THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. **** Saturday/Sunday, April 4 - 5, 2020 |A
I
keep thinking of Dylan Thomas:
“Do not go gentle into that good
night. / Rage, rage against the
dying of the light.” What has drawn
this verse up from childhood mem-
ory is the debate, once limited to the
rarefied precincts of bioethical con-
ferences and worst-case-scenario
policy papers, about the rationing
and imposed do-not-resuscitate or-
ders at hospitals overwhelmed by
coronavirus patients.
As a rational member of society, I
understand why such a morally
fraught issue has become a subject
of everyday discussion. Doctors and
nurses are seeing their emergency
rooms and hospitals overcome by
patients with pneumonia. The device
that can keep alive the most criti-
cally ill of these patients is the ven-
tilator, which enables them to
breathe when they cannot. Many of
these hospitals face a shortage of
ventilators. This means that doctors
will have to make agonizing deci-
sions about who gets one.
Not only that, but given the
New YorkI
n the days before the Wuhan
coronavirus hit America
hard, widespread alarm en-
sued. This expressed itself
most obviously in the flock-
ing to supermarkets. Shelves were
depleted of their contents, with a
few items—such as hand sanitizer,
disinfectant wipes and Lysol prod-
ucts—becoming prized and scarce.
Of all the things dear to American
civilization, toilet paper became
the leitmotif of the country’s col-
lective panic.
The run on toilet paper makes
grocer John Catsimatidis angry,
even though its recent sales are
bound to have fattened his bottom
line. “There’s a rumor that there
will be a shortage of toilet paper—
and then there is a shortage of toi-
let paper,” he sputters over the
telephone. (This interview was con-
ducted pursuant to social-distanc-
ing best practices.) There is no real
shortage of toilet paper, he insists,
describing any passing scarcity as
the result of unhinged demand.
“What do you normally have at
home, maybe four rolls? Now
homes have 12, 24, 36.” As for
Purell, he says, people “normally
don’t have it, or one bottle at home
at best. Now they have one in ev-
ery room.”
New York is the American city
hardest hit by Covid-19, and Mr.
Catsimatidis, 71, is New York’s gro-
cer. He owns one chain of super-
markets, Gristedes, and a control-
ling interest in another, D’Agostino.
With 34 stores in total, his is the
largest supermarket presence in
Manhattan (with a store each, he
insists I note, in Brooklyn and on
Roosevelt Island, which sits in the
East River but is part of the bor-
ough of Manhattan). The Forbes
400 list of wealthiest Americans
reckons his net worth at $3.3 bil-
lion, money made from loo paper
gone gangbusters, real estate and
oil.
“There is no reason to panic
about supplies,” Mr. Catsimatidis
says. “I want people to know that.
Only panic buying causes short-
ages.” Immediately, he texts me a
picture, taken at one of his stores,
of shelves stacked with paper
goods. The virus has doubled his
business. “Before the jump in de-
mand,” he says, “around 200 trucks
unloaded at our stores every day.
Now we’ve got 400 trucks daily.”
In a few days, the local super-
market was transformed from a
mundane place every American
took for granted into a shrine to
human survival. Mr. Catsimatidis
counsels Americans who wish to
stock up to buy “no more than two
to three weeks’ worth of supplies.
Most people have stuff for three
days, in normal times. They don’t
need stuff for two or three
months.”
The grocery industry is one of
the few in America that are hiring
at a time when many businesses are
laying people off. Mr. Catsimatidis
says that he’s hired 100 additional
employees at his stores: “We found
that our loyal staff were working
something like 70 hours per week,
and we had to lighten the load.”
Will he keep them on after the cri-
sis? “It depends on our needs,” he
answers, “and it depends on the
mood of New York’s people.”
An epidemic poses special chal-
lenges to face-to-face retail. “We’ve
put up a visible guard between cus-
tomers and employees at the
checkout,” Mr. Catsimatidis says,
as he texts me a photo of a masked
employee behind a transparent
screen at a register. “And we put
tape on the floor near the checkout
to mark a 6-foot distance for cus-
tomers.” The stores are distribut-
ing masks to employees. “We have
our stores fumigated every night,
and we have our managers moni-
toring the temperature of every
employee before they come in and
log in.” He adds ruefully that
“we’re short thermometers right
now.”
