Skip to main content

When the City Stopped: Notes

When the City Stopped
Notes

  • Show the following:

    Annotations
    Resources

  • Adjust appearance:

    Font
    Font style
    Color Scheme
    Light
    Dark
    Annotation contrast
    Low
    High
    Margins
  • Search within:
    • Notifications
    • Privacy
  • Project HomeWhen the City Stopped
  • Projects
  • Learn more about Manifold

Notes

table of contents
  1. Editor’s Note
  2. Introduction
  3. 1 Early Days, Winter 2020
    1. Fear, Hygiene, and Teaching
    2. The Angel of Death over Italy
    3. Looming Threats to Transit Workers
    4. The Start of a Pandemic
    5. A Weird State
    6. Early Morning Fog
    7. Worrying for the City
    8. The Sirens
    9. Lamb’s Blood
  4. 2 Working for the Public’s Health, Spring 2020
    1. “Dead on Arrival”
    2. Into the Storm
    3. Challenging Times
    4. On the Frontlines of COVID-19, Echoes of AIDS
    5. At the Gates of Hell
    6. It Was Not Business as Usual
    7. Hard Choices
    8. Coping with Gallows Humor
  5. 3 Work Turned Upside Down, Spring to Fall 2020
    1. Forgotten Frontline Workers
    2. We Have to Help Each Other
    3. More than a Cashier
    4. At Home in the Bronx, At Work in Midtown Manhattan
    5. Frontline Workers in a Restaurant
    6. Working for the Apps
    7. Lessons, Survival, and a Public School Teacher
    8. In the Cloud: New York, December 2020
    9. Inside and Outside
    10. A Horror Story with a Happy Ending
  6. 4 Losses, Spring 2020
    1. Changes to 4 Train
    2. Afraid to Go Out
    3. Quarantined and Unemployed in the Bronx
    4. Saying Farewell
    5. Living in a Shelter in the First Year of the Pandemic
    6. Grief Works from Home at All Hours
    7. The Second Father: A Tribute
    8. He Was the Block’s Papa
  7. 5 Coping, Spring 2020
    1. No Opera Now
    2. Embracing Solitude
    3. A Prayer for My Mother
    4. Sharing Stories
    5. A Subway Story in the Time of COVID-19
    6. Making Masks, Whatever It Takes
    7. Working and Surviving
    8. Sustaining Community
    9. Building Bonds
    10. Organizing
    11. Clap Because You Care
  8. 6 Opening Up, Summer and Fall 2020
    1. New York to across Africa
    2. From Lockdown to Curfew
    3. Protests, Riots, and Retirement
    4. Broken Systems
    5. Opening Up
    6. “I’d Like to Think I’m an Optimist”
    7. Discrepancies
    8. After the Surge
    9. Drawn-Out Deaths
    10. Anticipating Vaccines
    11. Have Faith and Fight
    12. The Best Place to Be
  9. 7 Vaccines and After, 2021
    1. Registration Nightmares and Vaccine Skepticism
    2. The Second Shot: New York, February 2021
    3. A Question of Trade-offs
    4. Slogging Along
    5. Changes and Challenges
    6. Lexicon of the Pandemic
    7. Eating Bitterness
    8. The Island of Pandemica
  10. 8 Reflections, 2023
    1. Learning How to Talk to People
    2. Strength in the Long Run
    3. “We Were Here”
    4. Remembering Sacrifices and Losses
    5. The Momentum and Tumult of Discovery
    6. “Look Out for Each Other”
  11. Conclusion
  12. Acknowledgments
  13. Notes
  14. Contributors
  15. Index

Notes

Introduction

1. Trends and Totals page of NYC Health at https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.page.

2. David P. Fidler, SARS, Governance, and the Globalization of Disease (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 71, 99–105.

3. Joseph S. Lieber, Sandra Opdycke, and David Rosner, “Public Health,” in Encyclopedia of New York City, 2nd ed., ed. Kenneth T. Jackson (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 1048–52.

