In the US it doesn’t hurt to inject a bit of humour into coronavirus

Holly Baxter is trying to look at the positive side of Covid-19 – a seat on the metro in rush hour, more space at yoga classes, after all there’s little else you can do when you live with America’s private healthcare system

A traveller wears a medical mask at Grand Central station (Getty)

This morning, for the first time ever during the morning rush hour, I got a seat on the subway. It was a pleasing Monday moment, even if I was squashed in between two people wearing medical-grade masks (one the classic “dental nurse” kind; the other a proper, full-on N29 type with a respirator.) When the train pulled in to Union Square station in Manhattan, I didn’t have to jostle to get out or wait as a crowd filed up the stairs to the exit. New York declared a state of emergency over the weekend, you see, and coronavirus panic has made my commute so much more bearable.

In a time of pandemic-fuelled crisis, it doesn’t hurt to inject a little humour. There are many, many reasons I could collapse into a spiral of despair, I told my friend and colleague Clemence this lunchtime as we spread out in a large booth in our favourite cafe, where we are usually lucky to even find a rogue chair to perch on. My wedding is planned for this September, and about half the people invited – including myself and the groom – are travelling to be there from abroad. My mother and her husband just returned from a holiday in Singapore which they refused to cancel, much to my consternation. My father has a heart condition and a blase attitude towards everything, and has already merrily concluded that he’ll “probably get it so there’s no point taking precautions”. If I wanted to, I could even start panicking about the fact that they’ve said the virus might be able to spread to pets, considering my cat is (with apologies to my family members and fiance) the absolute light of my life.