The string of giant Broadway billboards blink in silence, like hospital monitors watching over a mega-city coma. In this blaze of lights of New York, the most popular tourist trap on the planet, only a few cars and rare passers-by can be spotted on the 42e street, one of the usually most crowded arteries in the city. The huge red Coca-Cola pub flutters above the almost deserted avenues, alternating the image of its legendary bottle with a civic message of the occasion: “Let us stay away from each other to better remain united”.
Free from compulsory confinement as in Europe or in San Francisco and Seattle, the most responsive cities in the country, New Yorkers have certainly been slow to follow the only instructions of ” social distancing “ from Mayor Bill de Blasio, the prohibition to approach within two meters of another person, to gather in groups on the sidewalks or public places. Their discipline only improved with the announcement of the doubling of fines (1,000 dollars today) and especially the staggering figures of the progression of the disease. With more than 80,000 people tested positive, 20,000 hospitalized and more than 4,200 dead (7,000 in total in the state), New York City is still standing as the epicenter of the disaster, representing more than a third of the United States’ toll, the country most affected by Covid-19 in the world.
Andrew Cuomo, a savior?
Two weeks of hype, daily press conferences by charismatic New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, suddenly described as a savior and media rival to Donald Trump, have had their effect. Calls from overworked doctors, the striking images of tents in Central Park near Mount Sinai Hospital, and even the possible conversion of St John The Divine’s Cathedral into a backup hospital, have stirred consciousness enough to prompt lockdown voluntary. Not without results.
Despite the peak of 770 deaths on April 6 in New York State, the curve is slowly sagging, the number of new cases is declining; opening up the prospect of a “plateau” phase of as yet unknown duration, during which medical services will at least be able to meet needs.
Gap of social differences
In the meantime, the wave of the virus has exposed the flaws in American society, starting with the staggering inequalities in New York. In popular neighborhoods like Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, the number of cases per 100,000 residents is double that of Manhattan, the wealthiest of the 5 boroughs from the city. The gap is clearly explained by social differences. The streets of Manhattan are sparse in the upper East Side or Upper West Side neighborhoods, chic or comfortably “middle class”, because the nature of the jobs of the residents makes it easier for them to be confined to their homes or homes. practice their profession there.
On the other hand, every evening, the crowd of cashiers and supermarket handlers, housekeepers or building maintenance workers, join at great risk, in rare and crowded subways, distant homes they share with roommates or several generations of the same family. Injustice is also racial, as Andrew Cuomo, Governor of New York, recalled during his daily press conference: “Why do the poorest always pay a high price for every natural disaster, he asked. The people calling for help from their rooftops during Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans were neither wealthy nor white. The same goes for this virus. »
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