4. On the death of social democratic New York City in the fiscal crisis, see Joshua B. Freeman, Working-Class New York: Life and Labor Since World War II (New York: New Press, 2000), 270–83; Kim Phillips-Fein, Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2017), 304–16; and Jonathan Soffer, Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 2020), 3–4, 191–203, 400–401. On the general problems of delivering health care in New York, see Bruce F. Berg, Healing Gotham: New York City’s Public Health Policies for the Twenty-First Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 16–17 and 26–30. On broad patterns of inequality in New York City hospitals, see George Aumoithe, “Dismantling the Safety-Net Hospital: The Construction of ‘Underutilization’ and Scarce Public Hospital Care,” Journal of Urban History 49, no. 6 (2023): 1282–84, 1285–88, 1291, 1295–97, 1300–1301; and on the shortage of beds early in the pandemic, Carl Campanile, Julia Marsh, Bernadette Hogan, and Nolan Hicks, “New York Has Thrown Away 20,000 Hospital Beds, Complicating Coronavirus Fight,” New York Post, March 17, 2020, updated March 28, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/03/17/new-york-has-thrown-away-20000-hospital-beds-complicating-coronavirus-fight.

5. Figures on the death toll of the flu of 1918 in New York City vary. Francesco Aimone’s figure of thirty thousand includes deaths from both flu and pneumonia, a common combination of illnesses that contributed to the deadly nature of the flu. See Francesco Aimone, “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York City: A Review of the Public Health Response,” Public Health Reports 125 (2010): 71–79. Useful books on the flu epidemic of 1918 include Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu and How it Changed the World (New York: Public Affairs, 2017).

6. The most important collections for this book were the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project at https://incite.columbia.edu/covid19-oral-history-project; Lockdown Staten Island Collection at https://covid-19archive.org/s/lockdown-staten-island/page/welcome; Fordham University’s The Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project at https://www.thebronxcovid19oralhistoryproject.com/; the Queens Memory COVID-19 Project at https://library.qc.cuny.edu/blog/queens-memory-covid-19-project/; Brooklyn College Journal of the Plague Year at https://covid-19archive.org/s/brooklyncollege/page/welcome; and the Museum of the City of New York’s “New York Responds Online” at https://www.mcny.org/new-york-responds-online. The folklorists of City Lore are at https://citylore.org/. For a website documenting COVID-related historical projects see, at the website of the Gotham Center for New York City History, the “COVID-NYC Documentary Project” at https://www.gothamcenter.org/covidnyc-documentary-project and, at New York University, Historians Respond to COVID-19 athttps://wp.nyu.edu/covid19histories/category/collecting/oralhistory/.

7. The phrase “alone together” dates to the song “Alone Together,” lyrics by Howard Dietz and music by Arthur Schwartz. The song was introduced in 1932 in the Broadway musical Flying Colors.

8. Paul Fussell, Class: A Guide to the American Status System (New York: Summit Books, 1983), 25–26.

9. “Trends and Totals,” NYC Health, at https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.page; and “COVID-19 Update for the United States,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#datatracker-home.

10. Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disasters (New York: Penguin Books, 2009), Kindle 2–3.

11. Vaclav Havel, Summer Meditations (New York: Knopf, 1992), 8–9.

1. Early Days, Winter 2020

1. See “At Novel Coronavirus Briefing, Governor Cuomo Announces State is Partnering with Hospitals to Expand Novel Coronavirus Testing Capacity in New York,” March 2, 2020, Albany, NY, at https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/video-audio-photos-rush-transcript-novel-coronavirus-briefing-governor-cuomo-announces-state.

2.Trends and totals: https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.page.

3. The COVID Crisis Group, Lessons From the Covid War: An Investigative Report (New York: PublicAffairs, 2023), 30. On the importance of thinking about epidemics and disasters historically, see David Rosner, ed., Hives of Sickness: Public Health and Epidemics in New York City (New York: Museum of the City of New York/Rutgers University Press, 1995); and Andy Horowitz, Katrina: A History, 1915-2015 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2020).

4. Daniel T. Rodgers, The Age of Fracture (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012); The COVID Crisis Group, Lessons From the Covid War, 24–26, 119, 127–28; and Lawrence Wright, The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2021), 14–18; and Paul Starr, “Reckoning with National Failure: The Case of Covid,” Liberties 1, no. 3 (spring 2021): 73–75, 77–80. For Trump speculating on cures, see Daniel Funke, “In Context: What Donald Trump Said about Disinfectant, Sun, and Coronavirus,” POLITIFACT, April 24, 2020, https://www.politifact.com/article/2020/apr/24/context-what-donald-trump-said-about-disinfectant-/. For Trump’s attacks on critics, see Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer, “Trump’s Response to Virus Reflects a Long Disregard for Science,” New York Times, April 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/climate/trump-coronavirus-climate-science.html; and Quint Forgey, “Trump Attacks Second Democratic Governor over Coronavirus Criticism,” POLITICO, March 19, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/09/trump-attacks-second-democratic-governor-over-coronavirus-criticism-124216.

