paper, which incessantly hails the medical system’s inspirational performance.

I don’t doubt that most nurses, doctors, and technicians are giving their best.

Hospitals operate at 80% to 90% capacity in the best of times. The last numbers I saw, the city had 3,000 ventilators and not much more than 1,700 intensive care unit beds to serve more than 8 million residents. The hospitals were trying to get more of everything but patients. Guess what grew fastest?

Security! There are armed guards everywhere.

HEAPS OF FOOD...IN ODESSA, UKRAINE (Jewgienij Bal)So far we have hundreds of flu deaths per day here, publicly noted. There are undoubtedly others moldering alone, at home. Half of Manhattan’s apartment-dwellers live alone. Solitude is a staple of our lives. The other half is getting dangerously crowded. Each economic downturn since the one that began in 2008 has caused more families to jam together in single dwellings.

In a pinch, we’re supposed to call hotlines staffed by people who don’t know much because the professionals are in the trenches. Fitch’s sister reached a woman who confessed that she normally takes cash in the hospital cafeteria.

A lot of communities have resorted to automated distress lines. A RAND Corporation report in 2008 deemed message systems starkly inferior to live lines that connect callers to public health professionals within 30 minutes.

If you’re lucky enough to reach sentient operators, make the most of it. Don’t abuse them. It’s traumatic responding to hours and hours of frantic pleas, especially when you haven’t much aid to offer. (Watch the Constantines perform Hotline Operator in tribute to those whose mercy we’ll all need someday.)

Evelyn has written to express her condolences about Lisa and Nina and to say that the LES DIY will try to spur the city to pick up Lisa’s corpse. The Irishman and I have been calling every few hours. I think an operator recognized my voice today, before hanging up.

My Ukrainian neighbor seems to have mastered how to wear the mask I gave him. (The others are griping about having to pay because they know he didn’t.) I’m not sure "Stefan" cares enough to wear the mask each time he goes out—or to return for it if he remembers he forgot—so I visit him in fully protected mode when he rings.

Stefan’s quick to hoist two glasses of vodka (not shot glasses) and goad me till I take one. I suspect he’s a terminal fatalist who won’t just get sick. He’ll either be very lucky or he’ll blow to pieces. Either way, he’ll never run out of vodka, which he calls horilka. He’s prepared for a Second Flood.

He humors my medical lectures so long as I drink with him. It’s a worthy cause that gives us both a kick. Having lived through three winters of the Nazi occupation that killed 7.5 million Ukrainians (counting Jews), Stefan calls our pandemic “a spring wind."

It’s strange and wondrous how being kind can be so rewarding. I think Ayn Rand would smile on his vigorous speeches, and on my choice to help him. I’m lonely. He’s my bristle-browed man Friday, though assuredly retired from work.

Stefan is running out of the canned fish that sustains him most nights. Choose To Send Food! We who are about to starve implore you.