The outbreak of COVID-19 has upended life in the United States, a country of 330 million: schools, restaurants, and bars are closed; stay-at-home orders have been issued by several state governments. One hundred and six days after the announcement of the first known case in the United States on January 21, 2020, the country has 1.26 million confirmed cases and 74,347 deaths.
President Trump and his administration as the face of leadership in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, were slow and casual in their response to the deadly virus, putting little priority on public health and incorrectly assuming that the “foreign virus” would not reach the U.S. under Trump’s authority. From late January to early March and then after, when the virus quietly entered and spread throughout the country, testing was not prioritized despite a federal task force assigned to combat the virus led by Vice President Mike Pence. It was during this period that the U.S. government squandered its best chance of containing the virus. Widely viewed as a foil to the president’s catastrophic presence during the crisis, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, a top government scientist involved in fighting COVID-19, has called the lack of early testing “a failing” of the administration’s response to the global pandemic.
On January 22, CNBC anchor Joe Kernan asked the president, “Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?” The president responded: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.” In February, the president continued to downplay the severity of the virus. During a speech at a rally on February 10th, the president said, “Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away.” On February 2nd, the president took one aggressive step towards halting the virus by issuing an executive order banning any visitor to the U.S. who had been in China during the previous 14 days—the country which saw the first case of the virus in the city of Wuhan November 2019. U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents and their close family members were exempt from the order.
The earliest of the president’s public remarks made it clear that he viewed the virus as a foreign, un-American threat. In the president’s notes photographed at a press conference March 19th, “Corona” had been crossed out and replaced with “Chinese.” The president denied that the phrase “Chinese Virus” was racist, but Asian Americans reported increased incidents of xenophobia. His language not only perpetuates discriminatory behavior and normalizes racist language, but it widens an us-versus-them narrative in the headspace of the white-American psyche, one that already holds fears of China as a communist state and of Chinese people in general (the Chinese Exclusion Act signed into law by President Chester A. Arthur in 1882 is the only law to date to exclude the immigration of a specific ethnic group into the United States; it was only repealed in 1943 under the Magnuson Act when China had become an ally to the United States who was at war with Japan in World War II).
Despite the onset of a pandemic, the American public continued to go to the gym and gather in social circles—up until March 11th the threat was not considered a serious one. On March 11th, Tom Hanks released a tweet saying he and his wife Rita Wilson had tested positive for the virus in Australia; he said that they would remain in isolation as long as necessary to protect public health safety. On the same day, the NBA announced it would suspend the 2019-2020 season after Utah Jazz player Rudy Gobert tested positive; days before during a press conference he jokingly touched the microphones and recorders placed in front of him when he was likely contagious—he later issued an apology for not taking the virus seriously.
In the days before the Hanks tweet and the NBA cancellation, NCAA officials announced that the annual March Madness tournament, similar to other large gatherings, would continue but without spectators; but only one day after Hanks’ tweet, NCAA officials retracted their statement and announced that the tournament would be cancelled over “Coronavirus concerns.” It appeared that Tom Hanks and the NBA had a greater effect on the American public’s knowledge of the seriousness of the virus than the federal government.
In the days after Hanks’ tweet, hand sanitizer, packaged meat, and toilet paper flew off the shelves; toilet paper company Charmin sold out of all online products. A grocery store cashier I spoke with on March 15th said that her seven-hour shift the day before had turned into a ten-hour shift. On the same day I spoke with her, Governor Charlie Baker declared a state of emergency in Massachusetts, the state where I live, and banned attending restaurants and bars and gatherings of more than 25 people. When Hanks got sick, the country realized that we could be in deep shit; if one of the country’s most beloved citizens wasn’t safe from the virus, nobody was safe. As a celebrity, Hanks’s life is valued higher than the average American; we, as a public, have confirmed that by our reaction to his positive diagnosis.
While some states like New York remain cautious and continue to extend the stay-at-home orders, others such as Georgia and Tennessee are starting to reopen; meanwhile, the president isn’t providing any clear instructions. As the discrepancy between state leadership and state and federal leadership widens, the value of a human life in the eyes of our leaders will increasingly become more clear.
Contrary to the title of this essay, this is a story about delight, and it has as much to do with living bunnies as it does dead bunnies. When I tried to come up with a name for all these words, I thought of Snoop Dog. He does this segment on Jimmy Kimmel Live called “Plizzanet Earth” where he narrates animal videos, just like David Attenborough in Planet Earth, but if David Attenborough was really high and knew nothing about the animals. During one episode, Snoop is watching a crocodile stalk a white fluffy bird from a pond until it lunges out of the water and snatches it. The predator’s teeth lock around the bird’s leg and whip it back and forth, and the life drains from the bird. At that moment I wonder what it would feel like to have a mouth full of feathers. As the crocodile drags the bird into the water, Snoop narrates, “Life and death. Mm, mm, mm. That hurt.” That would also be an appropriate title.
