So here I am — 17 days in the apartment. Nowhere to go. I’ve only gone out to go to the grocery and the bodega, a mere few hundred yards in either direction. I remember when I was 14 years old and I was grounded for a month or more for drinking.

Wasn’t able to leave the house for well over a month. This is cake in comparison to that because at least I have my writing, reading, music, films, and I can go out for some air if I choose to, but with nowhere to go around here, what’s the point?

What I grow weary of is the politics, the conspiracy theories, the bullshit nonsensical rantings by these sudden ‘experts’ in either medicine and/or global politics. This disease is just as bad as COVID-19. It’s enough to make one not want to go online, cut off even further.

The tinfoil hat brigade is out in large numbers. Yesterday I slept a lot, whether out of boredom or just due to not getting normal sleep — which is common among everyone right now — I don’t know. I went to bed early last night, woke up early this morning.

Things aren’t improving at all. More cases around the city/country, more people dying, more people getting very sick. This shit is no joke yet there are many out there in denial, trying to play this down.

These are the ones you know are truly frightened because their denial is so fierce. I saw a post in which on ‘Fox and Friends’ — that paragon of intellectualism — had someone on complaining that their ‘friends can’t get their nails done’. Imagine? How vapid must one be?

Then again, it’s ‘Fox and Friends’, where the collective IQ among the hosts is lower than a handball. This will pass eventually and things will slowly get back to normal. I do wonder how many agoraphobics this crisis is going to produce, at least initially.

One can feel the anxiety when stepping out of the apartment just to make a quick store run. It’s thick, lingering in the air, one can virtually swallow it. The empty streets and the silence are surreal.

Julian Gallo is the author of 'The Penguin and The Bird', 'Last Tondero In Paris', 'Existential Labyrinths' and other novels. He lives and works in New York City. This is his second letter from New York, and was originally posted as a series of tweets @JulianGallo66 Photo credit, Julian Gallo.