5. See Benjamin M. Althouse, Brendan Wallace, Brendan Case, Samuel V. Scarpino, Antoine Allard, Andrew M. Berdahl, Easton R. White, and Laurent Hebert-Dufresne, “The Unintended Consequences of Inconsistent Pandemic Control Policies,” National Library of Medicine (2020), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7457624/; and Karen DeSalvo, Bob Hughes, Mary Bassett, Georges Benjamin, Michael Fraser, Sandro Galea, and J. Nadine Gracia, “Public Health COVID-19 Impact Assessment: Lessons Learned and Compelling Needs,” NAM PERSPECTIVES, April 7, 2021, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8406505/.

6. Gary Gerstle, The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: America and the World in the Free Market Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 5–6, 161, 173, 207–27, 241–67.

7. Berg, Healing Gotham, 16–18, 21, 25–30, 247–49; and the essays in Joshua B. Freeman, ed., City of Workers, City of Struggle: How Labor Movements Changed New York (New York: Columbia University Press, 2019).

8. Michael Schwirtz, “One Rich N.Y. Hospital Got Warren Buffett’s Help, One Got Duct Tape,” New York Times, April 26, 2929, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-university-hospital.html; Brian M. Rosenthal, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Otterman, and Sheri Fink, “Why Surviving the Virus Might Come Down to Which Hospital Admits You,” New York Times, July 1, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/nyregion/Coronavirus-hospitals.html; Amanda Dunker and Elizabeth Benjamin, “How Structural Inequalities in New York’s Health Care System Exacerbate Health Disparities During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Call for Equitable Reform,” New York: Community Service Society, June 4, 2020.

9. Dunker and Benjamin, “Structural Inequalities in New York’s Health Care System,” 1–2, 5; Clare Malone, “New York’s Inequalities Are Fueling COVID-19,” 538, April 10, 2020, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/wealth-and-race-have-always-divided-new-york-covid-19-has-only-made-things-worse/; and Elise Gould and Heidi Shierholz, “Not Everybody Can Work from Home,” Working Economic Blog, Economic Policy Institute, March 19, 2020, https://www.epi.org/blog/black-and-hispanic-workers-are-much-less-likely-to-be-able-to-work-from-home/.

10. Hannah Kuchler and Andrew Edgecliffe-Johnson, “How New York’s Missteps Let Covid-19 Overwhelm the US,” Financial Times, October 22, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/a52198f6–0d20–4607-b12a-05110bc48723; J. David Goodman, “How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York’s Virus Fight,” New York Times, April 8, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html; and Joe Sexton and Joaquin Sapien, “Two Coasts. One Virus. How New York Suffered Nearly 10 Times the Number of Deaths as California,” Pro Publica, May 16, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california.

11. Goodman, “How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York’s Virus Fight”; and Sexton and Sapien, “Two Coasts.”

12. Goodman, “How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York’s Virus Fight.”

13. Damien LaRock, interview by Bridget Bartolini, Queens Memory COVID-19 Project, July 17 and 27, 2020, https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/943/collection_resources/46728/transcript.

14. Fabio Girelli-Carrasi, “The Angel of Death Over Italy,” first published as “From Ground Zero in Italy,” Brooklyn College, Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of Covid-19, https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/item/28432.

15. Re’gan Weal, author interview with Re’gan Weal, March 23, 2023.

16. Ali Mazinov, an early version of this account was written in April 2020 for a class at Brooklyn College taught by Professor Margrethe Horlyck-Romanovsky, archived at Brooklyn College Journal of the Plague Year at https://covid-19archive.org/s/brooklyncollege/item/47989.

17. Keerthan Thiyagarajah interview by Joyce Ma, COVID-19 Asian American Oral History Project, Institutional Archives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, December 23, 2021.

18.Davidson Garrett, first published in Mark Nowak, ed., Coronavirus Haiku: Worker Writers School (Chicago: Kenning Editions, 2021), 40.

19. Jessica B. Martinez interview conducted by Ryan Hagen for The NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project, October 13, 2020.

20. Led Black, “The Sirens,” first appeared in the Uptown Collective at https://www.uptowncollective.com/2020/04/02/op-led-uptown-love-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-the-sirens/.

21. Steve Zeitlin, “Lamb’s Blood.” For a discussion of the poem in the larger context of the Passover story, see Caroline Harris and Guest Columnist, “Time All at Once,” Voices: Journal of New York Folklore 46, no. 1–2 (2020): 22.

