Home » News » From the song of the birds to that of the mermaids: how the covid-19 has changed life in New York | Univision News United States

From the song of the birds to that of the mermaids: how the covid-19 has changed life in New York | Univision News United States

NEW YORK, NY.- The other afternoon, locked up at home and without knowing what day it was, some screams made me look out the window. They were shouts of encouragement accompanied by applause, between timid and awkward, it was 7:00 sharp. I assumed that the applause was to thank the medical personnel who are dealing with the tide of covid-19 patients in New York – where I have lived for 10 years – as it has been happening in Spain, my country of origin, for weeks. Then I joined the claca, which was left half started. In the opposite building, a man lifted the screen from his window, took a quick look to make sure nothing was wrong, and closed it again. Suddenly, a woman’s scream was heard: “Why are we clapping?”

The scene seemed representative to me of how New Yorkers are experiencing the public health crisis that has hit the city hard, the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States, where today More than 3,000 people have already died and there are more than 67,000 cases detected. In the absence of clear guidelines from the authorities, which change with the light of day, each citizen does what he can to handle the lack of coordination and uncertainty. In the end, if anything characterizes New York it is that it is a city of survivors.

The evolution of the crisis in the city is felt to vibrate in all the senses: hearing, smell, sight, in the absence of touch. Since the isolation measures began, the soundscape has been transformed. With the silence of the cars and the planes came the song of the birds. But in recent days, this hopeful detail has been crushed by ambulance sirens, which now scream day and night without rest.

The streets no longer smell like tacos or pizza, because most of the restaurants have closed or only serve through the window. Food carts have disappeared from the sidewalks and I wonder what their owners, most of them immigrants, will live on now.

Lower-income neighborhoods with higher immigration rates, such as Corona, in Queens, or the South Bronx, are the most affected by the virus. The garbage bags, however, grow like volcanoes on collection days.

Covers, of all possible patterns and shapes, have also multiplied on people’s faces. Wearing plastic gloves has become a common practice outside the home, even a sign of respect.

On the portal of my building, it seems like Christmas every day: boxes and more boxes with the smile of Amazon appease the anxiety of those who do not dare to go shopping. And what about the workers who brought these packages here? I wonder every day. Now the packages arrive even on Sundays. They are delivered by small vans, without labels or company logos, used by large families.

Online food orders grew more than 65% in early March. Applications like Instacart are collapsed for deliveries in the city. However, that has not reduced long waits at major supermarkets like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods.

The adventure of shopping

At the Park Slope cooperative, which has more than 17,000 members, the queue goes around the block at any time of day since the physical distancing measures began. Customers come in five by five and the wait can be extended up to 2 hours. Before entering, an employee gives instructions through the face mask and urges anxious customers to please not be amused when making their purchase. As if the anxiety accumulated by the wait and the indications were not enough, once inside the scene it is from a science fiction movie.

First you have to wash your hands with disinfectant, then take a wipe to disinfect the trolley support or basket handles, and follow the delineated route to advance through the aisles to avoid funnels. The restockers, wearing gloves, face masks and a hat, appear to be serving a sentence and try to stay as far away from clients as possible. The ATMs, all equally equipped, are half the usual ones and are located at alternate counters, so there is more distance between them. They disinfect all surfaces – counter, cashier, barcode reader, card reader – between customer and customer.

As the cashier passes each item through the reader, the customer should stay away from the cashier and can only start filling their bags when the cashier has finished completing the entire order. When leaving with both shoulders loaded like a mule but afraid to call a taxi, I see that there is no queue in the corner cellar and the protection measures are minimal.

Contradictory messages between Trump and Cuomo

Immersed in their battle of egos, the conflicting messages from President Donald Trump, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, and the Mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio, provoke meaningless situations that trigger citizens’ anxiety.

He February 28th Trump said the coronavirus was “a new hoax” by Democrats. Two weeks later, Mayor de Blasio warned that we should prepare for a “shelter in place”, a massive closure. On the same day, Governor Cuomo he ruled out the possibility of that closure, saying that the measure would not be useful and that, in addition, only he could take it. Rather, Cuomo advised New Yorkers to run to the park and take walks, keeping six feet apart. When I heard those tips, I was terrified.

I moved from Barcelona to New York ten years ago, but I have never been able to call this city “my home”. Spain is the second country in the world with the most deaths from COVID-19, after Italy, and the fact that my whole family is still there has made me much more aware of the evolution of the virus. Ever since things got serious in Spain, I have been anxious about the news and the evolution of the graphics, and I watched in panic as the infected line rose and rose, rose, almost tripling daily. And on the same trajectory, the line of the dead. A week later, I see exactly the same thing happening in New York.

The other day, on my usual route to the supermarket, I passed Prospect Park, Brooklyn’s Central Park. The landscape horrified me: hordes of joggers, bikers, families walking the dog, and groups of teenagers carrying a portable speaker. It was a sunny and warm afternoon, which invited to enjoy a long walk and a bit of longed-for vitamin D, but I could only think of the graphs that kept rising, just like my anger. I wanted to shout, like a mad augury, that in a week we were going to be the same as in Spain. But what would I accuse them of, if I did the same until my family was already in the wolf’s mouth? As humans, we don’t react until something brushes our skin. And in this case, it is a highly contagious virus and for which there is not yet a vaccine.

Perhaps the saddest times in the city are on Friday nights. Last week I went out for a walk with my husband, already late, to breathe some fresh air and open a physical parenthesis between weekdays and weekends. On the main avenues, where bars and restaurants are concentrated, most of the windows were dark. We approached the liquor store, one of the few stores that were still open and still considered “essential”. There was a hand sanitizer dispenser by the door and a bachata by Juan Luis Guerra was playing. The boy in the box answers us in Spanish while charging us for two bottles of Rioja. I ask him how the business is going and he says “full” with a Caribbean accent. We laugh and say goodbye with a “take care, you are fine.” Each one does what they can to survive these uncertain times.

Photographs of the pandemic in the US: this is how the country faces an unprecedented health crisis (photos)

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