The Wall Street Journal - 28.03.2020 - 29.03.2020

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opportunistically piggybacking on a

pandemic, maybe the more cele-

brated one. If it was a common one

I suspect others are having it too

and so it should have a name, but

not a distinguished one like corona.

Let’s call it the schmutz virus.

It came three weeks ago with a

chill, the next morning I felt fine,

that night chills again, and a temper-

ature of 101. It bopped around from

99 to 101.5.

Symptoms seem to vary a lot and

everyone asks about them. Here was

my coronavirus or schmutz:

A dry cough that turned deep and

then wracking. Bad sore throat. The

first week I had a funny electrical

headache that made me think of si-

lent videos of lightning in the dis-

tance. These would come, go away,

return. Early on I experienced some-

thing that some people are report-

ing, a racing heart. Just a minute or

two of a fast-beating heart, mostly

at night as I read. Looking back, this

started in the days before the fever.

I think it was my system flashing

red:We are fighting something.

There are reports some lose their

sense of taste and smell, and some

have conjunctivitis—not me. Fatigue

a week in, which I discovered after I

stripped down and made up a bed

and was so exhausted I had to nap.

There seems no accounting for

how hard the virus hits one person

and not another, nor for the duration

of the illness. Mine stayed so long

because I believe it heard I’m a

charming host. If yours doesn’t linger

you should ask yourself: Why?

From the beginning I took self-

quarantine both literally and seri-

ously, going out only for a doctor’s

appointment, a virus test and a run

to the bank. I haven’t been home for

three weeks in 30 years.

There will be a lot of self-reckon-

ing going on inside a lot of us in the

coming months and years. For me

there have been some surprises. One

is that I didn’t do anything most of

the time and yet each day sped by

kind of satisfyingly. And I didn’t feel

lonely—there’s been a lot of tele-

phoning, texting, emailing, even

FaceTiming.

I wanted to read Trollope but in-

stead mostly read the intellectual

equivalent of comfort food—Honoria

Murphy’s respectful memoir of her

parents, Gerald and Sarah; A.E.

Hotchner’s “Papa Hemingway,”

My Corona (or Is It Schmutz?)

sary, and I would have said, “No,

alas,” if they’d asked. This reminds

me of meeting a stooped old Marine

with one eye in Washington in the

1980s. Somehow it came up that

he’d fought at Guadalcanal. I asked

if by chance he’d crossed paths with

Richard Tregaskis. No, he said, who

is he? He wrote an important ac-

count of the early days of the battle,

“Guadalcanal Diary.”

The Marine gave me a steely one-

eye look and said, “No, I was gone by

the time the writers came.” This

ever after gave me a subdued sense

of my place in the order of things.

But with how poorly some gov-

ernment agencies have handled this

thing in general, you have to wonder

if the problem with reporting results

is not only triage but other things,

such as poor organization and plan-

ning and incompetent systems. Eight

days in I entered the living hell of

attempting to find my results

through websites and patient por-

tals. I downloaded unnavigable apps,

was pressed for passwords I’d not

been given, followed dead-end

prompts. The whole system is built

to winnow out the weak, to make

you stop bothering them. This is

what it’s like, in a robot voice: “How

to get out of the forest: There will be

trees. If you aren’t rescued in three

to seven days, please try screaming

into the void.”

Once I got through to an actual

person who was assigned to another

department at the clinic but kindly,

furtively checked my name and date

of birth. “We have no results for you

on Covid-19,” she said. I asked if they

were overwhelmed. She said they

are “just trying to deal with the

data. A lot.”

iii

Here I’ll speak of my experience

of whatever illness I had.

Various tests had eliminated flu

and other possibilities early on, and

my doctor and I concluded I likely

had a virus, maybe a common one

which I hadn’t read since it first

came out when I was a teenager and

was important to me then. A lot of

Lost Generation literature going on

here. I read Jay Parini’s fair-minded

biography of Robert Frost, whose

work I more and more revere but

whose nature and personality I

somehow cannot warm to. It would

irritate him to hear his effortful life

makes you think of Carl Sandburg:

“This old anvil laughs at many bro-

ken hammers.”

That resonates, doesn’t it?

