34 THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020
T
he novel coronavirus is not the
first pandemic of the global
age, but it is easily the most
relentless. In just a matter of months,
from the first appearance of respira-
tory illnesses in a cluster of people as-
sociated with the Huanan Seafood
Wholesale Market, in the Chinese city
of Wuhan, the virus infected millions
of human hosts, killing tens of thou-
sands. The disease it causes, Covid-19,
has come to every corner of the earth,
except Antarctica. How it first reached
New York City, which by late March
had become known as the epicenter of
the pandemic, is not hard to imagine.
John F. Kennedy Airport is the busi-
est point of arrival for international
passengers in North America. Infected
people arrived in New York from Italy,
from the U.K. and Spain. And, while
travel to the city has slowed, the planes
keep coming, the travellers disembark-
ing, around the clock.
Soon after midnight on April 15th,
the passengers of Delta Flight 1888,
from Atlanta, filed into Terminal 4.
Hours earlier, Governor Andrew
Cuomo had said that the city was at
“the apex of the plateau” of the epi-
demiological curve. The first passen-
ger to reach the baggage claim wore
a respirator mask. Three military
nurses from Pensacola followed with
a quick step. They were heading to
work on the U.S.N.S. Comfort, afloat
in the Hudson River and operating
as a vast supplementary hospital. A
man named Henry Vargas paused to
catch his breath. He lives in the Lit-
tle Italy section of the Bronx and has
been suffering from lymphoma. When
the first COVID-19 case in the United
States was confirmed, on January 20th,
in the state of Washington, Vargas
was in Seattle, undergoing a three-
month-long stem-cell treatment,
which had laid waste to his immune
system. “You have nothing left,” he
said. “They have to reintroduce you
to all the vaccinations, as if you were
a newborn.” He waited for weeks be-
fore it was safe for him to travel. When
his doctors finally cleared him, the
best ticket he could find required two
connections—some eleven hours air-
borne. It was a nerve-racking trip:
“The person sitting next to me could
sneeze, and that could kill me.” He
was relieved to be back in the city.
“This is my home,” Vargas said, and
shuffled toward the exit.- In Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, Jo-
siah Charles lay in bed, after midnight,
watching the movie “Midsommar” and
logging in and out of her bank ac-
count. She’d worked at a party store
called Balloon Saloon, but it had
closed. “It might be on pause for a
while,” she said recently. “I don’t think
that anyone wants to celebrate any-
thing anymore.” Six hundred dollars
in unemployment funds had disap-
peared fast; for more than a week, her
account balance had been less than
seventy-five cents.
Charles had read online that the
federal government was about to send
out twelve-hundred-dollar stimulus
checks to millions of Americans. Those
who were signed up for direct deposit
with the I.R.S. would receive them
first—presumably, she reasoned, at
1:30 A.M., which is when her biweekly
paychecks had once hit her account.
At 1:28 a.m., she logged back in.
Nothing. She opened up a new tab and
went on Reddit. Hundreds of other
people were doing the same thing: wait-
ing for the I.R.S. to send them money
on what would have been Tax Day.
“WHERE MY CHASE BROS
AT?” a user named brewsnob asked on
“THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
MEGATHREAD.”
“I got all my notifications turned
on,” kburchdmv wrote, “and I’m logged
in to Wells Fargo.”
At 1:33, xI-Red-Ix wrote, “CITI bank
deposited.”
Sadxtortion: “Wow I checked and
mine hasn’t come through. I wonder
if maybe I’m just not part of the first
round.”
Charles checked her account again.
Zilch. Maybe she wasn’t part of the
first round, either. She paused the
movie—it was the first sacrifice scene—
and continued to scroll through Red-
dit. 1:36 a.m.
“Ugh I can’t sleep,” bossladyfaithdg
wrote. “My husband just got into a car
accident today. totaled and not covered
by insurance. I need this stimulus.”
At 1:37, Charles logged back in to
her Advantage SafeBalance Banking
account. It showed a total of $1,200.73.
Thank God, she thought. She took a
screenshot of her balance and posted it,
with the one-word caption “Stimulated.”- Around three o’clock in the morning,
Bradley Hayward, a critical-care phy-
sician at Weill Cornell Medicine, in
Manhattan, led a team of doctors to a
patient’s room on an upper floor. The
patient, a middle-aged man, had come
off a ventilator the day before, and was
now in cardiac arrest. Hayward, as-
sisted by a critical-care fellow, two res-
idents, and a nurse, stripped the man
naked and rolled him onto a backboard.
Hayward placed his hands on the pa-
tient’s chest—the skin was cold, which
suggested that the man did not have
a fever when his heart stopped—and
pushed until he felt the ribs cracking.
In two-minute shifts, pressing faster
than once per second, Hayward and
the fellow used manual compressions
in an attempt to circulate blood
throughout the patient’s body. A ma-
chine monitored their pressure; if it
slackened, a mechanical voice said,
“Push harder.”
The cardiac complications of COVID
can be a mystery. In Hayward’s expe-
rience, running a code, as the process
of attempted resuscitation is known,
typically doesn’t last much longer than
twenty minutes. But, without know-
ing what caused the patient’s heart to
stop, Hayward could not be certain
how to start it again, or how long it
might take to do so. After eight min-
utes, an airway team, led by an anes-
thesiologist, entered the room to per-
form an intubation. The procedure,
which is necessary for the use of a ven-
tilator, releases a spray of particles from
a patient’s lungs, and is one of the risk-
iest for health-care providers treating
COVID patients. Hayward kept up com-
pressions until the moment before the
ventilator tube slid down the patient’s
throat. A few minutes later, a triangu-
lar contraption called a LUCAS, which
automates the work of compression,
was delivered. By then, both Hayward
and the fellow were sweating and out
of breath.
After half an hour, the door to the
patient’s room opened. Someone sug-
gested that it was time to call the code.