The Glendale Star
8
December 30, 2021
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Big Apple trip poses a question befitting ‘Hamlet’ BY DAVID LEIBOWITZ Glendale Star Columnist
Early on in your relationship, she confessed a semi-startling fact. While she had visited China as a little girl and walked along the Great Wall, never once had she been to New York City. To her, the metropolis back east seemed like a gleaming trophy to life made large. Broadway, Times Square, the Statue of Liberty. Skyscrapers and a chance to stride up Fifth Avenue in spike heels, like Carrie in “Sex and the City.” To you, the city was home once, the backdrop for a million childhood memories: a piping hot slice of pizza dripping with cheese, a walk around the Central Park reservoir, the concrete stoop fronting the old red brick apartment in Queens, the Garden for a Knicks game, a knish purchased from a street vendor and painted in brown mustard. She dreamed aloud. You egged it on,
and thus a trip was born. New York at Christmastime and for New Year’s Eve. Plane tickets were purchased; hotel, theater and dinner reservations were made. And then Omicron showed up, which is exactly America’s luck in 2021. The spiking pandemic gives rise to a question, one that feels a little bit like some bad “Hamlet,” given that vacation issues are a decidedly first-world problem to have in the midst of global affliction. To go or not to go? To get on that jetliner, which departs tonight, or to cancel our plans and instead spend Christmas watching “Miracle on 34th Street,” instead of living it? Some background: We have both been vaccinated three times, and thus have been maximally protected against the dread virus. We are both in good health. We both understand that New York City will still be there next month, next year, next vacation or the one after that.
And yet making the trip still feels tempting, especially when you run the numbers in your head. Last week in New York City, the infection rate among all 8 million residents was 193 infections for every 100,000 people. That’s a tenth of a percentage point chance of getting sick — and the infection rate for the vaccinated is half as much. This year in New York, COVID-19 has claimed one life for every 200,000 vaccinated residents. Put another way, I’d have a better chance of getting a hole in one (12,500 to 1) or being killed by lightning (1 in 138,849, according to the National Safety Council). Then again, to quote Jim Carrey as Lloyd Christmas from “Dumb and Dumber,” “So you’re saying there’s a chance?” Life is a series of calculated risks. Some of us have decided not to get vaccinated. Other people continue to avoid indoor gatherings and to wear masks while they’re outside walking their dogs. There are those of us who smoke de-
spite the threat of lung cancer, others who would never think of wearing a motorcycle helmet because they like to feel like a badass. One of my buddies went skydiving last year. I turned down the invitation, saying I avoid optional danger in all forms, including jumping out of perfectly functional airplanes. But now here I am, contemplating risking my life for a hot dog with sauerkraut from Gray’s Papaya and the opportunity to show a pretty girl with a huge heart the Tyrannosaurus Rex exhibit at the Museum of Natural History. What would you do: Throw caution to the wind and live your life? Or give Omicron a wide berth and avoid New York literally like the plague? One thing’s for sure. If I go and end up in intensive care or dead, everyone who read this column and thought “tsk, tsk” sure will have one last chance to say “I told you so.”
Then on the TV, they heard such a clatter, They both turned to watch and see what was the matter. On the screen was a show from the news folks of cable Devoid of facts and heavy on fable. The interview guest neither wanted to hear was a doctor, adept at marketing fear. He drove home his message, laying it on thick, spreading the notion the viewers were sick. “First COVID, then Delta and Omicron, too! I bet there’s a mutation that’s
coming for you!” “Now, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson… Forget “gain of function…” I’ll just redefine it! “From a bat cave to the lab… No, not a Wuhan market stall… You paid for it… paid for it… paid for it all!” As the outrage grew louder, the viewers grew mad So convinced were they that this short doctor was bad… And fiercer and fiercer their outrage grew… at the leftist networks and the small doctor, too! And then, in a twinkling, it all went “Poof!”
As Hollywood actors acted out their “proof…” So skillful were they, their scripts turned folks around… And Dr. Fauci was able to scale the rebound! He was dressed all in white, from his toe to his head, But why did this doctor seem to delight in the dread? Therapeutics? He denied folks… and with that he was fine… As if he were saying that “your fate is mine!” Oh, how he loved it! His demeanor so merry… As if he determined which poor
David Leibowitz has called the Valley home since 1995. Contact david@leibowitzsolo.com.
Poem is a commentary on the current state BY J.D. HAYWORTH
Glendale Star Columnist
’Tis the week before New Year’s, and for better or worse — The words of this column are written in verse. Campaigns are concocted, plans are made for the air, As politicians hope to show how much they know and they care. The voters are struggling, no names have been mentioned As thanks to inflation, folks can’t pay for attention! Mom was pacing the floor; dad had joined her there… Wishing they could print money right out of thin air!
SEE HAYWORTH PAGE 10