2. Working for the Public’s Health, Spring 2020

1. Michael Schwirtz, “One Rich N.Y. Hospital Got Warren Buffett’s Help, This One Got Duct Tape,” New York Times, April 26, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/26/nyregion/coronavirus-new-york-university-hospital.html; Brian M. Rosenthal, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Otterman, and Sheri Fink, “Why Surviving the Virus Might Come Down to Which Hospital Admits You,” New York Times, July 1, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/01/nyregion/Coronavirus-hospitals.html. On the terrible and dangerous working conditions that essential workers faced in the pandemic, even as they were applauded for their service, see Jamie K. McCallum, Essential: How the Pandemic Transformed the Long Fight for Worker Justice (New York: Basic Books, 2022) 5, 8, 10. On the imbalance of hospital bed ratios across the city, see Caleb Melby, Jackie Gu, and Mira Rojanasakul, “Mapping New York City Hospital Beds as Coronavirus Cases Surge,” Bloomberg, Marcy 25, 2020, updated April 28, 2020, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2020-new-york-coronavirus-outbreak-how-many-hospital-beds/?embedded-checkout=true.

2. Simon Ressner, “Dead on Arrival: A N.Y. Fire Chief’s COVID Journal.” Early in the pandemic the independent nonprofit news organization Pro Publica asked Simon Ressner of the Fire Department of New York to keep a diary of a twenty-four-hour shift that began at 9:00 a.m. on Friday, April 3, 2020. Published April 5, 2020, at https://www.propublica.org/article/dead-on-arrival-a-ny-fire-chiefs-covid-journal.

3. The New York City Fire Department lost 343 firefighters and paramedics in the attacks of September 11, 2001. See “9/11 By the Numbers,” New York Magazine, https://nymag.com/news/articles/wtc/1year/numbers.htm.

4. Phil Suarez was interviewed by Rishi Goyal for The NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project, October 6, 2020.

5. Richard Brea, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, April 17, 2023.

6. Steven Palmer, interviewed by Mary Marshall Clark for the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Project, June 19, 2020.

7.Patricia Tiu: As a Queens resident and nurse in upper Manhattan, Tiu recorded her observations and posted them on YouTube. Her videos are archived at https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/943/collection_resources/31398?embed=true.

8. Christopher Tedeschi, interviewed by Denise Milstein for the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Project, July 14th, 2020.

9. “Richard Jenkins” is a pseudonym. Interviewed by Ryan Hagen for the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project, May 7, 2020.

10. Steven Palmer, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, March 4, 2023.

3. Work Turned Upside Down, Spring to Fall 2020

1. Christina Goldbaum, “41 Transit Workers Dead; Crisis Takes Staggering Toll on Subways,” New York Times, April 8, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/coronavirus-nyc-mta-subway.html.

2. Goldbaum, “41 Transit Workers Dead.”

3. Re’gan Weal, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, March 23, 2023.

4. Ralph Rolle, interviewed by Bethany Fernandez for the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project of Fordham University, July 26, 2020, https://www.thebronxcovid19oralhistoryproject.com/interviews/ralph-rolle.

5. Elizabeth Petrillo, interviewed by Anthony Brognano for the Staten Island Coronavirus Chronicle Oral History Project at the College of Staten Island, May 19, 2021.

6. Patricia Hernandez, interviewed by Veronica Quiroga for the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project of Fordham University, May 10, 2020, https://www.thebronxcovid19oralhistoryproject.com/interviews/patricia-hernandez.

7. Maribel Gonzalez Christianson, interviewed by Bethany Fernandez for the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project of Fordham University, June 2, 2020, https://www.thebronxcovid19oralhistoryproject.com/interviews/maribel-gonzalez.

8. Gustavo Ajche, interviewed by Martha Guerrero Badillo, November 1, 2021.

9. Claudia Irizarry Aponte, Josefa Velasquez, and Katie Honan, “New York City Passes Landmark New Protections for Food Delivery Workers,” THE CITY, September 23, 2–21, https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/09/23/new-york-city-landmark-food-delivery-worker-law/.

10. Damien LaRock, interviewed by Bridget Bartolini, Queens Memory COVID-19 Project, July 17 and 27, 2020, https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/943/collection_resources/46728/transcript.

11. Rachel Hadas’ poem “In the Cloud” first appeared in The New Yorker and was also published in Hadas’s book Pandemic Almanac (Princeton, NJ: Ragged Sky Press, 2022).

