The New Yorker Radio Hour - Life Under Quarantine

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

Since its outbreak last year, the coronavirus COVID-19 has thrown the world into disarray. Travel to the U.S. from Europe has been suspended for thirty days; financial markets have plunged; Saudi Arabia cancelled the Hajj—the list of impacts is already infinite. In China, where the virus started, eight hundred million people are under some kind of restriction. One of them is Peter Hessler, who is currently based in Chengdu, and who has been quarantined with his family since January. New cases of the virus have been falling recently, which the Communist Party touts as a sign of its success, but Hessler has concerns about the costs of mass quarantine. “When you’re building a society, it’s not just about numbers or the death rate. Mental health is a big issue, and being free from fear is a big part of that,” he says. “And the public-health people will tell you that it’s better to have an overreaction than an underreaction, but I think there may be a point where that’s not true.” Plus: the staff writer Lawrence Wright recently wrote a novel—yet to be published—about a pandemic that sounds a lot like COVID-19. “The End of October” is a work of fiction and firmly in the thriller genre, but what he imagined in it turns out to be eerily close to what we are experiencing now. “I read the paper and I feel like I’m reading another chapter of my own book,” he tells David Remnick.  New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

From One World Trade Center in Manhattan, this is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick, and we are broadcasting from my apartment. Like everybody else, we're making adjustments. Since its outbreak last year, the coronavirus, COVID-19, has thrown the world into disarray. Travel from Europe has been restricted for 30 days, at least. Financial markets have tanked. Saudi Arabia canceled the Hodge, the Islamic pilgrimage. The NBA has suspended the basketball season. And who knows what could happen to all kinds of public assemblages, theaters, the Olympics, and all the rest. And in China, where the outbreak began, nearly 800 million people have been living under some kind of restriction. Hello? Oh, yeah, I can hear you fine. Given all this, we rang up our staff writer Peter

Hessler on Skype. Peter is reported for years from China. He went back with his family last year to teach at Sichuan University. Yeah, now we're in Chengdu, which is in the southwest. It's the capital of Sichuan province. And so, yes, I mean, we've been quarantined since, you know, late January. We have two nine-year-olds. We have twin daughters there in Chinese public school. And so the city, you know, so my kids are not in school.

And, you know, this has been more than a month. My kids have not seen another kid their age for more than a month. Now here in the States we talk about self-quarantining. That's a voluntary decision to keep others safe. But in China, a quarantine is a quarantine. Usually in many compounds, they would allow one person out from each household every two days. Because we're sort of in a higher-end thing, there was no limit. We have to have a card to go in and out, but we can go in and out as much as we want.

And so I went out a lot because I would bike around and see what's going on in the city. and, you know, there's more people out. You know, there was a long stretch when there was absolutely nobody on the street. And there wasn't much open, but convenience stories were always open, kind of like small markets were always open. People at least around here didn't have problems with food because a lot of people do stuff online anyway here. And so I've kind of tracked what my neighbors are like the weird shit people buy during this time. Like some guy upstairs about like a hundred inch television, you know, when you see them. these guys in masks trying to bring this.

That's probably what my stuff. But, you know, so I, there's a lot of stuff like that. And then also just the whole mask fetish, you know, that people, which also serves absolutely no point at all. And if you don't have it, people get angry, you know, people yell at me, because I run along the river in the mornings and people would scream at me. I mean, they're kind of mellowing out a little more now. But like a week or 10 days ago, they would go totally ballistic, you know.

New cases of COVID-19 have fallen in China in recent days. President Xi Jinping visited Wuhan, the epicenter, as a show of confidence that the Communist Party has the virus under control. Peter says you can see right on the ground the power of Xi Jinping's government. There's a big sign in front of our building that actually has all the local government officials and their phone numbers and their pictures, which is a very usual thing to have in China. Of course, I called, and then they, within minutes, set up an appointment, and I met the local party secretary.

So I sort of unusually open in that sense. This is a little section of like a neighborhood of the city that has 6,000 residents. They've had one case, which is the guy in my building. But it's also just kind of an amazing, the violations of privacy. Because in many places, like my students write it, but they will publish people's names who have it. You know, I mean, I've seen a few things, I think, very misguided where they talk about this threat to the party. I don't feel like that all. I mean, I think this really reinforces their strength.

I think it actually makes more people have faith in them. And while the World Health Organization has praised China's efforts, these are measures that only a truly authoritarian regime can pull off, which has Peter a little concerned. You know, I have, like, serious, you know, reservations about this kind of situation. Like, I think it's really bad to shut things down in this way. You know, when you're building a society, it's not just about numbers on a death rate. To me, like mental health is a big issue, and to me, like being free from fear is a big part of it. of that. I get in the elevator, and if somebody, people won't get in the elevator with me, first all, and if they do, they turn their back to me often. And I think this is a psychological issue.

