BY DC CUEVA
The beauty of this hobby turned at-home profession for me is that my phone is always on and where I'm always available for any notifications that pop up... and that includes any tips to stories that I write on here to add any additional context if it is needed to be updated, like any reporter. But after I posted my link on my Twitter this past week, Kendal let me in on someone else who has also done their part to be part of the true heroes of this spring in helping to contain the spread of a virus that has shut down everything in our world the past month and for the near future.
For this follow-up, you have to go back over two decades to where it all began for one of the first Real World roommates to come from the LGBTQ+ community, and who then became the very first openly gay competitor on The Challenge. And it took for one of cable news' most prominent figures to bring a nurse from America's Midwest to the forefront, as he has now joined the many thousands who have descended upon the one place in the entire U.S. that has been most affected by COVID-19, and where nearly a third of all the cases reported in this country have been in its largest city.
Two notable moments stand out: the night a threesome was formed inside of one of the house's shower that saw even roommates trying to peek through the window to see what was going on; and the other was a fight where the "B" word was uttered out involving, of all things, an item in one day's pack of mail. As a spectator in the former and as one-half of that blowup in the ladder, both had Dan Renzi as part of the proceedings, and who came to South Beach from just outside Kansas City. He took a break from attending Rutgers and editing the student paper for this experience, and where he had LGBT rights, environmental studies and world economics as his passions.
That fight he had with Melissa when she opened his mail by accident, along with his ensuing meltdown, was the one moment that defined Dan's stay in South Florida, where he joined what was then a small but growing elite company of Real Worlders who were gay or lesbian. Also there in Miami, he dated two men including one who had not publicly come out, and he also began a modeling career with Irene Marie's modeling agency (which would later have its own MTV reality show, 8th & Ocean, when Real World returned to Florida for the Key West season ten years later).
After his stay in Miami, Dan moved to Milan to continue his budding career posing for the cameras before becoming a Chicago agency scout in that profession - not to mention chronicling his travels for his own blog and contributing to newspapers. But eventually, he would find his focus in the health field, first with the Los Angeles Department of Epidemiology as a field researcher, and then back home in KC as a director of the AIDS/HIV program at its Gay & Lesbian Center. And it's his experience in the former that eventually saw him become a nurse back home in the Midwest.
Right now, more than 2.4 million cases of COVID-19 have been reported in at least 180 countries, and over 160,000 have died since the World Health Organization declared it a pandemic. The U.S. alone has become the country most affected: 760,000+ cases and over 49,000 people killed, with more to come before things finally get to subside and life can start to get back to normal. And in the nation's largest city, New York has become the epicenter of this new crisis, where over 134,000 cases have been accounted for, and on Sunday the local death toll crossed the 10,000 mark.
Last week, TooFab came across Dan's Instagram page, @D.Renzi, as he had arrived in New York City in early March before the breakout became widespread and becoming the buzzword on the minds of everyone around the world. And he has been on the frontlines ever since as he has been working almost every day with thousands of fellow nurses who have arrived in a suddenly shut-down "city that never sleeps" to help combat the coronavirus from where it is affected the most.
Up until now, Dan has shared a dozen Instagram posts to offer everyone a unique glimpse into what he and other health personnel are putting up with a daily basis. And his images can best describe the challenge those in the medical community have been dealing with in the past month as the biggest health emergency in a century has made a profound impact on all of us.
In one of his videos, Dan explained his experience in nursing school talking to fellow students about why they wanted to be in this profession. He stated there and in another vid, "Honestly, when I signed up for nursing school, I had these visions of myself working for a cosmetic dermatologist or something. ... And if you told me that not too many years after I graduated -- because I went to nursing school as a second career -- and if you told me that I'd be living in a hotel in New York while I was putting bodies in body bags because this mysterious virus was mowing down everybody's grandparents, how do you process that?"
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| Instagram @D.Renzi |
In the usually bustling atmosphere of rush hour in New York City, late afternoon and early evening has become a much more quieter place with streets & highways being mostly empty and Manhattan becoming as much a ghost town as Las Vegas. But at 7PM, residents across the five boroughs have been given reason to open their windows, walk onto their balcony and salute their fellow medical workers by applauding, making noise with their pots and pans, and even honk their horns like its famous taxis.
For several minutes every evening since then, New Yorkers have given thanks to the medical force of their city with this great gesture... something that has been repeated not only on a nightly basis in the Big Apple, but also in cities & towns all across both America and elsewhere at dinnertime including in Vancouver, Canada. And when he was outside to capture this moment, the 7PM Clap gave Dan reason to shed a tear.
The events of what has been happening since early March have given news outlets reason to step out of endless political coverage including the presidential primary season and every move the man in the White House does to cover wall-to-wall the coronavirus crisis. It was that TooFab article on him that came to the attention of MSNBC's Rachel Maddow, who over a week ago was the first broadcaster to highlight what Dan has been doing in what is no doubt the biggest challenge of his life.
Maddow had him on via videochat on her talk show on April 10th and she told him in her segment opening, "...I feel like we should all really see from the perspective of a health worker…we should see not just what those cheering episodes for health workers look like to all of us. I feel like we should all see what those feel like to somebody who those cheers are for."
Like anyone who might not be well-known as he is after doing several reality shows at the turn of the century, Dan has gotten much respect and thanks for the social-verse for putting everything on the line to help and work for all of us -- both from those inside the health circles and outside of it including those who watched him on MTV nearly a quarter-century ago and who reemerged into the spotlight because of this ordeal.
The outpouring of support from ordinary people and from nurses was tough to single out, but one of those who gave their thanks to Dan was Sharon Gitau, a singer from Essex who was on the Real World season prior to his in London 25 years ago. She wrote to him in the Instagram comments, "Dan, all I can say is thank you. I know it isn't enough but thank you for enduring all you do and for sharing your days with us. xxx."
The coronavirus and the effect it has had on all of us in every aspect of life will be felt for a long time even after the panic fades away and a sense of normalcy returns, but that may not be the case for the near future. What has become clear has been how those who work in the medical field and those who puts on those uniforms & masks have worked harder than any of us in the past month-plus to help with the biggest battle they have ever faced... and they have no doubt earned our respect.
That includes someone who may have developed a reputation for being a "drama king" in his four MTV seasons and who is one of the hundred-plus or so who has the title "Challenge Champion" in their resumes. But Dan Renzi has also won over us in the past month for tackling this ultimate of extreme challenges... one that can be stressing at times but also rewarding in knowing that he's doing his part to keep the one city in the nation and the world that has been affected by the coronavirus. For that he, like everyone else in this field, is a true MVP.
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