We fled New York to the countryside because of the coronavirus

• My wife and I left Brooklyn on March 16 for my childhood home in Pennsylvania. We suspected that the coronavirus would spread quickly and were both able to work from home.
• We love to live in New York. Nevertheless, we always had a wish list with other things that we wanted to buy one day, such as a garden, a car or even a washing machine.
• Now it feels like we’ve fast-forwarded our lives. I don’t know when we’ll be back to New York. I don’t know if we’ll do that either.

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I am among the hundreds, if not thousands, of people who left New York in March.

My wife and I made the decision when we realized the extent of the coronavirus pandemic and suspected that it was going to get worse. Several factors, such as my job as an editor at Business Insider, made this decision easier. I had read a lot about the spread of the virus and my wife and I knew we could work from home.

Another factor is that my newly retired parents live in Pennsylvania, near the New Jersey border. They have a yard, a guest room and a washing machine. All in all, it seemed a good place to retreat in an unpredictable and turbulent situation.

So we left New York on the night of March 16th. On the same day, San Francisco announced the curfew. We were convinced that New York would be the next city to do this – maybe even the very next day. However, it wasn’t until March 20 that New York State ordered people to stay at home. The number of cases in New York is far higher than in the Bay Area.

On the night of our departure, we took an Uber to LaGuardia Airport and rented a car there. We drove about 100 kilometers on Interstate 78. My wife hadn’t expected to move in with her in-laws two and a half years after our wedding. We have now been living in a four-person household for five weeks.

For the past month, I’ve pondered not only about my extraordinary privilege to have a place like this, but what’s next. The coronavirus pandemic opened many doors to a new world, even if not all of them were good. For us, it’s also a taste of a new lifestyle that could come to New York.

Try a new lifestyle

We love New York, but we weren’t always determined to be New Yorkers for life.

I’ve lived in the city since 2005, with the exception of a few years. My wife moved from California to New York in early 2016. We moved to an apartment in Fort Greene, Brooklyn about a year ago. It is located just 20 minutes on the subway from downtown Manhattan, where the Business Insider office is located.

Our Brooklyn home was almost, but not quite, perfect. I’ve always wanted to live in a real brown sandstone house. We managed to find a spacious two-bedroom apartment in a beautiful block of flats – a significant improvement on our previous cramped studio in Manhattan. But the apartment is on the fourth floor and has no laundry room in the building. When the New York Marathon ran through our street in November last year, it was still nice and exciting to live in the city. I didn’t want to be anywhere else.

We enjoyed New York for what it was: a beautiful city with a vibrant street life, great restaurants and bars, a wide range of cultural activities with many amazing theaters and independent cinemas. We also had work and many of my friends lived there.

Often we thought about what a different lifestyle might look like. Our checklist says: a house with its own washing machine, a car (preferably a Subaru), access to nature, a house near a city but not in a city. But honestly, what could make us leave New York?

Now we are in Pennsylvania and it’s like our lives have been fast forwarded.

This area of ​​the state is full of well-preserved farms and old stone houses. It has rolling hills with pretty trees that have white or pink or yellow leaves. There’s a lot of nature here – from the ducks swimming in a pond near the river to the hawks circling over the river.

Last weekend we drove to New Jersey and hiked a hill overlooking the Delaware River. Not only is it beautiful, but it’s exactly what we would want if we ever left New York.

It’s been five weeks since I left New York with just a few suitcases – we’d both packed for a week. Now I wonder if the decades in New York ended that night when, as I thought, we briefly fled the city.

I wonder how and if I should ever go back

When I think about going back, I get excited about the idea of ​​helping revitalize a city that has been stripped of everything I’ve known for over a decade. It could be like a return to the 90s or the heyday of punk rock and disco in the 70s, when the city’s tight financial situation inspired the iconic Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead”.

From our digital newsroom, I’ve watched record-breaking unemployment being reported almost every Thursday. Many of my friends in New York have told me that the situation is even worse. Some suddenly lost their jobs and have been trying to submit applications for weeks. The government does not manage to process all incoming applications.

New York may see the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in May. Without reliable tests, however, the city cannot yet open stores without risking another outbreak.

Then there is the “wave” thing. Pandemics come in waves and experts suggest there will likely be another wave of the coronavirus before a vaccine finally comes out. I can imagine New York bouncing back on its feet by summer, only to be hit by a second wave in autumn or winter. Then the social distancing starts all over again.

Bill Gates may be right when he says that such pandemics could happen every couple of decades. After all, they have increasingly multiplied in the 21st century. As we continue to invade animal habitats, it becomes more and more likely that infectious diseases can spread from animal to human.

This is bad news for all densely populated cities around the world. Also for New York, which has been my home for most of my adult life. Six months ago the city in front of my stairs was so beautiful and full of people who may not come together for months or years.

But there is another voice in my head that tells me that I may not have to go back. Even if the home office and curfew comes to an end in the next few months, I don’t know which version of New York I’ll be returning to.

I don’t even know if I want to be a New Yorker again.

This article was translated from English and edited by Ilona Tomić. You read the original here.

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