I find it truly sad that the museums and libraries of the world are closing. Last summer, on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, we took our daughters to see a Maplethorpe exhibit at the Guggenheim museum in New York City. They were shocked, as one always is with Maplethorpe, but his photographs led to a whole day of careful conversation about sexuality, race, and the role of art in mediating humanity’s biggest questions. We took the subway down to Greenwich Village to see the LGBTQ+ march on Christopher Street. We talked about the problems that we saw in Maplethorpe’s photographs of black, male bodies—sexualized and phallic. Maplethorpe was 42 when he died of HIV/AIDS, I told them, a disease for which there still is no vaccine. Museums and libraries are the places that force us into new realities, that teach how to understand our own experiences and the experiences of others, that give us language for navigating love, anger, loss, joy, injury, pain. These are the places where civilization is contested and mediated. If there is any time that we need the museums, it is now.[1] And yet, it is clear that there will be some smaller galleries that will never be able to reopen.[2] 

I read this morning that New York state processed 10,000 additional COVID tests in the last twenty-four hours. The news is that New York is now at nearly 8,000 coronavirus cases—a number ten times higher than earlier in the week. NYC alone is at 5,600 cases.[3]

The same thing is happening in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington DC –all have issued stay-at-home orders to people who do not qualify as “essential workers.” Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and others have called up their national guards to help distribute medical supplies.[4] Like a tidal wave brought in by a tsunami, it was slow at first but now threatens to swallow the house.

I glance at my phone and realize I’ve been sitting here for forty minutes. Usually this building is abuzz on a Friday, filled with students trying to get last-minute dispensation for unscheduled absences and make-up exams. But there is not a sound in the building now. Actually, that’s not true — I can hear someone else also desperately rifling though their office, trying to figure out how they’re going to teach an online course for the first time with no training and no equipment. The fact that I can hear them at all means the HVAC has already been shut off for the building.

I touch my old desk that I got from the furniture surplus warehouse years ago, stained with coffee rings and pen marks. It smarts to walk away, strangely. This moment of leaving feels official somehow. An omen. A mile marker. But we’re only supposed to be gone a few weeks until the “curve” is flattened. We might even have to transition back to in-person teaching after scrambling to teach online.

When I get home I read that Congress has passed the “Families First Coronavirus Response Act” after a week of debate. According to this second piece of coronavirus legislation, the government will support paid leave, free coronavirus testing, expanding food assistance, and will give money to states for additional fighting of the pandemic.[5] While the emergency lasts, unemployed folks are supposed to receive around $600 a week. Conservative media complain, like they always do, that these giveaways encourage laziness. I collected welfare and foodstamps when I had my oldest daughter by myself at the age of twenty. I worked full time and was in school. The foodstamps and welfare, when added to my job income, were just enough to pay the rent, the electricity, take care of my baby, and feed me one meal a day. One meal a day. I never went to parties, never bought myself clothes, never paid anyone to cut my hair. Never have I worked so hard. There was nothing lazy about it.

And I can tell you that the people who need $600 a week to keep their family alive are not the ones who are currently acting as though this virus is something to be ignored while they enjoy their Spring Break.

Students know what to do with this down time. Not take the coronavirus seriously, that’s what: the pictures are all over the internet of spring breakers deciding that coronavirus isn’t going to happen to them. Or, just as troublingly, they don’t care if it does. Partying takes precedence.[6] This seems like a typical ‘tragedy of the commons’ problem caused by the ordinary capitalist impulse. Students want to drink and act however they want to—they don’t believe they will get the virus or, if they do, they don’t believe it will be serious. All along the virus has been portrayed as a disease of the elderly. Airlines, hotels, restaurants, and bars see the young kids at Daytona Beach and Miami as walking ATMs. The Florida governor does not want to risk the cashflow and jobs that would be lost from closing the beaches. It’s hard to fault the students, though. Spending a few days spent in a drunken haze at the beach has become a requirement of youth and a tragedy if missed, a story they will tell on all their class reunions, the fulcrum upon which pivots their American lives.