Berlin, April 27, 2020
I lie down in the park, half-naked, on that grassy area in the middle of Berlin. This is possible because a large swath of the population continues to adhere to the #stayhome rules.
For the first time this year, the temperature is over 30 degrees and we are going to have many more days like these in the approaching summer. I feel this on an intuitive level. I also feel intuitively that in July I will fly to Tel Aviv with my daughter to vacation a bit and recharge after this madness.
One week on the beach, one week on a road trip across Israel, and one week of a marathon of meetings with friends and family. This is how I imagine the vacation unfolding.
When I tell people about my plans for the summer, during the five Zoom meetings I hold daily, everybody shakes their head in disbelief. But I am totally convinced that normalcy will set in much more quickly than people expect, only with a bloody recession.
My portfolio manager, who gets a barrage of WhatsApp messages from me every day, says I have to hold off on buying stocks, He says the downward economic trend will reach its negative peak only a year from now, maybe 18 months, and only then will it makes sense to get on the gravy train.
But this doesn't mean we should all just sit at home without doing anything because on top of the great recession, there will be a new world order. This is why when I woke up today the first thing I did was send a message to my friend Silke.
Anyone who regularly reads my column should know who she is. Silke is an ear, nose, and throat specialist who works at the most important coronavirus clinic in Germany, where a large-scale testing scheme will be launched soon. This is not just about detecting the virus in order to see who is positive, but rather to see who has antibodies.
I am pretty sure that I was sick with COVID-19 in January, and I want to confirm this as soon as possible. In fact, I like my new superstar status because in the future, and I say this in the most definite way, society will split between those with coronavirus antibodies and those without them.
The rules pertaining to each and every one of us will be derived from them. Who can return to the office, to the restaurant, and to the airplane? It's obvious – only those who have already experience this ordeal, those who can no longer transmit the disease and can no longer get infected.
That's why I am advising everyone to find a coronavirus patient as soon as possible so that antibodies are formed. True, COVID-19 is horrific, because apart from the terrible cough, you get a high fever and a general sense of exhaustion that in my case lasted three weeks. But when this is over, you can wear a badge of honor on your t-shirt.
The haves and have nots. Those terms are obsolete. The new term will be "have antibodies" and "do not have antibodies". Our degree of freedom will be based on the status of each of us regarding those two terms. Either we get a lot of this freedom, or we get little of it. Very little.
If it turns out that the source of my cold in January, which has already been determined as viral, was from a differed culprit, I would have to be resourceful and creative. Perhaps I will storm the coronavirus ward in a hospital or find someone on Tinder who has been infected.
Frankly, to be honest, I don't have any other form of advice I could think of. Anyone who wants to return to work in the coming months, to drive and live without having to wear these stupid masks most of the time, must do something immediately to manufacture the most important antibodies in the 21st century.