In response to a question about
employee morale, Mr. Catsimatidis
says “we have a few” who are un-
happy, “but not as many as Whole
Foods or Amazon.” It helps that he
gets along with the unions that
represent his employees: “I’m inbusiness 51 years. We’ve been
unionized 51 years. And we’ve
worked with them 51 years.” Many
of the employees at Gristedes and
D’Agostino have been “very loyal,
working with the company for 10,
20, 30 years.”
Mr. Catsimatidis says the pan-
demic will have a “huge impact”
on how Americans live—and how
they shop. He sees changes in be-
havior unfolding in real time that
he doesn’t think will be reversed
once the coronavirus abates. “You
have the brick-and-mortar stores
like ours, and the internet compa-
nies that deliver, like Instacart.”
People are ordering “the heavy
stuff, the paper goods” online,
and won’t stop. “They’ll rather
have it delivered and pay the ex-
tra dollar than—how do you say
that Jewish word?—schlep it
home themselves.”W
ith the paper-goods busi-
ness migrating online and
“half of all drugstore space
now used for food,” Mr. Catsima-
tidis says supermarkets like his
may have to repurpose themselves
into “convenience stores where
people come to buy specific food
products.”
Yet the closure of restaurants is
helping the supermarket business.
Dining out is prohibited under
emergency executive orders, and
many eateries have shuttered take-
out and delivery too. This redounds
to the supermarkets’ advantage,and Mr. Catsimatidis thinks that
may continue after the crisis.
In normal times, “60 cents of ev-
ery food dollar spent in New York
City is spent in restaurants,” he
says. “Let me say that again: 60%
of the food eaten in New York is
made by restaurants. And this is
where the real increase in business
is coming to the supermarkets
right now.” New Yorkers who sel-
dom cooked have had to take to
their kitchens under lockdown.
“Some of them are making good
food at home,” he says. “Really
good food.”
Mr. Catsimatidis thinks the
eclipse of restaurants could have a
profound impact on New Yorkers’
habits. “People are getting used to
staying home, and restaurants
could be hurt by it if we decide we
like eating at home.” The pandemic
could accelerate a similar change in
the entertainment business: “Tell
me, when you go to the movies, do
you know who you’re sitting next
to? No, you don’t. Wouldn’t you
rather stay home and pay Disney
$30 to watch a first-run movie?”
The grocery mogul’s life, it could
be said, is not unlike a movie
script. Born on Nisyros, a tiny
Greek island, he was 6 months old
when his parents migrated to the
U.S. They settled in Harlem, where
he grew up on 135th street. His fa-
ther worked as a busboy. Mr. Catsi-
matidis bought his first grocery
store while he was an undergradu-
ate at New York University. Hedropped out eight credits short of
graduation, and now lives palatially
on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, a
man of self-made wealth. In 2016
his native Greece honored him by
putting his likeness on a postage
stamp. A former “Bill Clinton Dem-
ocrat,” he unsuccessfully sought
the 2013 Republican nomination
for mayor of New York. His oppo-
nent went on to lose to Democrat
Bill de Blasio.
How would he handle the crisis
if he were in City Hall? “I’d be sit-
ting down with Donald Trump and
saying, ‘What else can you do for
me? Please. And thank you, sir.’ ”
He contrasts this with the combat-
ive approach Gov. Andrew Cuomo
initially took: “I gave Cuomo some
advice. I said, ‘Donald Trump,
whether you like him or not, is the
president of the United States.
You’ve got to decide. He can move
mountains for you if you’re nice to
him. You don’t want to be nice to
him? You’re not going to get as
many mountains.’ And I think I had
an effect on Cuomo.”T
he supermarket business,
Mr. Catsimatidis says,
“changes every 10 years or
so.” The food he sells in his stores
today bears little relation to the
stock on display at his first Red
Apple grocery half a century ago.
The most notable change of late
has been in the volume of produce
sold. “Ten years ago,” he says,
“your produce departments did 7%
of store sales and your meat de-
partments 17%. Now they have
flipped. Produce and vegetables
are way up there; meat products
are way down.”
He expects the pandemic will
drive the next great change, a de-
monstrative focus on hygiene.