Let’s be inappropriately personal

because what the hell. Through the

larger drama of the past few weeks

my spirits have been good but my

emotions somehow closer to the sur-

face. I found I didn’t want to binge

on Netflix, I wanted to watch what

other people were watching and

watch it with them. “A League of

Their Own,” and “Les Miserables”

have been in cable rotation, and mo-

ments in them which in the past

hadn’t moved me moved me now. I

watched, “My Best Friend’s Wed-

ding,” and in the restaurant scene

when they all break into “I Say a Lit-

tle Prayer for You”—it choked me

up. I’m choked up now!

Man, what a time. Here is a real-

life moment. I mentioned running

out to the bank. We’re all tipping

$20s in Manhattan and I ran low. I

walked over in full regalia—N

mask, sanitary gloves, high-necked

coat and scarf. As I walked home I

passed by the 90th Street Pharmacy,

looked in the shining windows, and

saw Hamidou and Barbara at the

counter. I felt so grateful for them. I

knocked on the glass, they looked,

and I drew myself up and threw

them a full, formal military salute.

At exactly that moment I thought:

Oh no, the mask, the gloves, they

won’t recognize me!But they did,

immediately, and we laughed and ap-

plauded each other.

How fiercely we love people we

don’t know we love.

A technician packages testing kits at Co-Diagnostics Inc. in Salt Lake City.

GEORGE FREY/BLOOMBERG NEWS

F

or the first time in 21 days
my temperature has been
normal twice in a row, so
as far as I’m concerned the
fever is gone and the illness
over. I still don’t know what I had. I
got the coronavirus test March 17 and
haven’t received the results.
If this is happening to me, it’s
happening to others. A week and a
half is a long time for suspense, es-
pecially when you’re sick, and speaks
of a certain breakdown. In the early
days of the pandemic the adminis-
tration was embarrassed to have
bungled the production and dissemi-
nation of tests. They say they’ve
pumped millions of tests into the
system, but if laboratories don’t
have the gear or personnel to pro-
cess the tests, the problem is not
solved.

It is to be assumed, and some
news reports imply, that the labs
too are doing triage, as they should.
Top priority would be those admit-
ted to hospitals and exhibiting
symptoms. Next might be doctors,
nurses and other hospital personnel.
Beyond that you’d hope they are
thinking in terms of essential non-
medical personnel: firemen, cops,
garbagemen, grid workers. I don’t
remember being asked at the North-
well GoHealth urgent-care store-
front on First Avenue if I was neces-

I went in for a Covid-

test March 17. I’m feeling

much better but still

awaiting my results.

DECLARATIONS

By Peggy Noonan

OPINION

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Old Age Is a Bummer for the Baby Boomers

T

he uncomfortable collision of
a perilous pandemic and a
boisterous battle for the pres-
idency conveys an unwelcome but
unmistakable message to aging baby
boomers. The generation that has
dominated pop culture and politics
for nearly a half-century, that has
loomed in the national conscious-
ness as perpetually pre-eminent,
may not be so ageless and invincible
after all.
Joe Biden (who’ll turn 78 before
Inauguration Day) and Donald J.
Trump (who’ll be 74), would be the
two oldest people ever nominated
for the presidency by a major party.
And it isn’t only the two survivors of
the arduous selection process who
demonstrate the graying of our poli-
tics. Mr. Biden’s most durable Demo-
cratic rivals—Bernie Sanders, Eliza-
beth Warren and Michael Bloomberg
—are all septuagenarians.
All of these grizzled geezers also
qualify as prime targets for Covid-19,
which seems to focus its most viru-
lent ravages almost exclusively on
those who’ve passed the age of
threescore and 10. American voters
like to believe that robust, inde-
structible chief executives will prop-
erly protect them from the world’s
dangers, but in the current situation
it’s the candidates themselves who
seem especially vulnerable, threat-
ened by coronavirus. If we do make
it to November with no health
breakdowns for either of the aged
electioneers, it will still constitute
the end of an era—a “Last Hurrah”
in the spirit of a marvelous, nostal-
gic 1956 novel about a political war-
horse in his final campaign.
However this plot plays out,
whether Mr. Trump proceeds to a
second term or Mr. Biden manages
to seize his place, it’s virtually in-
conceivable that we’ll ever again
elect a president born in the 1940s.
Boomers (and pre-boomers like Mr.
Biden, who arrived less than three
years before the end of World War
II) won’t be shuffled offstage alto-

gether, but they won’t capture star-

ring roles for the future, or hold the

spotlight that our generation tradi-

tionally demanded.

