More than a year after the coronavirus closures plunged “the city that never sleeps” into torpor, New York could be wide awake again this summer.
As of Wednesday, vaccinated New Yorkers have been able to shed their masks in most situations, and restaurants, stores, gyms, and many other businesses have been able to return to full capacity if they check vaccination cards or apps for check that all clients have been vaccinated.
The subway was back in operation 24 hours a day this week. Midnight curfews in bars and restaurants will disappear at the end of the month. Broadway tickets are on sale again, although the curtain won’t rise until September.
Authorities say now is the time for New York to shed the image of a city brought to its knees by the virus last spring, a recovery that poignantly appears on the latest cover of The New Yorker magazine. It shows a giant door partially open to the skyline of the city, letting in a ray of light.
Inside this week’s issue of The New Yorker: https://t.co/LojYjZiL9x pic.twitter.com/KCj1PZJZ2b
– The New Yorker (@NewYorker) May 17, 2021
Has the Big Apple returned to being the same as always?
“Maybe 75%. … He’s definitely coming back to life,” says Mark Kumar, 24, a personal trainer.
But Ameen Deen, 63, said: “The sense of full normalcy is not going to come anytime soon. There are too many deaths. There is too much suffering. There is too much inequality.”
Last spring, America’s largest city was also the nation’s deadliest coronavirus hotspot, with more than 21,000 deaths in just two months. Black and Hispanic patients died at markedly higher rates than whites and Asian Americans.
Hospitals overflowed with patients and corpses. The refrigerated trailers served as temporary morgues, and tents were set up in Central Park as a COVID-19 room. The busy streets of New York were silent, save for the sirens of ambulances and the nightly blasts of cheers from the windows of the apartments for the sanitation workers.
After a year of ups and downs, reopens and closings, the city hopes that vaccines will definitely change the trend.
About 48% of residents have received at least one dose so far. In recent weeks, deaths have been about two dozen a day, and new cases and hospitalizations have plummeted since the winter wave.
Vast swaths of the country and the world are also approaching normal after a crisis that has been blamed for 3.4 million deaths worldwide, including more than 587,000 in the United States.
In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has declared that it is “New York’s summer.”
On Wednesday the mayor reported that for the first time “in months” the Covid-19 indicators were below the benchmarks or parameters.
“We are closing this chapter in the history of New York City thanks to YOUR efforts. Let’s continue,” de Blasio wrote in a message on social media.
For the first time in months, EVERY #COVID19 indicator is below our benchmarks:
• 96 new hospitalizations
• 537 new cases
• 1.44% positivity rate (7-day avg.)We are closing this chapter in NYC history because of YOUR efforts. Let’s keep going.https://t.co/cNSZQW3Wf1
– Major Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) May 19, 2021
As the mask requirement eased across the state on Wednesday, businesses faced different rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated people. Some people bare their faces on the city streets, while others continued to wear masks.
The city’s elected public defender, Jumaane Williams, urged people to keep wearing the masks, at least indoors.
He noted that less than half of residents are vaccinated throughout the city, and less than a third in some neighborhoods.
“We don’t want to put people who have not yet received the vaccine in a position where they can be stigmatized or pressured for not wearing a mask,” Williams said.
There are other signs that New York is picking up business. Some 80,000 city employees returned to their offices at least part-time this month; others were already working in person.
The number of passengers on the subway and suburban trains averages 40% of normal, after plummeting to 10% last spring, when the subway system began to close for several hours in the morning. night for the first time in its more than 115 years of history.
Shakeem Brown, an artist and deliveryman who works late in Manhattan, spent up to three hours a night commuting to his Queens apartment before 24/7 service resumed on Monday. Brown, 26, said it’s “refreshing” to see things open up.
At e’s bar, located on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, “we feel the energy” of social life, said co-owner Erin Bellard. “People are very excited to get out.”
Still, bar and grill revenue is down 35% due to schedule and capacity restrictions from the pandemic, he said. The imminent end of the midnight curfew will give the bar two more crucial hours, and the owners are considering regaining full capacity by requiring vaccination.
From other points of view, “normal” seems more distant.
The sidewalks and skyscrapers of downtown Manhattan, for example, are still remarkably empty.
Large corporate employers aren’t looking to bring more workers back until fall, and only if they feel it’s safe, said Kathryn Wylde, CEO of the Partnership for New York City, a leading employer group.
“Closing was easy. Reopening is difficult, “Wylde said.” All employers say there is still fear and some resistance to go back. “
In addition to fears of viruses, companies and workers are wondering about safety, he said.
Crime in the city has become a growing concern, but it is a complicated picture. Murders, shootings, felony assaults and car thefts increased in the first four months of this year compared to the same period in 2019 before the pandemic, but robberies and grand theft declined. So did crime in the transit system, probably due to the drop in passenger numbers.
Brandon Goldgrub returned to his downtown office in July, but only in recent weeks has he noticed that the sidewalks appear to be a bit crowded again.
“Now I feel like it’s a lot more normal,” said Goldgrub, 30, a property manager.
Visiting from Tallahassee, Florida, Jessica Souva looked around downtown and felt hopeful about the city where she used to live.
“All we heard, in other parts of the country, was that New York was a ghost town, and this doesn’t feel like that,” said Souva, 47. “It feels like a city in transition.”
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