New York: From the city of dreams to the city of drama | NDR.de – NDR culture broadcasts

Since July 1, 2019 Peter Mücke has been a correspondent at the ARD radio studio in New York.
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For me, one sentence says pretty much everything about the Corona catastrophe in New York. Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York State, pronounced it at a press conference on March 2nd. The day before, a 39-year-old woman who had landed at JFK airport from Iran in late February had tested positive for the virus. The first corona case in New York. And Cuomo said this sentence, which I can’t get out of my head to this day: “Excuse our New York arrogance, but – and I also speak for the mayor – we have the best health system on the planet here in New York.”

The addressed Mayor Bill de Blasio nodded eagerly. Also, as Cuomo continued that it “won’t be as bad here as anywhere else in the world”. The two continued to pretend that the virus was none of their business, which was already raging in China and Europe.

Everything was missing

A few weeks later, this “best health system on the planet” was more reminiscent of conditions in the poorest countries in the world. Refrigerated trucks pulled up in long rows in front of the hospitals to deal with the corpses that were dragged by the hundreds from the city’s clinics every day. Not only in the poorer parts of the city, sick people had to stand in line for hours to even get to a hospital, where everything was missing: beds, staff, tests, masks, disinfectants. Emergency hospitals have been set up in parks and large halls.

At this point in time, the two Democrats Cuomo and De Blasio had long since taken refuge in the war rhetoric that the hated Donald Trump had dictated in the White House: New York, the “epicenter”, attacked by an insidious virus – in the heroic defensive battle against this enemy from the outside. Always careful not to criticize the Republican President. After all, he was supposed to send an army hospital ship and the urgently needed ventilators from the government reserve.

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VIDEO: USA: Jobs in New York urgently wanted (6 min)

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A chronology of failure

According to official information, around 24,000 people have died of Covid 19 in New York City to date – the number of unreported cases is likely to be much higher. Health experts are certain: 50 to 80 percent of them would not have had to die if those responsible had acted at the beginning of March. The New York crisis management, it’s a chronology of failure.

It begins with the press conference on March 2, in which Mayor De Blasio also said that although he did not believe that the sick 39-year-old was contagious on the flight, all passengers would be contacted anyway – which never happened. And in which Governor Cuomo appeased that one had always been one step ahead of the virus from day one. A few weeks later, he didn’t want to hear any more about it: He repeated almost every day that he was tired of running after the virus from day one – only to point the finger at others.

Even one-eyed people can do a lot of harm

That of all things this windy Cuomo, who is interviewed by his own brother on CNN at prime time and who uses his daughters as sidekicks for his daily press conference broadcast on national television, later also celebrated in the German media as a major crisis manager and even as a democratic presidential candidate is brought into play is one of the most tragic-comic excesses of this crisis – and can only be explained by the fact that there is an even bigger failure in the White House in Washington. So it is with the one-eyed and the blind.

AUDIO: New York: From the City of Dreams to the City of Drama (11 min)

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But even one-eyed people can do a lot of damage: It was this Andrew Cuomo, who in previous years had saved the public hospital system in New York so much that in March 2020 suddenly 30,000 hospital beds were missing. Almost exactly the number that previously fell victim to his red pen policy, which particularly affects the neighborhoods in which Afro-Americans or Hispanics live, who cannot afford Manhattan’s private high-tech hospitals. Another reason why many people in Harlem, the Bronx and parts of Queens and Brooklyn died of Covid 19.

The zip code makes the difference between life and death

The ZIP code – the postal code – makes the difference between life and death in New York City. If you have the money to live in the chic parts of Manhattan, you can buy top-quality medicine in the private clinics around the corner. If he needs her at all. Because when the virus really struck in New York, many of those who could afford it were no longer in town, but in their weekend homes in Long Island, by the lake in Vermont or on the beach in Florida. Luxury vacation rental owners made the business of a lifetime. Money doesn’t matter – the main thing is to get out of town.

And the others? They continued to live in the narrow social housing blocks with 30 or more floors and infected each other in the elevators. People who already have an above-average number of previous illnesses: obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular problems. The corona virus has an easy time of it. Especially when many of these people who are left behind have no health insurance. There are cases in which seriously ill people have been turned away from doctors’ offices and hospitals for this reason – in what is said to be the “best health system on the planet”.

This topic in the program:

NDR culture | Thoughts at the time | 08/30/2020 | 7:00 p.m.

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