Covid: Year One

Errors of excessive pessimism

(Win McNamee/Getty Images)

I think of this first week of March as my Coronavirus Anniversary Week because it’s the time when COVID-19 first started to really impinge on my life.

Back on March 2, 2020, I took the Amtrak up to New York so that I could speak at a big conference of all the Vox Media revenue teams happening at a hotel in Brooklyn on the morning of March 3. That was the last of my once-frequent trips to New York. As long as I was heading up to NYC, I thought it would be a good opportunity to stop by the Penguin Random House office in Midtown and actually meet the editor of “One Billion Americans” and some other people from the Portfolio team. At the time, I kind of assumed I would see them again, but it turned out to be the only time we met.

On the evening of the 2nd, I met up with New York people for food and drinks at a restaurant in Chelsea. We sat indoors. It didn’t occur to me that over a year would pass without me doing that again.

And what’s interesting to me about all…