A few days ago, my mom saw our small dog Jasper sniffing around a grassy area next to our garage. She went over to him and saw he was interested in several baby bunnies. They were so tiny and their eyes were sealed shut; they had a light layer of fur on their bodies. Drops of blood coated nearby blades of grass and we wondered about the blood, and if they’d just been born. They were all so still that I thought they were dead. That’s why, when my sister Chloe and I checked on them a few hours later and saw that three were alive, we shared in the delight of discovering life.
The three of them were barely breathing, and slightly squirming—life, life, life! It was getting to be dinner time and the wind had picked up. That day wasn’t as warm as the few days before and soon it would drop to 37 degrees. Two of them were shivering together and we nudged the single one towards the group to share in whatever warmth was there. We covered them in their mothers fur and left them for a few more hours. Chloe and I went back inside; the two of us were cold just from the quick trip outside and we looked at each other with worry.
When it became dark Chloe asked if we should bring them inside. Uh oh. Yes, yes I did want to bring them inside. But we didn’t...at first. Ha! But then we did and I was so happy to have them with us, warm and safe, sleeping in a tangerine box cozied with a towel, some grass, and their mother’s fuzz. Around 11 p.m. that night, Chloe came downstairs with a pillow and blanket and said she would sleep on the couch and keep an eye on the bunnies. Our old and gentle golden retriever Ellie kept hovering around the box like she knew something special was inside. I moved the box to the table, further out of her reach. As usual, the bunnies slept like they didn’t know anything amazing was going on.
Normally, I wake up around 9 or 9:30 a.m., but that day I was out of bed quickly, excited to see how the bunnies were holding up. Now that I’d known them for 24 hours I could tell them apart. We discussed names. My mom thought we should name them Olivia, Tara, and Chloe, the names of her real children. But Chloe and I landed on Roger, Honeyglow, and Tara—keeping Tara because she was the only sister not at home and we missed her. The bunnies each had a small dash of white on their tiny pea heads, but the smallest bunny had the longest white dash. When I held him it felt like he could use some food; he was the most squirmy. Another one was a little bigger and looked healthier. He was very calm and was happy to snuggle in my hand or against my chest. Besides a small cut in between his right eye and his tiny ear, which didn’t yet stand up on its own, the third bunny also looked healthy. I took turns holding each of them hoping they would get used to me when I fed them later.
We called the pet store and asked them what we should do. They told us they had the product we needed to feed them, Kitten Milk Replacement, and gave us the contact info of a woman who rehabilitates baby bunnies. We sent her a message and while we waited for a response, we picked up the KMR and tried to feed the little fur babies. They were both fidgety and sleepy when we tried to feed them, which sounds impossible but they were. They didn’t eat much, but we tried. Soon, the rehabilitation lady sent us a message back and said not to feed them anything. Oops. Maybe she thought we would try feeding them something crazy and not the KMR. She told us to reach out to her intern Kaila who was taking in bunnies this season. We texted Kaila and told her everything, about finding them, bringing them in, and trying to feed them. She replied that she could take them. “They’re a very sensitive species and I need to mix the KMR with probiotics and other vitamins.” I wasn’t sure how to take this text; I felt like we had done something wrong, but I could see that they were very sensitive and knew they would be better off with Kaila.
For the next couple hours I tried to soak up having baby bunnies in my life. I knew that we wouldn’t be able to properly monitor them or feed them and that we couldn’t keep them, but god dang they were so cute. I’d wanted a kitten for years and these three baby bunnies were kicking my kitten dreams in the butt. The hour before we left for Kaila’s I took lots of pictures of them in their box, and caught a moment when they were sleeping in a row.
My mom and I turned into a driveway and immediately saw a flock of chickens. Hilly, lush green grass blanketed the backyard and where that ended a woodsy area began. I lifted the box from my lap and my mom and I walked to the front door. A porch chair was next to the door and hundreds of used cigarettes lay in a clear plastic box next to it. An ashtray was on the coffee table in front of the chair and held a few more butts. I tried to reserve judgment about the cigarettes as I rang the doorbell. A woman in her mid-thirties answered; she had dark hair and wore sweatpants, like most of us in quarantine. I handed Kaila the box. She felt the bunnies and said they weren’t too dehydrated, which was good. My mom and I wanted to ask Kaila if they could be let out in our backyard when they were ready, but we were both too shy.
A few days after we dropped them off I was curious what happened to the bunnies who didn’t make it. I walked over to the spot near the garage where we found them and saw three bunny bodies, cold and firm still lying in the grass. I think the bunnies that lived in our tangerine box for a night meant so much to me because the preciousness of their lives was so apparent, with their dead brothers and sisters still in the backyard. And while some of them didn’t make it, some of them did. I didn’t mention it until the last paragraph, but the baby bunnies happened during this quarantine, and for about 24 hours I completely forgot about it.