It’s been a year since we left NYC, a place we had called home since college. We left suddenly and unexpected in early March, as when we’d stopped off at an upscale specialty grocery store to pick up a single item, a guy pushed his way in front of us on the checkout line and became menacing when we reacted. We were so gobsmacked by the incident that we called our NYC-born husband once we’d left the store, who immediately realized that a serious Covid panic was starting to set in in the city. Two hours later, we had gotten the hell out of Dodge. Our husband was especially concerned, as we were suffering from an all-too-prevalent disease (which no NYC-based infectious disease specialist would treat, all of whom had decided to ignore the disease that our blood tests indicated that we had and to treat us instead for a disease that tests definitively proved that we did not have, for those of you who wonder why we personally question the current breed of medical practitioners). If every blood test indicates that we have two forms of Lyme disease bacteria as well as tick-borne malaria, how will treating us for Hep-C help??? Answer: insurance companies.

A New Life

We’ve literally been out here in the woods ever since. The following has been our experience and what our life has been like since we’ve been out here in much more rural America. Cutting our own hair. Missing the specialty cooking ingredients that are readily available in Manhattan, but for which Amazon jacks up the prices four- to five-fold, and to quote one of our readers, thank you very little, and frack you very much. Visiting our infectious disease specialist who couldn’t believe that NYC doctors had not treated our malaria, which had gotten worse as a result. And enjoying visits from our friends and neighbors, attending and hosting events and meetings on Zoom, and socializing these days primarily on Clubhouse.

There are even erstwhile techies out here, as well as former NYC firefighters and police officers, working in general contracting and at the local establishments. The latter are older and when we meet them and tell them that we had left NYC as well, they’ll tell us their stories about how they had worked at Ground Zero on 9/11. We had been in the city that day, too. They can’t believe how the current Covid policies has done so much more damage to New York than did the felling of two massive buildings.

Different times, different leadership.

The Many Sides of Normal

There are people we speak to who have fond memories of the former world capital but who had only ever merely visited, who assure us that we – and the many other residents who’d left for parts unknown – will return this summer, when things get back to ‘normal,’ but not sure what they consider ‘normal.’ Wearing a mask? We have a compromised immune system. Wearing the mask nearly resulted in our being hospitalized, we had gotten so dangerously ill. Getting vaccinated with a new, novel vaccine/gene therapy, endorsed by a medical community who had insisted on practicing, at least in our case, what we can only call ‘insurance company medicine?’ Pass.

Is the food culture off the table?

New York had been one of the food capitals of the world. The restaurants, which were forced to close for a long spell, are gone, for the most part. People would come to visit or live there for the culture – the theatre, the music, dance, sporting events. Those things are all gone. And after fleeing the city for places where wearing masks and social distancing are not required and not seeing death counts jump, – and we’ve lost count, but the number of states which do not require masks may be up to 18 now, and counting – why would they return to the conditions from which they fled?

As a compulsive networker, we do miss in-person events. We miss not being able to host our own events in person and mingling and speaking privately with the attendees before and afterwards. We miss the serendipity that happened at in-person events and in offices/co-working spaces, and the closest thing we’ve found to it Clubhouse and OMG – New York Times report on Clubhouse app panned for sounding alarm about ‘unfettered conversations’ – imagine! A place online where people can have actual conversations outside of the guidelines and purview of the tech cabal!

Although we do miss interacting with different sorts of people at different times of the day. In person, we mean. New York is a pedestrian town. We miss being able to walk everywhere, with the character of the neighborhood changing every several block. You can’t replicate that in the woods. You make compromises.

We were born a country girl and seem to have come full circle. We’re looking forward to the weather improving and being outdoors again, gardening, not in a mask, but covered in bug spray, as we now have a healthy terror of ticks.

Life among the locals

We don’t at all mind living out here among country people, who have gone about their lives normally for, well, as long as we’ve been here. Most have already had this flu – and took to bed, cared for each other and recovered. They felt no need to get tested to check for antibodies – they had had the symptoms. Good enough. They also knew that testing positive for the antibodies would have driven up the ‘covid rates’ and led to a lockdown. Which they consider just plain unnecessary. Around here, the mortality rate from this flu is under 3% and note to self: there are more people here on the streets of our local town (primarily paying lip service to the mask mandate: you can always spot the NYC transplants) than there are on Broadway in NYC these days, and they’re not running out to get vaccinated, either. They keep their own council. They’ve seen the PSAs that the Hollywood crowd has been hawking. Trust us, the last people that the locals are about to listen to are A list actors who are paid a fortune to read from a prepared script and whose livelihoods are derived from putting out convincing fiction.

And what of the fact that the CDC Inflated COVID Numbers (by 1600%, mind you), Accused of Violating Federal Law and if the vaccine was so safe, why did the pharmaceutical industry feel that they needed to indemnify themselves from future vaccine injury lawsuits? We’re definitely living among the ‘trust but verify’ segment of society, aka the salt of the earth.

They also can’t find the logic in following the mandates of politicians who don’t follow their own mandates.

Wear all of the masks you’d like

and social distance, have your Karen moments (btw: The CDC’s Mask Mandate Study: Debunked..by the CDC itself) or send people living in mask-free states all of bad karma you can muster, but how many people do you think breathed on and/or handled that melon that you just placed in your grocery cart and will be taking home?

Do the math. It just doesn’t add up.

For the record, we have lost friends and acquaintances as a result of Covid – several as a result of not being able to receive treatment because they had medical issues other than this flu. Some as a result of having received the novel gene therapy.

We miss the New York that existed and as we sit here in the country, preparing seedlings that we’ll transplant in our garden so that we can spend as much time in the sun as possible, as per doctor’s orders, breathing in fresh air and exposing ourselves to the healing rays. We can’t readily say when we will be returning to the city. We do know that a lot of people believe that everyone will return when the weather turns warmer (which is not what the diaspora themselves are saying), but many of the people who left have been dwelling in climates where it was never cold! It has nothing to do with the weather. In our humble opinion, the monied class will return with all of their cherished tax dollars only when the benefits of living and working there again make sense. If it doesn’t how long will they stay away? To once again quote Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s  Love in the Time of Cholera, which many did around this time last year, and his Florentino Ariza character when asked how long he planned to stay on the boat and avoid dry land:

“Forever.”

Onward and forward.

 

Onward and forward.