by Nicolas Büchse
04/04/2020, 5:44 p.m.-
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In New York, the coronavirus is no longer an invisible threat. While the city’s rich citizens flee to their summer homes, the poorest become all the more visible.
We recently received a postcard from Donald Trump, our neighbors and we. It says “President Trump’s Coronavirus Guidelines for America” in bold letters. On the back, the president admonishes us to work from home and wash our hands. He warns not to take the virus too lightly: Young people are also at risk!
I met the neighbor from the second floor in the hallway. She was angry. It was Trump who put us all in this danger with his ignorance, she said. Trump has never been popular here in Brooklyn, so her anger didn’t surprise me. Anyone who does not scold Trump in Brooklyn is not one of them, and in the worst case scenario, they may even be mistaken for one from New Jersey. But the anger at Trump is now mixed with a little fear of him. Fear of his blatant ineptitude that will cost lives these days.
I had to read the card twice. Are those supposed to be Trump’s words? It was a good month ago that Trump tweeted: “Last year 37,000 Americans died of the flu. Nothing is shut down, life and economy continue. Now we have 546 confirmed coronavirus cases. With 22 dead. Think about it! ”
Calm before the storm
It has been a good month since I picked up my son from basketball and told a mother that she was stocking up on supplies. The corona virus had arrived in Manhattan at the time, a woman had been infected on a trip to Iran. I didn’t take my mother’s worries seriously, thought she was one of those over-anxious doomsday preppers. The danger seemed far away. Invisible.
Today the pasta packs are stacked up with us. Today, almost every morning, I watch the livestream from Governor Andrew Cuomo, who prepares New Yorkers for their worst days since September 11, 2001 in increasingly haunted terms. On days when 1,000 New Yorkers will die from the coronavirus. A series of days like this. We live through the calm before the storm.
The coronavirus is no longer an invisible threat in New York City. Everyone knows someone who is sick. Many know someone who has died. Everyone is talking about the fact that there will soon be a shortage of hospital beds and ventilators, everyone has seen the pictures of people queuing in front of the corona test tents in hospitals, everyone has read obituaries from well-known New Yorkers who fell victim to the virus. My son’s school parents’ association collects rubber boots and raincoats for hospital staff. As additional protection in addition to the surgical gowns, it is said. That is how dire the situation is in the hospitals in one of the richest cities in the world. And when my wife and I walk up the street to Prospect Park because we’re telling ourselves that the kids are going crazy in the apartment (and it’s us), then we pass the hospital. The ambulances park in long rows on the street. Tents were raised in the parking lot for corona tests. The cooling of a long trailer hums. They brought him in because there was no more space in the morgue.
The danger is no longer invisible
The danger of the coronavirus is so visible in the city that we have all become cautious. We and our neighbors wipe the packaging of our purchases with disinfectant wipes ourselves. In front of drugstores sit employees who make sure that only ten customers are inside at the same time.
At the same time life goes on. Just different. Every morning my son sits in front of the laptop and learns with his classmates from the second grade in video conferences, my daughter’s teacher reads books at Facetime and teaches children’s yoga. The streets are empty, the park is full, but joggers and walkers keep their distance.
There is now silence in the subways – and I won’t get used to the new New York silence by the end of these days. The New Yorkers certainly not. No more elbow fights for seats. Instead, the few people who are still taking the subway sit apart at large safety distances, each careful not to touch anything. They wear masks, and a man in the F-Line recently even wore snorkeling goggles. Everyone is polite in this crisis, one nods to one another, lets pass one another. The hectic city, it learns to be patient.
Social structures disclosed
Crises like this reveal the social structures of a city, as clear as an X-ray. The other day I rode my bike through Manhattan, in Corona days ago it was an almost suicidal suicide mission. Now I sometimes felt as if I was alone in the world between the canyons with the last indomitable yellow New York taxis. I passed the almost deserted luxury apartment buildings on Fifth Avenue.
The city’s rich have fled to their summer homes. The mega-rich by helicopter. The middle-rich in SUVs. Two weeks ago, her exodus caused a mega-traffic jam in the Hamptons, empty supermarkets in the beach communities and overcrowded hospital beds in the corona wards. As I drove through Manhattan, I met those who chains poverty to the city, especially delivery men on their electric bicycles and scooters. And the many homeless people who otherwise drown in the crowd of passers-by on the streets.
Many foreigners have also left the city. It was better to be in Germany now, German friends said and left, a decision of four days. The German Consulate General wrote to us in an email that it urgently advised German tourists to return. When we read such news, we too get queasy.
New York is a promise
And yet there is not all danger here. After all, New York City is more than a city, New York is a promise. Especially in the crisis. Greater than fear is people’s belief that New York City will soon recover from Corona. After all, I was told by an unemployed Broadway ticket salesman who, out of habit, stood at his workplace in Times Square, the city has always recovered from everything.
Standing here in Times Square feels spooky these days. I look at all these flashing lights promoting shows that no one can see. To an art world that has been brutally overtaken by the real world and defiantly just carries on.
Just like the city that produced it.
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