The Last (and Longest) Coronavirus Story You Need to Read
Lawrence Wright's latest New Yorker epic is worth your time and attention.
Whatever it is we’ve done over the course of the past year, it’s likely we’ve done it to death. The novelty of the novel coronavirus pandemic has worn off, and the excitement we felt in its early stages — zoom happy hours! new recipes! reading all the books! — has given way to a new monotony, counting down the days until our vaccinations.
One of those many activities that have gone from fascinating to rote is reading about the pandemic itself. In the beginning, I wanted to read everything I could get my hands on — about the structure of the virus, about the history of disease, about what this all means. By the end of the year, I couldn’t bear to read another thinkpiece about the meaning of anything, let alone Covid. There was nothing new happening, and so not much new to say about it.
And yet, when I first heard that the New Yorker was giving over its entire issue (Hiroshima-style) to one of its greatest writers (if you haven’t read Lawrence Wright’s Scientology article, you should remedy that) to tell the full story of the virus, I couldn’t wait for it to appear in my mailbox.
I did have to wait though, because apparently the USPS is still sorting through its post-Christmas backlog and the issue never came. Thankfully, my friend and personal coronavirus advisor Micah Timmen had already devoured his issue and was eager to pass it on, if only to discuss it with someone else.
Wright’s article, “The Plague Year” goes extraordinarily deep into the United States’ handling of the virus. At once sweeping and intimate, he pieces together the stories of the individuals who saved and cost lives on a scale like no other. One person in particular it made me reconsider is Dr. Deborah Birx — who had been in my mind and many others’ just another Trump lackey who silently sat by as the President suggested ingesting bleach to cure the disease. In reality, Dr. Birx is a bad-ass military woman who went toe-to-toe with Mnuchin when he was reluctant to close down the economy, and when the coronavirus taskforce was sidelined, took to the road to warn individual governors about the dangers lurking in their states.
Somehow, Wright manages to write this story like a thriller — HBO’s Chernobyl miniseries came to mind more than once — while still taking the time to break down complex ideas of virology for the layman. Even if you’re sick of reading stories about coronavirus, read this one, and then you don’t have to read any more. At least not until he writes a follow-up.
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Some other great things I’ve read lately:
The American Abyss, by Timothy Snyder — It’s hard to process the unique ugliness of the events at the Capitol this week. Like a boa constrictor that swallowed a horse, I’ve been digesting it piece by piece, usually one outraged tweet at a time. Though it only occurred a few days ago, Snyder does an incredible job of contextualizing the attack and placing it within our current and historical political landscape.
To Our Friend Tom Perrotta, Who Was an Ace, by Jason Gay — Lost to many in the chaos of Wednesday’s events was the death of WSJ reporter Tom Perotta, from brain cancer. I’d met Tom a few times through Varsity Letters events and our mutual friend Carl Bialik, but knew him mostly through his tennis writing, which was invariably brilliant. I do know that he was especially beloved by his colleagues, and Gay’s piece (as well as this one) is a fitting tribute as to why.
Born to Be Eaten, by Eva Holland — I’ll be honest. I have no idea how this story — about the caribou calving grounds of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge — came to be in my queue. (I suspect some algorithm somewhere noted my interest in the work of Kieran Mulvaney). But Holland’s story gripped me from beginning to end, and put a human (and caribouean?) lens to an environmental issue I knew little about beyond the acronym ANWR. It also complicates the issue, with native tribes on both sides of it, and pulls the curtain back on how everyone involved is essentially telling a version of a story that someone wants to hear.
That’s all I got for now. Hoping for a less hellish week, though I’m not particularly optimistic about it.