At 2:23 pm on a Friday in early May, I sat in my Manhattan apartment trying to convince myself that at 2:30 I would start reading the academic article I had open on my computer for the past couple days. The article described the structural arrangement of the ACE2 receptor protein that is essential for SARS-CoV-2 viral infection. It was two months since I was told not to report to my graduate thesis lab, and I had taken on volunteer work to review COVID-19-related articles. Quarantining together, my girlfriend and I tried to maintain a semblance of a weekly work schedule, so I was still on the clock for a couple more hours. Working from home was proving not to be as productive as in the lab, but on this day, I was especially distracted as I looked up advice for fishing in the Hudson River near our apartment. This led to a rabbit hole of how-to videos and trail maps culminating with my reminiscing at three-year-old pictures from a trip to my home state of New Mexico. I realized that I must be bored out of my mind if I was longing to go fishing, a pastime I had found very dull growing up. Snapping out of it, I closed the fishing windows in my browser and looked at my clock. 2:35. I figured I might as well wait until 3:00 to start reading.
Reading scientific articles on my couch had eaten up the previous routine of meetings, presentations, and in-lab benchwork that every biomed grad student and I were familiar with pre-pandemic. As the hotspot of the world, COVID-19 left everyone in a once social-driven New York City very conscious about physical proximity in order to prevent hospital overburden. About half of the people I knew who had family in other states immediately evacuated when in-person work was discontinued. For those of us who stayed, an aura of confusion over the necessary steps to flatten the curve was ubiquitous. University emails and most types of mass media contextualized quarantine as a moral duty. People with symptoms had been told to stay home for months, but it had become clear that asymptomatic spread was a significant threat to virus management. We and millions of New Yorkers only left the apartment about once a week for groceries. For now, shaking hands and hugging friends was over, and it had been eight weeks since we saw anybody we knew. During almost every commercial break on our TV, NYC Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot appeared before a white backdrop with a calming but urgent plea: stay home to save lives. She understood that this seemingly trivial request was in reality quite extraordinary. “We’re New Yorkers and we love to be out in our city.”
A normally packed cafe in New York City is eerily empty with an unlit “24 Hours” sign during the peak of Coronavirus
Since March, it had always been in the back of our minds that staying in New Mexico would be safer than staying in the city. NYC hospitals were running out of vacancies and I constantly contemplated a worst-case scenario of being hooked up to a ventilator in the Javits Convention Center. New Mexico had advantages that had allowed the state to maintain a formidable leg up on any severe outbreak that we saw in New York and other states. As a large state made up of freckled small towns, spread of the virus was slow, and in early March each small flare-up could be traced to a single traveler. The “secret” weapon was known by all across the state: the fast acting of Governor Michelle Lujan-Grisham. Previously New Mexico’s Secretary of Health then a U.S. representative, Lujan-Grisham had sturdy qualifications in areas of public health and policy when she was elected as governor in 2018. On March 11, two days before President Trump, Lujan-Grisham declared a state of emergency over COVID-19 and established the nation’s first drive-through testing site within a few days. Other sites in the state were subsequently opened, immensely helping public health officials gather data on where and how the virus was spreading. At the time, the state was an example of a health crisis handled with swift, data-driven decisions. My girlfriend and I considered that a trip to New Mexico might provide us with a safer environment and curb our paralyzing boredom. The largest barrier holding us back from traveling to New Mexico, of course, was the risk of exposure that came with flying on multiple planes and waiting in several public spaces.
We spent Saturday on the couch focused on a jigsaw puzzle that would eventually materialize into an image of colorful papier mâché masks hanging from shelves. There were several duplicate masks and, consequently, quite a few near-duplicate puzzle pieces. That evening we watched seven episodes of King of the Hill. On Sunday we slept in, woke to an update on the new COVID-19 case count, and played our new quarantine game, “Let me show you what you’re doing wrong”, while making lunch. That afternoon, donning our masks, we walked three blocks to Key Foods on 172nd St. for groceries. On the way home I felt an itch, wiped my eye, then realized what I’d done and cursed.
PhDish writer Daniel Roybal works on a puzzle while quarantined during Coronavirus in NYC
Monday was the start of a new work week. After some coffee, I opened an email that contained my new COVID-19 literature review assignment and read the title of the paper I would be reviewing: Structural basis of receptor recognition by SARS-CoV-2. It sounded too familiar. Confused, I searched my email for my previous assignment, found it, and read the title. Structural basis for the recognition of the SARS-CoV-2 by full-length human ACE2. Hand to my face I wondered what I was doing. It wasn’t that I thought each of these articles with only mildly overlapping aims didn’t merit an analytical critique and, perhaps, even a comparison to the other. It was the beginning of a realization that time was standing still for us. Without more variation in each day, it became taxing just to remember how my work from today was different from that of last week or last month. Anxious to finish my thesis work in the lab, two months had passed where each week I waited on confirmation for a rumored restart date that just kept getting pushed back. The whole while, our actions every day mirrored those of the day before. This, combined with the extremely restrictive habits we’d developed to stay healthy, led us to understand that it was time for a change of scenery.
We bought plane tickets for a flight to New Mexico about a week later and on the morning of our trip, my girlfriend and I left our apartment at about 10am. One cancelled Uber, a missed connection, two new flights, and several unmasked flight attendants later, we arrived in Albuquerque at 11pm to find that our baggage had been naturally sent to Chicago. We recovered our bags when all was said and done, and the erratic trip was somehow less draining than spending another week in our NYC apartment. In New Mexico, we drove three hours north of Albuquerque near the Colorado border to quarantine in a small, rural two-room cabin for two very surreal weeks of my life. The novelty of walking outside in seconds to the smell of cold tree bark and sounds of crickets chirping never faded. We had views of snow-capped peaks in the distance during the day and a vast field of stars at night. In New York, our lives were blanketed with feelings of boredom and anxiety. We brooded every day over how we could be contracting and/or spreading the virus. In New Mexico we had the geographic freedom of possessing a car and walking for miles without putting ourselves or others at risk. A new setting led to a renewed sense of determination, and I actually completed about a quarter of my academic goals for quarantine. At the tail end of the trip we spent a few days with my family and even found time to go fishing.
A glorious sunset over the plains of New Mexico. Photo credit: Elise Flynn
The difference of environment was revitalizing, and I understood that the courage to pursue change is essential for how several of us could personally combat the paralyzing effects of COVID-19. My experiences of feeling defeated aren’t unique, and the magnitude of prevalence of mental health disorders among adults due to this pandemic is becoming more apparent every day. Constant mixed signals and uncertainty felt by everyone during this pandemic can lead to stagnation, but discovering accessible ways to make a change can lead to clarity. Making the resources or time to take advantage of these opportunities is not always easy, and often an effort of repeated attempts and failures. As a part of the process, though, these attempts are ultimately worthwhile. During this pandemic, I hope that everybody—especially researchers, activists, and essential workers—can take an opportunity to explore what they’re not used to in order to find hidden delight.
