It is not true that the coronavirus has equated rich and poor in sickness and death, however much Tom Hanks, Boris Johnson and the Prince of Wales are among those affected – all out of the woods by now. The virus may not ask questions, but the rich in New York he has not found at home.
When the United States already surpasses Italy in the number of deaths, reaching yesterday the 19,882 victims Since the pandemic began to spread, and has more than half a million infected citizens (514,415), almost a third of the total of 1.7 million affected worldwide, New York has the sad mark of registering one death from coronavirus every two minutes.
The map of the epidemic by zip codes paints a reality in color that leaves no doubt. Of the twenty neighborhoods with the fewest cases of contagion, all but one are the wealthiest. Manhattan is empty. The sirens howl because they bring and carry patients to hospitals, which this week have registered 824 deaths in a single day, but those who had views of Central Park have left the city in private planes and have rented multi-million dollar houses in the Hamptons , the Long Island coastal area where they spend the summer.
So far they take home what they miss the most, the Blade helicopter company, the Uber of propellers, which despite charging between 500 and 700 euros per delivery, says it has received a barrage of orders. Alone in Southampton the population has increased from 60,000 to 100,000 inhabitants. New residents paid anything to get out of the Big Apple and have a quarantine of luxury.
Real estate investor Joe Farrell said he rented one of his Bridgehampton mansions to a textile mogul desperate to abandon the bad apple that has paid two million dollars (1.8 million euros) for the full season until the end of August. Ten bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, a bowling alley, movie theater, skating rink and, of course, a heated pool by the sea, in case the summer takes a long time to arrive.
Workers and beggars
With Manhattan left to the sirens of ambulances, an evangelical organization that preaches hatred of homosexuals and Islam has raised a field hospital in the heart of Central Park to accompany coronavirus patients in their grief with death. It is another apocalyptic image that is difficult to fit into the New York of the pandemic, where you can walk through the middle of Fifth Avenue without looking back.
As the streets empty, misery has been exposed. The homeless have nowhere to hide and there are no Starbucks left to sneak into to use the bathroom. They are the only ones who inhabit the streets and dThey sleep in the underground world of the subway, where they mix with the workers who have not been able to escape from work. Caught between the fear of running out of it and the fear of falling ill, those who do not even have teleworking qualifications continue to take public transport every day to supply supermarkets, cook in restaurants or cycle in home delivery. A Pew Center poll revealed that most New Yorkers making more than $ 100,000 would be kept in their jobs if they lost two weeks of work due to coronavirus disease. The pandemic is exposing the squeaky hinges of a system that masked them with too many neon lights.
The city that never slept now has a curfew and rush hour is busier than ever. At dusk, when the shift is over and everything closes, the laborers take off their masks and crowd at the entrance to the Staten Island ferry, as if the day’s precautions were a theater to reassure those who take the bag that they deliver almost without touch the.
A bedroom for everyone
Seventy-five percent of these front-line workers are from ethnic minorities, according to a study by City Controller Scott Stringer. Hispanics make up 60% of those who do cleaning jobs and blacks 40% of those who operate public transport.
For the same reason, they are the ones that contribute the most deaths to the pandemic. 34% of the victims in New York are Hispanic, 28% African American. In states like Louisiana, where social disparities are even greater, blacks account for 70% of the victims, because this marginalized population already suffered more diabetes, hypertension and other ills from junk food associated with poverty. Containing the disease outside the family nucleus is almost impossible. How do you quarantine someone when three generations sleep in a one-bedroom apartment?
In the coming weeks they will continue to supply the supermarkets and the statistics. The rich will be shocked when they find their streets taken over by beggars and queues of unemployed waiting for a plate of food outside their church, but there is no doubt that this spring will shed more light than any other on the miseries of capitalism at the stake of vanities.
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