There will be a next generation of
packaging. “People won’t be touch-
ing the produce so much, or touch-
ing it at all. Everything will be
packaged around human handling.”
Prodding the tomato or sniffing the
melon before you buy may be a
thing of the past. “The mood will
demand that everything be clean,
untouched. I think the people’s
mood will be very important for us,
in everything we do.”Mr. Varadarajan is executive ed-
itor at Stanford University’s Hoo-
ver Institution.A Coronavirus Bull Market for Groceries
KEN FALLINThe owner of Manhattan’s
largest supermarket chain
on panic buying, mask-
clad cashiers, and how the
pandemic will permanently
change his business.
THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW with John Catsimatidis| By Tunku Varadarajan
Rage Against the ‘Bioethicists’ and the Dying of the Light
shortage of personal protective
equipment, doctors and nurses risk
infection when they intubate a pa-
tient or resuscitate someone having
a heart attack. Even doctors and
nurses who are protected under-
standably fear getting infected and
infecting their families. Some avoid
such a danger by issuing an order
not to resuscitate patients they
deem beyond saving.
To repeat, as a rational member
of society, I understand the cold cal-
culation of letting one person die to
save many and of preserving the in-
dispensable lives of doctors and
nurses.
As a particular human being,
however, I do not have a socially re-
sponsible, rational response. I am a
62-year-old man with two young
children and an asthmatic allergy
that makes me vulnerable to lower
respiratory diseases. I almost died of
pneumonia when I was a child, and
I get bronchitis almost every year.
I am revolted by any doctor who
says that he would, in a split second,
make the decision to refuse to put
me or someone I love on a ventilatoror, despite being fully protected, re-
fuse to resuscitate us.
When I hear talk of shortages and
risk, I respond, emotionally and self-
ishly: “Get some then!” And, “But
you’re adoctor!”Much of President Trump’s appeal
is that he says—or tweets—thoughts
that more politic figures suppress. I
am no fan of this president, but I
find the calm, decorous debate in
the media over who should be saved
in a hospital—and who should not—
disingenuous in the extreme.
Part of the reason is that none of
these people, despite their politi-
cally correct attitudes, stop to con-
sider the influence that race, class
or sexual identity might have on
such dire decision-making. Justwhen wokeness might for once pro-
vide an important insight, liberals
given to abstractly musing about
medical rationing pretend that we
live in a just and equal society.
Such “socially responsible” talk
has two effects. One is to confer a
kind of vicarious altruism on the
people who indulge in it. The other
is to normalize a horrifying practice,
one that should not even be consid-
ered except in extremis.
What is curious about the report-
ing on such debates is that it seldom
presents a debate. You usually get a
doctor, or more often a “bioethi-
cist”—an academic who is neither a
physician nor a scientist—comfort-
ably explaining the ins and outs of
allowing a hospital patient—an ines-
timably precious human being—to
die.
What you don’t get is the per-
spective of a doctor who would
rather risk his life than allow a pa-
tient to die. You don’t hear from the
vast majority of doctors and nurses
who don’t consider themselves “he-
roes” for going to work during the
pandemic, because healing people isa sacred obligation that they have
vowed to fulfill every day of their
own inestimably precious lives.
The complacent tossing about of
apocalyptic scenarios in which doc-
tors—or hospital administrators—
allow patients to die is a product of
the liberal media’s view that short-
ages of ventilators and protective
equipment are a catastrophic dys-
function of uncaring or corrupt
politics. In reality, it is the result of
a tragic situation that leaders
failed to foresee, and that society
inevitably will encounter obstacles
in addressing.
The response should be not a ca-
sual conversation about legalizing
forms of euthanasia, but conversa-
tions about America’s technologi-
cal, industrial and economic prow-
ess in solving problems. Rather
than talk about how to let people
die, we should fight, in a spirit of
love and affirmation, against the
horror of a socially decreed dying
of the light.Mr. Siegel is author, most re-
cently, of “The Draw: A Memoir.”By Lee Siegel
Why are we so eager to
have ‘socially responsible’
conversations about how
to let Covid patients die?OPINION
Social Distancing Comes Naturally in South Dakota
Rapid City, S.D.
The prisoners were
panicking in Pierre.