12.Beth Evans, excerpted from Beth Evans, “Inside and Outside, At Home,” Journal of the Plague Year: An Archive of Covid-19, Brooklyn College (spring 2020), https://covid-19archive.org/s/archive/item/30688.

13. Robert Kelley, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, January 24, 2023.

4. Losses, Spring 2020

1. On the pattern of deaths, see “Trends and Totals,” https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.page.

2. See “Funeral and Burial Guidance,” https://www.nyc.gov/site/helpnownyc/get-help/funeral-burial-guidance.page.

3. Author communication with Rachel Hadas, August 31, 2023.

4. “Health Advisory: COVID-19 Guidance for Hospital Operators Regarding Visitation,” New York State Department of Health, March 18, 2020, https://coronavirus.health.ny.gov/system/files/documents/2020/03/doh_covid19_obpedsvisitation_032720.pdf.

5. For photographs of hospital staff and a chaplain tending to patients in extreme conditions, see “Collection on COVID-19” at the Mount Sinai Health System (AA119). The Arthur H. Aufses, Jr. MD Archives, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai/Mount Sinai Health System, New York, NY. On the extremely difficult conditions that confronted health care professionals, see Marie Brenner, The Desperate Hours: One Hospital’s Fight to Save a City on the Pandemic’s Front Lines (New York: Flatiron Books, 2022), 249–55, 260, 275–76; Schwirtz, “One Rich N.Y. Hospital”; Rosenthal, Goldstein, Otterman, and Fink, “Why Surviving.”

6. W. J. Hennigan, “We Do This for the Living’: Inside New York’s Citywide Effort to Bury Its Dead,” Time, May 21, 2020, https://time.com/5839056/new-york-city-burials-coronavirus/.

7. “Funeral and Burial Guidance,” HELP NOW NYC.

8. Stephanie McCrummen, “Death Without Ritual,” Washington Post, April 4, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/04/04/funeral-home-new-york-city-bodies-coronavirus/.

9. The poem by Alfred Small first appeared in Mark Nowak, ed., Coronavirus Haiku: Worker Writers School (Chicago: Kenning Editions, 2021), 33.

10. The poem by Thomas Barzey first appeared in Nowak, ed., Coronavirus Haiku, 85.

11. Nichole Matos, interviewed by Veronica Quiroga for the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project of Fordham University, April 26, 2020, https://www.library.fordham.edu/digital/item/collection/bxcvdoralhist/id/4.

12. Copy of letter in author’s possession.

13. Rozelyn Murray first published this essay in COVID Class 2021, a platform for students in David Rohlfing’s English 12 class at Pace High School.

14. Michèle Voltaire Marcelin: Published here with permission of the author.

15.C.A. Duran, this essay first appeared in COVID Class 2021, a platform for students in David Rohlfing’s English 12 class at Pace High School.

16. Robert W. Snyder interview with Veronica E. Fletcher, February 5, 2023.

5. Coping, Spring 2020

1. Jeremy Berke, “‘We Are Flattening the Curve’: Cuomo Says Shutdowns Are Working to Curb the Spread of the Coronavirus, but It’s ‘Not a Time to Get Complacent,’” Business Insider, April 8, 2020, https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-cuomo-says-new-york-flattening-the-curve-2020–4; Jeffrey E. Harris, “The Coronavirus Epidemic Curve Is Already Flattening in New York City,” National Bureau of Economic Research, April 2020, https://www.nber.org/papers/w26917.

2. Jesse McKinley and Shane Goldmacher, “How Cuomo, Once on Sidelines, Became the Politician of the Moment,” New York Times, March 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/24/nyregion/governor-andrew-cuomo-coronavirus.html; Bill Hammond, 2020 Hindsight: Rebuilding New York’s Public Health Defenses After the Coronavirus Pandemic (Albany: Empire Center, 2021), 8–13, 19–24.

3. On Cuomo, de Blasio, and their uneven responses to the pandemic, see J. David Goodman, “How Delays and Unheeded Warnings Hindered New York’s Virus Fight,” New York Times, April 8, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/08/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-response-delays.html; Shalini Ramachandran, Laura Kusisto, and Katie Homan, “How New York’s Coronavirus Response Made the Pandemic Worse,” Wall Street Journal, June 11, 2020, https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-new-yorks-coronavirus-response-made-the-pandemic-worse-11591908426; Hannah Kuchler, “How New York’s Missteps Let Covid-19 Overwhelm the US,” Financial Times, October 2, 2020, https://www.ft.com/content/a52198f6-0d20-4607-b12a-05110bc48723; Joe Sexton and Joaquin Sapien, “Two Coasts, One Virus,” Pro Publica, May 16, 2020, https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california; and Hammond, 2020 Hindsight, 8–13, 19–24.

