Posted on 03/28/2020 7:47:21 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
I live in the greatest city in the world. At least that’s my opinion. A lot of people like to drag us, but we don’t care, we kind of like it, actually. We know who we are; we know what we are. And now we are the epicenter of the world-killing virus. In Casablanca, asked if he can imagine the Germans occupying New York City Rick says “Well there are certain sections of New York that I wouldn’t suggest you try to invade.” This is as true of viruses as it is of armies.
At the very founding of America, New York City found itself under siege. 32,000 troops in New York Harbor, as it says in the musical “Hamilton.” The Battle of Brooklyn in August of 1776 was the largest engagement of the entire Revolutionary War, but we don’t talk about it a lot because we lost it badly. George Washington was lucky to escape with any army at all.
But the war was won and not long after five forts were built around the harbor to ensure the city would never be invaded again. One of those forts serves as the star shaped base of the Statue of Liberty. Now more than 200 years later the city is once again under siege, not by the Redcoats but by the invisible enemy of the Wuhan virus. Just as in 1776, things have not started very well.
Our mayor Bill de Blasio has been a deer in the headlights, first urging New Yorkers to go about their business as usual and now panic-stricken and pleading with the federal government for help. But Bill de Blasio is not New York City; he is an accidental mistake. And even under competent leadership like that of Rudy Giuliani after 9/11, it is not elected officials that make Gotham resolute, it is her people.
The streets today are quiet and strange, loaded with darkness. We see the flash of figures that tell us hospital beds are running out, and worse? The morgues overrun by victims. It’s not good, but it’s also not something we can’t handle. After the February follies in which too many of us failed to heed the advice of experts we do now toil in a complicated quarantine. We get it now, and we are springing into isolated action.
We are checking in with elderly neighbors, from a safe distance of course. We are mobilizing more hospital beds; we are increasingly buying only what we need, not stockpiling like it’s the end of the world. It would be wrong to say that things feel like a new normal, they don’t. But there is a fighting spirit that is emerging; life always finds a way and all that.
New York City is a place that people come to, some merely for a visit; others fall in love with it and never leave. For those who choose to live here there is a price to pay. Not money, though there is that too, but hustle. You gotta move, you gotta walk fast. New York isn’t easy, and the virus will learn that soon, deadly though it may be, it cannot outhustle New Yorkers.
Is it scary? Yeah, sure. Will it beat us? Not on your sweet life. Someday soon the virus will have run its gauntlet through Gotham and we will be weaker, we will have lost lives, fortunes, jobs, but not the ability to pick ourselves up and be the sparkling Big Apple that we have always been. That you can count on. There isn’t a punch in the world that can keep New York City down.
For now? We endure the strange new reality of loneliness and shutdown sadness. We yearn expectantly for another happy hour in midtown, a ballgame, a rickety ride on the Cyclone roller coaster at Coney Island. We will have these things again and with all the more meaning for having momentarily lost them.
It still happens. Every time I’m on train or bus or in a car and the skyline comes into view, it chokes me up a bit; it’s like the first girl you ever kissed. And inside that cage of impossible glass and steel and brick the millions make their lives, even under the haze of pandemic. None of that is going to change even if it feels like nothing will ever be normal again right now. New York City will beat this and will beat it with a smile. And when it’s beaten, we hope everyone will come and visit, because New York City is yours too. It belongs to the world.
Sorry David Marcus, I don’t think the virus can hear you over the whining of De Blasio and Cuomo. If they represent NY, NY is doomed.
NYC is America’s progressive Mecca, and like all progressive meccas, its a fraud.
In the greatest of ironies, their Communist mayor runs a government which is merely a function of the S&P500 and bond markets. NYC no longer produces anything, and they exist because they skim their taxes from a few dozen banks and wealthy Wall Street players, who only exist because they are the oligarchs at the center of trading in printed, fiat, manipulated US dollar securities.
Saw nearly full subways three days ago. Very few folks wearing masks.
