Following up on yesterday's post about The Hilarious Covid-19 Pandemic, in chronological order, our improvised "escape" route laid out as follows:
Groton/Long Point, Connecticut – April and May of 2020
Selbyville, Delaware – July of 2020
Boulder, Colorado – mid-August through late December of 2020
Sarasota/Siesta Key, Florida – March of 2021
In each location, the state’s governor installed a different approach to the pandemic than did New York.
And in each location that approach generated the same OR BETTER results than did the onerous lockdowns of my home state of New York.
How could this be? From the time I graduated college (1979) to the day the wife, dogs, and I moved back to New York City from California (2018), The Big Apple reigned as the place where doers went to DO things. And I am well aware of the intransigence of politicians and bureaucrats.
But the DOERS of the world called New York home.
Not anymore.
The city and state closed businesses; shuttered schools; invoked fear-laden health restrictions, and REFUSED to lift them when other states did. New York, and my former home state of California, subjugated their citizenry with ghoulish death counts, photos of bodies in morgues and refrigerated trucks, and never allowed a single story about hospitals to escape into the public sphere without the phrase “At or near capacity.”
Of course, the overlords of New York neglected to inform anyone that hospitals operate at capacity, or they lose money and go out of business.
That shouldn’t matter, though, to the stalwart individuals of New York, should it? Those steel-spined and rock-ribbed no-nonsense film noir extras would spit in the eye of the callow politicos and health stooges and tell them to kindly fuck off.
They did no such thing.
New York descended into a social experiment in compliance. Any insurance actuarian could use NYC as a liability and exposure model.
They couldn’t put masks on fast enough. They couldn’t shame their neighbors who didn’t comply as though they were living in 1939 Berlin, nefariously enough.
They dutifully ordered deliveries of groceries; ate take-out food; and eschewed exercise.
New Yorkers turned into the Eloi of HG Wells’ The Time Machine overnight.
After the Two Weeks to Hashtag Flatten the Fucking Curve, the significant other, the dogs, and I, left.
We spent the next year luxuriating in the more common sense approaches of four other states, two of which were within a couple hours drive of New York.
A thumbnail of Connecticut follows and then the hilarity of the sometimes day-by-day, both out of New York and, depressingly, back in New York will have you laughing at The Health Crisis That Wasn’t.
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