4. Liam Stack, “De Blasio Breaks Up Rabbi’s Funeral and Lashes Out Over Virus Distancing,” New York Times, April 28, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/28/nyregion/hasidic-funeral-coronavirus-de-blasio.html; Sander L. Gilman, “Placing the Blame for Covid-19 in and on Ultra-Orthodox Communities,” Modern Judaism, December 30, 2020, https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/kjaa021; Josefa Velazquez, Ann Choi, and Clifford Michel, “Southern Brooklyn’s Ongoing COVID Suffering Shows Toll of Disinformation and Disconnection,” The City, May 26, 2021, https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/05/26/southern-brooklyn-covid-death-disinformation-disconnection/. On uneven adherence to masking and police responses to masking requirements, see Michael Wilson, “At Least New Yorkers Can Still Roll Their Eyes,” New York Times, April 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/nyregion/new-york-coronavirus-masks.html; Tina Moore, Julia Marsh, Bernadette Hogan, Nolan Hicks, and Aaron Feis, “NYPD Blows Off Concerns over Cops Ditching Masks during Coronavirus,” New York Post, June 11, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/06/11/nypd-blows-off-concerns-over-cops-ditching-coronavirus-masks/; Michael Wilson, “Why Are So Many N.Y.P.D. Officers Refusing to Wear Masks at Protests?” New York Times, June 11, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/11/nyregion/nypd-face-masks-nyc-protests.html; and Andy Newman, “Are New Yorkers Wearing Masks? Here’s What We Found in Each Borough,” New York Times, August 20, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/nyregion/nyc-face-masks.html.

5. Alexandra E. Petri and Daniel E. Slotnik, “Attacks on Asian-Americans in New York Stoke Fear, Anxiety, and Anger,” New York Times, February 26, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/26/nyregion/asian-hate-crimes-attacks-ny.html; Weyi Cai, Audra D.S. Burch, and Jugal K. Patel, “Swelling Anti-Asian Violence: Who Is Being Attacked Where,” New York Times, April 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/04/03/us/anti-asian-attacks.html; ADL, Hate in the Empire State: Extremism and Antisemitism in New York, 2020–2021, May 19, 2022, https://www.adl.org/resources/report/hate-empire-state-extremism-antisemitism-new-york-2020–2021.

6. Mackenzie Kwok: With permission of the author.

7. Trends and totals: https://www.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid/covid-19-data-totals.page.

8. Davidson Garrett: Mark Nowak, ed., Coronavirus Haiku: Worker Writers School (Chicago: Kenning Editions, 2021), 40.

9. Adele Dressner: An earlier version of this essay appeared in Sounds I Never Heard Before: Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic, a zine published in August 2020 by the Lasting Impressions Department of DOROT, a Manhattan organization founded to improve the lives and health of older adults.

10. Sumya Abida: With permission of the author. Thanks to Steve Zeitlin for introducing Sumya Abida and her work to the editor.

11. An earlier version of Matilda Virgilio Clark’s essay appeared in Sounds I Never Heard Before: Reflections on the COVID-19 Pandemic, a zine published in August 2020 by the Lasting Impressions Department of DOROT, a Manhattan organization founded to improve the lives and health of older adults.

12. Reprinted with the permission of Ron Kolm, a contributing editor of Sensitive Skin Magazine, the author of five books of poetry and two collections of short fictions, and the editor of six Unbearables anthologies.

13. Reprinted with the permission of the author.

14. Kleber Vera (Flame), interviewed by Oscar Zamora Flores for the Queens Memory Project, January 13, 2021, https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/943/collection_resources/39882/transcript?u=t&keywords[]=Kleber&keywords[]=Vera.

15.Sheikh Musa Drammeh, interviewed by Dr. Jane Kani Edward and Bethany Fernandez for the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project at Fordham University, October 7, 2020, https://www.thebronxcovid19oralhistoryproject.com/interviews/sheikh-musa-drammeh.

16. Keerthan Thiyagarajah, interviewed by Joyce Ma, COVID-19 Asian American Oral History Project, Institutional Archives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, December 23, 2021.

17. Dave Crenshaw, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, May 11, 2023.

18. Reprinted from the Uptown Collective, https://www.uptowncollective.com/2020/04/17/op-led-uptown-love-in-the-time-of-coronavirus-clap-because-you-care/.