I think it damages community. But all these things, it's not a body count, you know, and that's what you're up against on the other side, because they'll just say, well, you know, look at how the numbers went down in the quarantine, and those are people who are still alive, you know. And the thing is, everybody, you know, the public health people will tell you what's better to have an overreaction, underreaction. But I think there may be a point where that's not true. I think there is a more subtle way to do this a longer-term approach. You know, your quarantine and what they would call social distancing has to be more targeted to the groups that matter. You have to recognize that the disease sort of runs its course and that there's probably not going to be a silver bullet for it. And also,

like eventually it comes back until you either have a vaccine or until you get herd immunity, this thing still is around. Like, because people have this idea that it's being defeated. You know, it's not like you do this and then it's done. It's going to come back. Peter Hessler is a staff writer living under quarantine with his family right now in Chengdu. You can read Peter's reporting from China and more at New Yorker.com. His recent book, which is about Egypt, is called The Buried.

More in a moment. This is the New Yorker Radio Hour. For most of us, the speed and intensity of the coronavirus pandemic came on as a shock. But maybe not for Lawrence Wright. Larry is a terrific journalist, the author of major books about Al Qaeda and the Church of Scientology, among others. And he's been a staff writer since 1992. Larry has been imagining a virus like COVID-19, teasing out its consequences for a book that he's called The End of October. Now, this book is not journalism. The end of October is fiction, very much a thriller, but the circumstances certainly ring familiar. Larry, you're talking to me from a studio in Austin, Texas, where you've lived for a long time, and Austin is the home of South by Southwest, this huge music and film and technology festival, and was one of the first big events to be canceled. Tell me about the mood in Austin where coronavirus is concerned, and What does the cancellation mean for Austin?

Well, it's a $350 million loss to the economy, but that's just, you know, what would have been the spending. Everybody is very worried about the effect on the service industries, the restaurants, the hotels. There's so many, you know, gig workers who are just going to be flattened by this because so much of their yearly income depends on this couple of weeks of Southby. My daughter used to rent out her house for Southby and maybe Formula One and it would pay her rent for the entire year. Wow. Well, that's not going to happen. And it was shocking to me, we haven't had a single case yet in Travis County that has been discovered at least. But there's hardly any cars on the streets.

I'm at the university. I only see a handful of students walking around. It's really quite striking, even in Austin. So we imagine the impact of an outbreak like COVID-19. We think a lot about the immediate health effects, the people infected, the people who will recover, the number who don't. But your novel, and I should emphasize it's a novel, not a book of science journalism, but we'll get to the research in a second. Your novel deals a lot with the unexpected ways that an outbreak can influence not just the public health, but culture and politics. and economies. And are those second-order effects of a virus more dangerous than the virus itself? How would you

equate that? Well, there's certainly more enduring. You know, viruses come and sweep through a population. They may return. They may not. But, you know, like cholera, cities have been built designed because of cholera. Have sanitation, clean water, clean air. All of that is because of cholera. Calera is easily dealt with in the modern era, but the enduring effects of those cholera plagues is still with us. The novel is about a virus of your own imagining. It's not about COVID-19. Tell me about the virus in your book. Well, I call it the Congoli flu. I chose influenza as my medium because it is still the most dangerous virus that we're faced with. And I pictured it starting in Indonesia in a refugee camp. Indonesia has been persecuting homosexuals.

And so I imagine that there was a camp, a detention center, where a number of people have HIV-AIDS and their immune systems are compromised. And in that environment, a novel infection, a flu that has never been seen before suddenly arises. takes root in the human population and becomes transmissible. And there is an attempt to quarantine the camp. But in the novel, the hero of the book goes to visit. His driver is contaminated and infected and goes to go on pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia for the Hodge. And that's how the virus really gets ignited.

What's really uncanny, and again, emphasizing that it's a novel, is that the global political conditions are so much like what we have now. You've got United States in Russia or in conflict, Saudi Arabia and Iran are to reach other's throats, the threat of climate changes everywhere. And there's a not terribly responsive president in the White House, though he doesn't go named. Yeah. What happens to that world when this virus is unleashed in it? And does it bear any resemblance to what you're seeing every day now in the news? Oh, David, it's so demoralizing. Honestly, I read the paper and I feel like I'm reading another chapter of my own book.

And unfortunately, real life seems to have taken the form of art and outraced even some of my imagination. Well, how do you mean? What are you observing now in the reaction to this coronavirus that resembles what you might have anticipated? And how is it outstripping it? Well, specifically quarantine. You know, quarantine is not a... It's not a cure by any means. Its only goal really is to forestall the advance of a disease so that time can be used to develop some kind of vaccine or cure.