From the beginning, the postwar

baby-boom cohort always received

disproportionate attention for the

simple reason that there were so

many of us: Some 76 million were

born during the period of fertility

and mounting prosperity from 1946

through 1964. When we were tod-

dlers and mischievous tykes, the

public delighted in newspaper car-

toons depicting our misadventures—

think of “Peanuts” (launched in

1950) and “Dennis the Menace”

(1951). “Leave It to Beaver” (a televi-

sion smash hit between 1957-63)

took us a bit further in our child-

hood journeys.

As we entered our adolescent

years, the term “teenager” suddenly

entered the popular lexicon while

the rest of the nation puzzled over

our exotic tastes in music (The Beat-

les, acid rock), hair (“flow it, show

it, long as God can grow it”) and

cosmopolitan clothing (why bell bot-

toms or Nehru jackets?). At Wood-

stock, fawning media accounts dis-

cerned the dawning of a new

millennial age, some 31 years before

the actual millennium, indulging our

generational arrogance and self-re-

gard. A year later, Yale law profes-

sor Charles Reich published a best-

seller called “The Greening of

America” that hailed his students

and their cohort for shaping a new

world, not based on what they cre-

ated or even pursued, but what they

rejected: materialism, militarism,

conformity.

In recent years, the “turn on,

tune in, drop out” radicalism of the

’60s gave way to a notable pursuit

of power. Two high school classes

achieved the near-complete domina-

tion of American presidential poli-

tics, with the seniors from the Class

of ’64 (Bill Clinton, George W. Bush,

Donald Trump) enjoying more con-

spicuous success than the hapless

juniors of the Class of ’65 (Al Gore,

Mitt Romney, Hillary Clinton).

My 1976 book, “What Really Hap-

pened to the Class of ’65?,” probed

the destructive, disillusioning im-

pact of the counterculture on mem-

bers of my California high-school

class, looking back from the vantage

point of our 10-year reunion. In

speaking about the progress of this

fabled, favored generation in lec-

tures and media appearances related

to that book, I often made the point

that wherever we found ourselves in

our peregrinations, admirers would

define our excesses as the very es-

sence of stylish novelty, so that

somewhere around the year 2020,

the world would consider it un-

speakably hip to be fashionably en-

sconced in cutting-edge nursing

homes.

That punch line drew chuckles,

but the real-life suffering of boom-

ers in board and care, grievously af-

flicted by Covid-19, counts as no

laughing matter.

At the moment, the bulk of ’60s

survivors still shelter in place and

hope for adequate supplies of toilet

paper, hand sanitizer and, if neces-

sary, ventilators. None of it seems

adventurous or sexy; instead of long-

ing for brave new worlds, most of us

would settle for a fondly remem-

bered bygone era—say, the good old

days of three months ago.

Boomers will not, of course, go

gentle into that good night, disap-

pearing before we play our own

role in the longed-for return of the

grand blessings of normal Ameri-

can life. We might even savor the

last exercise of presidential power

by one of our rough contempo-

raries, whichever of the dueling

old-timers wins the 2020 keys to

the White House. But with brothers

and sisters of the Woodstock fam-

ily suddenly frail and vulnerable,

we can far more readily accept the

patronizing, smug disdain of “OK

boomer” in place of the less palat-

able formulation—“Bye bye boom-

ers”—that inevitably lies ahead.

Mr. Medved hosts a daily, nation-

ally broadcast radio talk show and

is the author, most recently, of

“God’s Hand on America” (2019).

By Michael Medved

My generation, dominant

for so long, gets a taste

of its mortality with the

help of the coronavirus.

Yes, We Need Cost-Benefit Analysis

Our country’s pre-

mier advocate for

cost-benefit analy-

sis has written

about the corona-

virus. He is Cass

Sunstein, the Har-

vard law professor

and former Obama

White House regu-

latory guru.

