The coronavirus pandemic is like watching Jaws in very very slow motion — you’re in the water, you know there’s a big, scary fish somewhere in the murky depths, you know the damn thing will bite you — and you know that because you can hear the infernal theme music, that alternating E / F that lets you know that mouthful of razor-sharp teeth is… there. Circling. The music gets faster, faster, faster… dum duh dum duh dum duh dum duh dum duh dumduhdumduhdumduh. And then: thump. The shark. The vortex. The blood.
Except with this, it’s super slow-mo. You can hear it, but it’s more like this: Dum (wait a week) duh (wait five days for an update) dum (wait three days) duh (another day, another update) dum… Well. You get it. It’s building inexorably towards a crescendo, faster every day, but rather than the strings that film score had, we get the petulant voice of Donald Trump screeching abuse at reporters (duh), claiming that he knows about treatment (dum)… and so on.
Jaws will always be my reference point for horror films, by the way. When I was a kid, I lived in Japan. Movie ratings worked a bit differently there; actually, I’m pretty sure that they didn’t operate at all. At any rate, I, then ten years old, was supposed to meet a friend at a movie theater. I don’t remember exactly how this happened, but in the crowds I missed my friend. This was long before cell phones. I was too shy, too embarrassed, and didn’t speak enough Japanese to ask for help, so I bought my ticket and went in.
That was, of course, a calamitous mistake. I sat, alone, as the film unfolded. Dum duh dum dum dum duh… It took me ages to overcome the terror of the water. Even in a swimming pool. (Murky water still makes me nervous.)
But sharks remind me of coronavirus in a different way. When we moved from Japan to California, we stopped in Hawaii on the way. And we visited the aquarium, which had some sort of exhibition about sharks. I don’t remember much of it; I think there were some reassuring things about the dearth of shark attacks in Hawaii, a few instructions about things not to do, and then this: “If bitten, try not to bleed.” I thought that was really, bitingly (?) funny.
Now, though, it seems the perfect analogy for COVID-19. We’ll try to keep you out of harm’s way — or rather, try to get you to understand how to stay out of harm’s way. But, if you get the bug, we don’t really know what to do.
Try not to bleed.
Leave a Reply