Wednesday thoughts

A month of “shelter in place”

It has now been more than of month of “shelter in place” here in NYC. It is interesting to see all the different approaches around the world to curb the spread of the virus. It is apparent that we, even now, know so little about it.

Broadway was the first place to shut down, and then the universities. Columbia University started the ramp down about 1 week or so before the shelter in place order came for NYS. In that way we all had time to gather important items at the office. The constant honking we could hear outside the apartment before the outbreak is long gone and has been replaced with the constant sound of sirens. Shelter in place here in NYC have meant that we (me and my husband) go to the store every second week, we take a long walk once a week and the rest of the time we stay at home. Only essential businesses are allowed to be open, and the inequality is clearer than ever. You should, as the term eludes to, try to spend as much time as possible away from other people. NYC has changed, and maybe one of the most drastic changes is the increase in unemployment by 2,637% and MTA subway ridership which has dropped by more than 90%. The NYC will be a very different place when it opens up again, and I am not the only one who thinks that. Last Friday Governor Cuomo ordered everyone to wear a face mask when walking outside if you can’t keep the distance of 6 feet to other people. Still, there are a surprising amount of people who do not follow that order. Many places have had to shut down, and shut down of small businesses is now slowly expanding to larger ones. It will probably take years before NYC fully reopens in the same capacity as we saw before, and it will probably be very different.

Was this the right call?

Even though we learn more and more about the virus every day, my brain switches back and forth about if this shelter in place was a “good” or “bad” decision. When you look at other places, for instance Sweden (since that is where I am from) no one is really practicing any of our precautions on the same level as we are here. And it is not until quite recently they got any guidelines about limiting social gatherings. Even tough the virus came to Sweden before we got it here. But then again, if you look at where we are today, here in NYC, it definitely was the best way to go. We’ve seen refrigerator trucks lined up and waiting to be used on Randall Island, we saw them about a month ago. At that point I guess no one really understood what the top of the iceberg really was. There were a couple of days when more than 500 people died every day, in NYC alone, from the virus. We now know that far more people are dying in their homes, far more than usual, and they are not included in that number. That is why we saw those refrigerator trucks on Randall Island, the hospitals and funeral homes just didn’t have the capacity for all this. Regardless if this in the end is less deadly than the regular flu, you just have to think about these numbers to realize that it is still way worse than the regular flu. Our hospitals were definitely filled over capacity, and it is now clear that the US health system will nee to change drastically. When we were at our worst, in Manhattan alone ~45% tested positive, there were some areas in Brooklyn and Queens where up to 80% tested positive.

The Future

The bigger question here is: When will NYC reopen? And what will that look like? We can’t just open up everything at once again, it will have to be in stages, and no one really know what that looks like in reality. What restaurants, bars, galleries etc. will even be here then? The future of NYC has probably not been this uncertain, ever.