Of course you

have to use the search function at

Bloomberg News to find his column

from Thursday. His editors don’t

make it easy. And his headline and

subheadline writers adopt the un-

usual tack of advertising his piece

by fibbing about what it says.

Mr. Sunstein endorses two stud-

ies that see benefits of “aggressive

social distancing,” even at the cost

of considerable economic destruc-

tion, in terms of lives saved. Who

doesn’t? But the proposals he cites

define aggressive social distancing

to mean something less stringent

than the sweeping mandatory busi-

ness shutdowns and shelter-in-

place commands already in force

around the country.

One study proposes seven-day

isolation of those with symptoms,

14-day isolation of exposed house-

holds, and “dramatically reduced

social contact for all those over 70

years of age.” The other, sterner

study proposes closing schools, the-

aters and sports venues.

Even so, Mr. Sunstein allows that

if the economic depression is long-

lasting or the recovery slow, the

costs “start to explode” and need

to be rethought. And nowhere does

he suggest costs shouldn’t be con-

sidered at all as the Bloomberg

headline writers seem to believe:

“This Time the Numbers Show We

Can’t Be Too Careful: Hard-headed

cost-benefit analysis usually con-

firms that it’s dangerous to be

overcautious. The coronavirus is

different.”

Huh? That’s exactly not what his

column says. Even Gov. Andrew

Cuomo, whose New York City is

America’s worst coronavirus hot

spot, was having second thoughts

on Thursday about the strenuous

social-distancing requirements he

has been imposing on the city’s

businesses and citizens.

Since I made a joke at CNN’s ex-

pense on Wednesday, I have had to

explain to a few readers that it

wasn’t just a gratuitous sideswipe.

For news organizations, misleading

the consumer can, at times, be part

of the business model. If consumers

put up with it or seem to enjoy it,

it will continue. Like Hillary Clin-

ton’s tweets, this is the last thing

we need right now.

Mr. Sunstein goes to some length

to explain why it’s exactly wrong

and self-defeating to refuse to weigh

the benefit of public goals against

the cost of achieving them.

He chooses examples of the sort

that excite ridicule when President

Trump cites them, such as our tol-

erance for traffic deaths as the

price for being able to move around

freely, or acceptance of construc-

tion deaths (perhaps an uncon-

scious wink to the real-estate im-

presario in the White House) so we

can have buildings to live in and

work in.

“I have long been an enthusiastic

defender of quantitative cost-bene-

fit analysis,” Mr. Sunstein begins.

In words plain enough that a head-

line writer can understand them, he

acknowledges that in the present

situation a significant percentage of

the “avoided mortalities involve

older people” and this ought to be

a factor in our calculations.

Of course he punts in the final

analysis as people often do when

the going gets tough. “In a period

when a lot of human beings are

getting sick and dying, it might ap-

pear callous to rely on statistics,

and especially the monetary valua-

tion of human life,” he writes, and

then ringingly finds that “extensive

precautions, not ending soon, are

amply justified by the most hard-

headed forms of analysis that we

have.”

Which is fine, but which precau-

tions? The lesser ones in the studies

he cites, or the more severe clamp-

downs governors around the coun-

try have been imposing on their

states? And when should we decide

the costs are rising too fast for the

expected benefits? His guidance

would be much appreciated.

There has been considerable talk

lately of moral hazard, as if airline

shareholders should have required

their companies to hold large

amounts of cash in advance against

the government unexpectedly shut-

ting down the economy to fight an

epidemic. This is not a case of

moral hazard (and neither does it

mean airline shareholders should

be bailed out now). When share-

holders want to pile up cash

against unlikely contingencies, they

buy Treasury bonds.

The real moral hazard in the

present crisis is the one Mr. Sun-

stein exemplifies: our politicians

and thought leaders, because they

don’t want to be seen as meanies,

failing to advise the country can-

didly about the nature of the trade-

offs we face in our current distress.

And just so you don’t get the

wrong idea, I’m a 61-year-old col-

umnist with a problematic lung,

whose Battle of the Bulge-surviving

father is 98.

BUSINESS

WORLD

By Holman W.

Jenkins, Jr.

A guru punts in the

last paragraph but

what he says is still

worth listening to.