REPORT – As the city prepares to discreetly commemorate the 19e anniversary of the September 11 attacks, doubt persists after a first deadly wave of the coronavirus in the spring. Emptied of its inhabitants, financially bloodless, Big Apple will have to show resilience to recover from the most serious economic and health crisis in its history.
By Maurin Picard
The shock occurred upon waking up on Saturday March 14. Suddenly the azure sky had emptied over New York. No longer a plane taking off, from Newark, La Guardia or JFK, and no longer a single helicopter flying its staccato above the skyline. The buzz of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, the fast lane through the metropolitan area, had died down. An unreal silence prevailed, plunging the megalopolis into the atmosphere of an anticipatory film. New York, overtaken by the threat of the coronavirus, curled up on itself while waiting for the sinister ballet of ambulances and their hitherto so familiar, now so distressing sirens.
The noria came, and New York knew «son Pearl Harbor», according to Chief Medical Officer Jerome Adams: 23,000 people have died in town, at home or in overwhelmed emergency services. The city center has become depopulated, like the residential neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Queens: 400,000 to 500,000 New Yorkers, out of 8.6 million inhabitants in total, have
