To expand on a comment from last week, with a week’s worth of hindsight…
It’s not easy to talk frankly about New Orleans. We ourselves have had difficulty broaching the subject. But now that our elders are quarantined in their apartments, we’re looking at what’s happened here in the last three weeks. You may not hear it on the news, but this is what everyone I know is talking about.
We are one of the world’s favorite cities. Travel and Leisure magazine rated us among the top ten destination cities in the world, one of only two American cities to be so honored. At any given moment, two months ago, there were millions of people around America and the world wondering if a stay in balmy, romantic New Orleans would make their lives better. And, as always, a million a month decided to find out if that was true.
This was not a terrible but not a great winter. The weather couldn’t make up its mind between wet, raw, windy cold and unreasonably hopeful warm. In February, people I know started getting The Crud.
Mixed symptoms, but none you wanted. Nausea for some, endless coughing for others, fatigue and crazy-ass fever. I took one friend at wit’s end to a doc in the box. Swab for influenzas negative. Told to overamp on ibuprofen and cough suppressant. Not the only one I know, but anecdotal.
And then, of course, Mardi Gras. Well, come on over, world. Let’s laugh joke drink smoke share food and suck face.
A week ago, we heard the first of the inevitable: positive cases out of state who had been at Carnival. Now, imagine yourself a diligent public health case tracker interviewing someone positive for a spreading disease and they tell you, “Well, me and some friends went to Mardi Gras.” Pretty much when you sterilize with ethanol internally.
Whether our February Crud was Covid-19 or our novel companion was introduced during our recent celebration, well, Madge, you’re soaking in it. Ain’t no way to unstir that gumbo.
With our woefully inadequate (thanks, Mr. President) testing capability, we are, naturally, directing our testing resources to suspected cases, many already hospitalized. Consequentially, we’re currently cooking at just under 50% positive per test.
That alarming number hides the truly alarming numbers that are coming when we have access to community-wide testing. Those numbers will reveal what many of us have talked about under our breath for weeks. We are a hot spot.
Despite having made astounding investments in medical infrastructure since the Flood of ‘05, building a new University Medical Center and VA complex, our city’s medical system is going to be overwhelmed. Period. Tents for sequestering possible coronavirus patients have already been erected at University.
Our governor, John Bel Edwards, is on the radio every month on his public broadcasting call-in show, “Ask the Governor.” We have recently become used to hearing him daily, updating the ever-changing state response of restrictions and regulations that must be promulgated.
Today, as his press conference was ending, the governor’s voice got particularly low and dry as he explained the importance of right now. Unless we impose on ourselves the strictest measures immediately, our state will be the worst of Italy in ten days.
Now, down here, we are not cowed by what most of you would call disasters. Storms, droughts, levee failures, conquering armies and undersea oil well blowouts, Yellow Jack and chemical train derailments while the Pope visits. Trust me, there ain’t nothin’ this 300-year-old dame ain’t seen.
Hell’s bells, we’ve still got bodies hanging from the Hard Rock Hotel Demolition, Still in Progress. The people here could give the Russians a run for their money in gallows humor.
But I think, I hope, the governor’s words today got through. Italy or not. Right now.
We’ll see.
This diary was going to be chock full of links and photos, but not tonight.
If anyone calls, I'll be at the bayou, shooting cannons at the pestilence.