Thread by @ClaireEFallon

so, here’s a thread! over a week ago, on his three-month birthday, my baby boy had to go to the emergency room.

he was in respiratory distress due to a NON-corona virus, basically a cold bug, that can wreak havoc on infants’ tiny systems. he ended up in the icu for five days.

I didn’t know how to tweet about this while he was in a hospital bed, hooked up to oxygen — and, for a while, a cpap machine — to keep his airways open.

but it was terrifying to watch New Yorkers flouting social distancing, and city, state, and national governments fail to take decisive action to quell the pandemic, from this vantage point.

it was terrifying to watch him struggle to breathe and know that millions of other people were being consigned to similar (and worse) suffering, and many thousands to death from it, by these decisions.

we were painfully aware that we were lucky he didn’t get sick two weeks later, when hospitals would be jammed with coronavirus patients, as they already are now.

baby is home now and doing well. we’re thankful for the incredible nurses, doctors, respiratory therapists and other workers who cared for him at nyu. they deserve care too.

these workers, not to mention people in other essential fields like delivery, will be (in many places already are) at enormous risk because of the failures of wealthy politicians.

so will anyone who needs emergency medical care for any reason in the coming months. that could be ANYONE. you are not immune. your child is not immune.

I hope it’s not too late to prevent a worst case scenario.

but that means measures like the government freezing rent, sending money to everyone to compensate for lost income, releasing prisoners, supplying free tests, health care, and medical equipment.

we absolutely cannot settle for a shitty corporate giveaway stimulus, or polite requests to cancel parties, or a decision to send everyone back to work in two weeks.

the stock market is not worth more than our lives. I’m not sacrificing my son or my grandma or frankly anyone for the nasdaq.

also, if you can, please stay home! help people who have lost income and who are vulnerable!

let’s be good to each other even if the country is failing us.