On March 23, an in-
mate at the Pierre
Community Work
Center, South Da-
kota’s minimum-se-
curity prison for
women, was taken
to be tested for
Covid-19. Her fellow
prisoners decided they were
doomed. At 8:43 p.m. they jimmied
open an exterior door, and nine of
them escaped into the night, fleeing
the disease.
The escapees were among the
few Dakotans showing much sign of
concern. Reading about China, New
York and Italy, it’s tempting to be-
lieve the end times have come. Prai-
rie people aren’t so apocalyptic.
In February, government officials
and newspaper columnists were
mulling the possibility of riots and
looting, as though the Great Plains
were about to become the set of
“Mad Max.” A few weeks later and
things have settled. These days the
mood is surprisingly relaxed. Chalk
it up to a simple fact: South Dakota
has seen few cases of coronavirus.
As of April 3, it had some of the low-
est numbers in the country, with 165
confirmed cases, two deaths, 57 re-
coveries and 4,217 negative tests.
Perhaps something more elemen-
tal explains the lack of alarm. “Mid-
westerners aren’t really panickers,”
says José-Marie Griffiths, president
of Dakota State University. South
Dakota is an agricultural state, a
place where the foundation of local
culture remains the old farms and
ranches. People are taught from an
early age to keep their feelings to
themselves, work hard and expect
that something will go wrong. A
deadly pandemic threatening lives
and livelihoods only confirms every-
body’s worldview. The social expec-
tation is impassivity.
This sangfroid irritates some.
“We’ve been sitting here for two
hours listening to public comments,
and the majority of them were
against taking harsh actions,” com-
plained Rapid City Mayor Steve Al-
lender at a City Council meeting onMarch 22. Nonetheless, Rapid City
did order the closing of some public
businesses, even while Mr. Allender
tried to reassure his constituents
that he was not planning a citywide
shutdown. Sioux Falls, on the other
hand, has prohibited gatherings in
bars, restaurants and city-owned
property.With well under a million people
spread across 77,000 square miles,
South Dakota was practicing its own
form of social distancing long before
the coronavirus came along. Most of
the state’s current measures are
prophylactic, drawn more from na-
tional and international news than
from anything local. What works in
a big coastal city may not be helpful
in a place like Custer, population2,067. South Dakota’s population
density is around 11 people per
square mile. For comparison, New
York City has more than 26,000 peo-
ple per square mile.
Even in a place where life moves
slower, things are slowing down.
“We are seeing huge increases at
the state level in unemployment,
people that do not have jobs, that
are needing help to pay their bills,”
Gov. Kristi Noem said on Thursday.
Still, the rural Midwest may suffer
less than other regions, with de-
mand for livestock, wheat and corn
likely to remain strong.
It’s no consolation to the busi-
ness owners and workers who are
already suffering to say that things
aren’t as bad as they could be, but
the real effect on the state’s econ-
omy won’t be felt until summer.
Tourism supports roughly 55,
jobs in South Dakota, and last sum-
mer visitors spent $4.1 billion. Note
that the total state budget in 2019
was only $4.9 billion.
Tourists won’t be coming from
overseas to see Mount Rushmore or
the Badlands this year. Americansfrom other states might not risk vis-
iting either. Hundreds of thousands
could skip the annual Sturgis Motor-
cycle Rally in August, which usually
puts a bulge in state coffers. Busi-
nesses that cater to tourists typi-
cally carry winter losses in anticipa-
tion of summer sales. Their lines of
credit are already stretched as far as
they will go.
For now, at least, South Dakotans
seem to be pressing on in their
usual way. After 150 years, some-
thing of the prairie—the open
spaces, the distant horizons—has
worked its way into the stoic souls
and laconic speech of those who live
here. People here know how to keep
their distance. It comes naturally.
By the end of the week, seven of
the nine women who escaped the
Pierre Community Work Center had
been recaptured. The warden re-
signed, of course. But even at the
women’s prison, life goes on pretty
much as usual.Ms. Bottum is a civil-engineering
student at the South Dakota School
of Mines.Thepaceoflifeonthe
prairie is always slow and
steady, so few are panicking
about the coronavirus.CROSS
COUNTRY
By Faith
Bottum