“There’s sort of an ongoing physiological
maintenance for your brain and for your body
that we’ve been following through,” Hanks says,
speaking by video conference from his home in
California. “What can you do but try to bind up the
hay in neat little bundles. That’s what we’ve been
doing. Just going into the barn with the baling
machine, saying, ’Well, we got all this hay. Let’s at
least stack it up and get it ready for the next day.”
For many, Hanks’ contraction of COVID-19 was
the first loud alarm bell that went off in the
early days of the pandemic. If “America’s Dad”
could get it, so could anyone. The decision to
go public with their diagnoses, Hanks said in a
recent interview, was twofold. He didn’t want
any rumors about why the production was
shut down. And if he was going to serve as an
overdue public service announcement, so be it.
“Why hide from the facts?” he says. “These were
the facts.”
The ordeal, one experienced with varying severity
and symptoms between Hanks and Wilson, gave
him a perspective on differing national responses
to the coronavirus. The comparison with Australia,
Hanks grants, isn’t a favorable one for the United
States. But he says, there’s no need for “another
dump truck to unload all the things that have
gone wrong” in the U.S.
“Here we are. And let’s just all do our part, eh?”
says Hanks. “Can we not all just wear a mask and
social distance and wash our hands? It sounds
pretty simple to me, and if you have a problem
with that, I certainly wouldn’t trust you with a
driver’s license. Chances are you’ll drive as fast as
you want to, never use your turn signal and aim
for pedestrians.”