6. Opening Up, Summer and Fall 2020

1. Margaret Garnett, commissioner, Investigations into NYPD Response to the George Floyd Protests (New York City: NY City Department of Investigation, December 2020); New York City Civilian Complaint Review Board, 2020 NYC Protests (February 6, 2023), https://www.nyc.gov/site/ccrb/policy/issue-based-reports.page; and NYPD Response to CCRB’s “2020 Protest Report,” https://www.nyc.gov/site/nypd/news/p00074/nypd-response-ccrb-s-2020-protest-report-.

2. Susan Sachs, “Giuliani’s Goal of Civil City Runs Into First Amendment,” New York Times, July 6, 1998, https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/06/nyregion/giuliani-s-goal-of-civil-city-runs-into-first-amendment.html; Ben Adler, “Bloomberg’s Long War Against Protests,” CityLab, November 16, 2011, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-16/bloomberg-s-long-war-against-protests; Conor Friedersdorf, “What Bloomberg Did to Peaceful Protesters,” The Atlantic, February 25, 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/02/what-bloomberg-did-rnc-protesters/607030/.

3. Christina Goldbaum, Liam Stack, and Alex Traub, “After Peaceful Protests, Looters Strike at Macy’s and Across Midtown,” New York Times, June 2, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/02/nyregion/nyc-looting-protests.html; Azi Paybarah and Nikita Stewart, “Symbol of N.Y.C. Unrest: A Burning Police Car,” New York Times, May 31, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/31/nyregion/police-cars-nyc-protests.html; Ali Watkins, “An Unprepared N.Y.P.D. Badly Mishandled Floyd Protests, Watchdog Says,” New York Times, Dec. 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/18/nyregion/nypd-george-floyd-protests.html; John Bolger, “Exclusive: NYPD Took Hours to Respond to Mass Looting, Despite Quickly Cracking Down on Protests,” The Intercept, June 1, 2021, https://theintercept.com/2021/06/01/nypd-looting-violence-protest/. Maura Grunlund, “‘Let Staten Island Be an Example’—As City Burned, Peaceful Protests over George Floyd Here,” June 1, 2020, https://www.silive.com/news/2020/06/let-staten-island-be-an-example-as-city-burned-peaceful-protests-over-george-floyd-here.html.

4. See Peter Senzamici, “Anger and Demand for Answers as Cops Seem to ‘Deputize’ Inwood Anti-Looting Posse,” The City, June 12, 2020, https://www.thecity.nyc/2020/06/12/demand-for-answers-as-inwood-cops-seem-to-deputize-anti-looting-posse/. For police speaking with local men about safeguarding the neighborhood, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Aswoj-kjYw&t=331s; for local men patrolling the streets, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Ee24Vf-K2A.

5. Mariame Kaba, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police,” New York Times, June 12, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/12/opinion/sunday/floyd-abolish-defund-police.html.

6. Colin Moynihan, “New York to Pay $13 Million Over Police Actions at George Floyd Protests,” New York Times, July 20, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/20/nyregion/nypd-george-floyd-protesters-settlement.html.

7. Gregory Neyman and Willliam Dalsey, “Black Lives Matter Protests and COVID-19 Cases: Relationship in Two Databases,” Journal of Public Health (November 2020), https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7717330/.

8. Andy Newman, “Are New Yorkers Wearing Masks? Here’s What We Found in Each Borough,” New York Times, August 8, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/nyregion/nyc-face-masks.html.

9. Christina Goldbaum, “When a Bus Driver Told a Rider to Wear a Mask, ‘He Knocked Me Out Cold,’” New York Times, September 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/18/nyregion/mta-bus-mask-covid.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage.

10. Amanda Rosa, “How a Bar Became a Symbol of Staten Island Virus Defiance,” New York Times, December 9, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/09/nyregion/macs-staten-island-covid.html#:~:text=The%20bar%20flouted%20a%20curfew,rates%2C%20the%20bar%20stayed%20open; and Eric Klinenberg, 2020: One City, Seven People, and the Year Everything Changed (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2024) 118-137.

11. Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Joseph Goldstein, “1st Vaccination in U.S. Is Given in New York, Hard Hit in Outbreak’s First Days,” New York Times, December 14, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/nyregion/coronavirus-vaccine-new-york.html.