And I imagined three million people in Mecca on Hajj and quarantining that. It seemed to me a real leap of imagination. It doesn't begin to compare with what? China did, you know, 70 million people in Hubei province, you know, maybe 250 million people, 750 million people I read, quarantined in one way or another. And now Italy, my own imagination would have balked at such a stupendous effort. I don't know what the world's going to be like when it's finally published in mid-April. And because this disease gallops along so much, much. This isn't the first novel about an apocalyptic pandemic. Some in the past have had a

pretty familiar form. There's a stable world. The virus throws that world into chaos. And then some brave souls defeat the virus and things go back to normal. That's not what happens in your book. Do those other novels get pandemics wrong somehow? Well, you know, there are enduring consequences of any great pandemic. And they've changed. The future course of human life. You know, smallpox, plague, you know, those great pandemics of the past are tremendous scars on history. They affected the outcome of wars. They affected the mortality of humanity for years to come. We tend to think after the 20th century where there were so many triumphs of medicine and we thought we had put the great plagues of the past to rest, accepting perhaps

influenza. But then along came SARS, along came MERS, these other viruses that posed tremendous threats. Fortunately, we have been able to contain them somewhat, but they are incredibly dangerous. Now, as you watch what's happening now, and obviously we're in early stages, how do you evaluate the American reaction to the pandemic on a government level? Oh, God, let's go back to, you know, when President Trump first came into office and fired the global pandemic team, including Admiral Timothy Weiner, who had handled the malaria outbreak in Africa and is credited with saving 6 million lives, and then cutting the budget for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so that they were no longer able to monitor the health in most countries in the world. We were handicapped going out of the gate. You know, America is not a country like China that will easily lock up cities and partition states. So, you know, the trust is going to be that people will take care of themselves.

But that's not really going to happen. I think that people will isolate themselves. They're social distancing. I think a lot of Americans are taking this very responsible. but still there's not going to be an absolute wall up the way that there is in China. In a sense, what you're suggesting is that there is an innate advantage to an authoritarian state like China's over a democratic fluid state like the United States in this kind of situation. Here's what I think about China in that, you know, it's an authoritarian country. It does not like to have any criticism. It hides any kinds of interior problems it might have.

as we saw at the beginning of this outbreak where that young doctor made an outcry and he was suppressed and of course he eventually died of COVID-19. Previously, you know, SARS had broken out in China and China hid that. When World Health Organization authorities went to China to examine the situation, there were reports that the authorities had placed SARS patients in taxis and had them ride around until the Who officials were gone. That is the downside of an authoritarian government. The other side of it is a government that is as authoritarian and brutal as the Chinese government can enforce a quarantine that I don't think any other country in the world would be able to attempt. What was your first thought when you heard about this outbreak in China late last year?

Did you immediately think we could end up where we are today? Did you expect a different outcome somehow? David, good evidence is I didn't unload my stocks. I didn't take any of the precautions that a person, given all the knowledge that I had, should have done. Like so many people, I kept thinking, this isn't going to affect me. It won't reach my home. But I've been unnerved. by it, I think it's going to be a real challenge to our democracy and is going to inflict a whole

lot of grief on the world in one way or another. When you say there's a threat to our democracy with COVID-19, what do you mean? You know, let's start with just the difficulty of having politics in a place where people can't assemble. You know, what's going to happen with the conventions? How about voting? How are we going to manage those kinds of things? this is not a good time to be going out to mass rallies. Larry, what concerns do you have for publishing a novel into the teeth of this? Are you worried? Well, you're worried how.

I don't know how people are going to react to it. You're worried because what? Or do you think it can provide information that's useful in a way that's maybe more easily or transmitted than, you know, a CDC announcement on television? I think it'll make it understand. to people in a way that they couldn't maybe in another way. You know, there should be at least some hope from this novel in that there are these really ingenious, courageous people that are involved in fighting it. I went to the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda and I talked to, you know,

immunologists at Pfizer, and I went to Fort Dietrich where a lot of the biowfare research had been done. And I was so struck by the ingenuity and the courage of people who work in public health. And that's why the book is dedicated to them. People actually go into those situations and confront these very cunning ways that nature has of sickening and killing us. That really impresses me. And I have a lot of confidence in them. Larry Wright, thank you so much. It's my pleasure, David. And best of health to your family and everyone you know. And same to you and yours.

Lawrence Wright has been a staff writer since 1992. His book, The End of October, just to be clear, is a work of fiction. It's due to be published this spring. I'm David Remnick, and that's our show for today. You can find much more of The New Yorker Radio Hour by subscribing to our podcast. Thanks for joining us. Be well. And see you next time. The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbus of tune yards, with additional music by Alexis Quadrado. This episode was produced by Alex Barron, Emily Boutin, Ave Carrillo, Riannon Corby, Calaliyia, David Krasnow, Gauphin and Putubuele, Louis Mitchell, Michelle Moses, and Stephen Valentino, with help from Alison McAdam, Morgan Flannery, Mung Faye Chen, and Emily Mann. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the Cherina Endowment Fund.