Journal of the Plague Year

Did my grocery shopping today. I have enough supplies laid by for a couple of weeks of quarantine, but I do not want to use that now in case I need it later.

There was a short lineup at the entrance; a security guard was letting in only five at a time. Social distancing. But the wait time was not long.

A sign on the window warned that they were out of toilet paper, an advertised special. More coming, it promised, in 48 hours.

Customer carts and reusable shopping bags were not allowed in. Reasonable; but I had to leave my cart and bag outside, which was worrisome.

The meat counter was stripped bare. But it was restocked before I had finished shopping. Eggs were out; but restocking began while I was there, and the clerk handed me a carton. Lots of bread; a selection of cheese. The one item I wanted and could not get was powdered milk. There were a few other bare shelves among the non-perishables.

On the way there and back, I passed three city buses, running as usual. Each had only one passenger.

When I arrived home, there was an email from Walmart seeking employees, probably to stock shelves. The grocery outlets at least are doing a good business.

As I wrote that paragraph, there was a sudden downpour outside my window. Doubly odd—I have just come back in, and I had not noticed a cloud in the sky. And this is the first rain of the year. It is still winter for one more day, by the calendar.

And as I type this, it is suddenly again bright and intensely sunny outside my window.

I want to see it as a sign.

I now know how to spell chloraquine. I have been hearing or reading about it for months; first about its use in Thailand. There has more recently been a peer-reviewed French study, with a control group, that found it 100% effective against coronavirus with a sample of a few dozen patients.

This is a drug we already have in circulation; we have been using it since the 1930s. Since we have used it for decades, we know it is safe. Since it is already in production, we can get it out quickly. If we can get it out quickly, might the need for lockdown and quarantine be over in weeks?

It almost looks like a miracle.

Trump just held a press conference, and the reporters were asking about it. His surgeon-general, Dr. Fauci, was talking down the possibilities, calling the claims “anecdotal,” insisting that we need more trials, while Trump was almost openly disagreeing with him, saying “What have we got to lose?”

This might have been a deliberate good cop-bad cop act, at least on Trump’s part, getting public pressure to build and force the government’s hand, while the government could avoid blame if it did not work out. Everyone with a sick relative is going to be on Trump’s side in this little debate.

Meantime, Belgium and Poland are apparently already using it as standard treatment. We should soon all see for ourselves how that goes.

Even if the Americans really do need to do more tests, why need such tests take any longer than the usual course of the ailment. They should not lack for test subjects; they can run tests concurrently. If, say, the virus usually lasts two weeks, and clears up in three or four days with the pills, we should have test results in a couple of weeks.

Trump scolded the press at his conference for sensationalizing and making things look worse than they are. I think that is right; it is the natural tendency. Bad news makes the better story. I think things may be far better than they look at the moment.

I think we may be looking much better in about two weeks.