“At Evergreen Health Medical Center, two miles from the shuttered Lifecare nursing home where 35 patient deaths were linked to the virus, officials say their rate of new covid-19 cases has remained steady for two weeks, leveling off at a trickle. On some days, doctors here see just one new case and haven’t seen more than four in a single day since mid-March. Few need admission to the intensive care unit, which is now half full, two weeks after overflow necessitated transfers to nearby hospitals”
Various reports and personal observation from medical professionals indicate that community spread in Eastern King County was earlier and more extensive than initially realized. We have half a million Chinese in this area and many visit home frequently.
My wife and I have both volunteered and been paid to do work at the Life Care Center in Kirkland, so I was one of the first here to tell people that this needed to be taken seriously, that it was more serious than a political stunt. I was called names for sharing my observation at that time. Since then the reaction has become insane. We have people on this forum who have completely lost their heads and sense of proportion. Now I have been called names when trying to calm the panicked here. The worst case scenarios were exaggerated by dozens or even hundreds of times. We are not likely to even match the number of pneumonia deaths as we had in this country last year .
We have many here in Eastern King County who have already recovered from an infection that had no or very few symptoms. The huge increase in testing may cause more media hype about the number of cases. In China, South Korea, and other places where this thing hit early things are already getting much better. God willing Eastern King County may not be that far behind. And yes New York will survive this as well.
The man was elected mayor twice; there's no spinning this guy as an "accidental" anything.
‘The greatest city’ keeps electing whackoid leftist DemoRats to run (or ruin it). This former NY’er feels great to not live there anymore.
Sorry for the typo... We are not likely to even match the number of pneumonia deaths that we had in this country last year.
Pneumonia secondary to the flu or the coronavirus is what actually kills people who are infected with either type of virus.
Having grown up in New York (suburbia), my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, who came from Ireland, and extended family all lived and still live in New York - Manhattan, queens, the Bronx and the suburbs, west Chester, Long Island, Rockland County,Connecticut and NJ.
We would go into Manhattan (The City) for concerts, the St. Patrick’s Day parade (not Macy’s thanksgiving).
I lived in Manhattan after college. This was when people rejected all that was good in marriage, family and religion. It was particularly bad in New York. That was when I left. Far away.
I visit New York, still connected to family and friends. It is difficult to find anyone who will go with me to Sunday mass. Even Christmas Mass, or to talk to about life issues.
It is the abortion capitol of tge country. Not for nothing.
If NYC is so tough, why did it surrender to political correctness, to illegal aliens and become a “sanctuary city”? In a real war, NYC would be the first to surrender, like in the Battle of Brooklyn, like Paris, to preserve its precious buildings and expect someone else to come and restore the liberties they aren’t willing to fight for.
In a couple of months compare NYC to a rural state and see how they compare in terms of % of population infected, % of population dead, % recovered. If NYC is as good as this guy thinks it is, then it will fare much better than the rural state. It won’t.
“ The man was elected mayor twice; there’s no spinning this guy as an “accidental” anything.“
Rudy Giuliani fixed New York. Cleaned it up (Times Square, esp) and got rid of much of the crime mayhem by enecting the no broken windows policy
New Yorkers hated him. Go figure.
Huh?
RE: In a couple of months compare NYC to a rural state and see how they compare in terms of % of population infected, % of population dead, % recovered.
It’s unfair to do that. NYC and surrounding metro has over 10 million people ( half of the state ). It is DENSE and PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION is the main mode of transport for most people.
Of course you are going to get the most infections!
If not for New York City, wed be a third less in deaths. We’d also be a lot poorer as a country.
Really? That’s crazy. You mean all those videos showing a ghost town New York City are fake? Surprise surprise. Lol.
(Think of "Sadie" in Johnny Cash's "In the Jailhouse Now" who visits "Billy Campbell" and feigns sympathy for his plight but then, out of earshot, begs the sheriff to keep him locked up.)
NYC has a VERY transient population; people will spend a couple of years in the city on a business assignment, the young come for a few years after college for the night life, the young foreigners come for the night life as well and also to check off the box on their curriculum vitae to indicate their "international experience". And most of these people tend to be liberal by nature.
Unfortunately, this means that the city has a very short memory; it is CONSTANTLY reinventing the wheel.
Many New Yorkers have fled to infect other areas of the USA with this virus.
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