12. Thomas Barzey in Mark Nowak, ed., Coronavirus Haiku: Worker Writers School (Chicago: Kenning Editions, 2021), 66.

13. Published with permission of the author.

14. Richard Brea, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, April 17, 2023.

15.Alexandra L. Naranjo, interviewed by Stephanie Khalifa for the Staten Island Coronavirus Chronicle Oral History Project at the College of Staten Island, May 16, 2021.

16. Kleber Vera (Flame), interviewed by Oscar Zamora Flores for the Queens Memory Project, January 13, 2021, https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/943/collection_resources/39882/transcript?u=t&keywords[]=Kleber&keywords[]=Vera.

17. Patricia Tiu, interviewed by Jamie Beckenstein of the Queens Memory Project, June 11, 2020, https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/943/collection_resources/31398/file/123688/transcript?embed=true.

18. Keerthan Thiyagarajah, interviewed by Joyce Ma, December 23, 2021, for the COVID-19 Asian American Oral History Project, Institutional Archives, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY.

19. Phil Suarez, interviewed by Rishi Goyal for the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Project, October 6, 2020.

20. Richard Jenkins (a pseudonym), interviewed by Ryan Hagen for the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project, May 7, 2020.

21. Jessica B. Martinez, interviewed by Ryan Hagen for the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative, and Memory Project, October 13, 2020.

22. Maribel Gonzalez Christianson, interviewed by Bethany Fernandez for the Bronx COVID-19 Oral History Project, November 11, 2020.

23. Jessica B. Martinez, interviewed by Ryan Hagen for the NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Project, March 3, 2021. For a description of festivities, see Edgar Sandoval, “A Rollicking N.Y. C. Celebration for Biden’s Win, Well Into the Night,” New York Times, November 7, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/07/nyregion/nyc-reaction-biden-win.html.

7. Vaccines and After, 2021

1. Quoted in Edith Wharton, French Ways and Their Meaning (London: Macmillan, 1909), 65.

2. Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Joseph Goldstein “1st Vaccination in U.S. Is Given in New York, Hard Hit in Outbreak’s First Days,” New York Times, December 14, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/14/nyregion/coronavirus-vaccine-new-york.html.

3. Shira Ovide, “The Problem With Vaccine Websites,” New York Times, January 12, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/12/technology/the-problem-with-vaccine-websites.html; S. Mitra Kalita, “What We Learned Registering Thousands of Our Neighbors for Vaccines,” Epicenter-NYC, March 22, 2021, https://epicenter-nyc.com/what-we-learned-registering-thousands-of-our-neighbors-for-vaccines/.

4. Deepti Hajela and Michael R. Sisak, “NYC Honors Essential Workers at Parade up Canyon of Heroes,” Associated Press, July 7, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/lifestyle-parades-canyons-coronavirus-pandemic-health-f6fbcd3b911164a6bcc9c51ca1fb5563; Mihir Zaveri and Ashley Wong, “Why Some of N.Y.C.’s Essential Workers Skipped a Parade to Honor Them,” New York Times, July 7, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/nyregion/NYC-parade-essential-workers.html.

5.Paul A. Offitt, M.D., Foreword in Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All (New York: Basic Books, 2015); Elena Conis, Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

6. Jake Offenharz, “‘This Is Tyranny’: NYC Municipal Workers March On City Hall To Protest COVID Vaccine Mandate,” Gothamist, October 25, 2021, https://gothamist.com/news/tyranny-nyc-municipal-workers-march-city-hall-protest-covid-vaccine-mandate.

7. Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal, “Behind Low Vaccination Rates Lurks a More Profound Social Weakness,” New York Times, December 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/03/opinion/vaccine-hesitancy-covid.html. Also see Caitjan Ganty, “The US Once withheld Syphilis Treatment from Hundreds of Black Men in the Name of Science,” The Conversation, January 12, 2024, https://theconversation.com/the-us-once-withheld-syphilis-treatment-from-hundreds-of-black-men-in-the-name-of-science-newly-public-records-are-helping-us-understand-how-it-could-happen-217216; Vanessa Northington Gamble, “Under the Shadow of Tuskegee: African Americans and Health Care,” American Journal of Public Health 87, no. 11 (November 1997), https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9366634/; and Carrie D. Wollinetz, PhD, and Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, “Recognition of Research Participants’ Need for Autonomy: Remembering the Legacy of Henrietta Lacks,” Journal of the American Medical Association, August 11, 2020, 1027–28, https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769506. On vaccination rates, see Nambi Ndugga, Latoya Hill, Samantha Artiga, and Sweta Haldar, “Latest Data on COVID-19 Vaccination by Race/Ethnicity,” KFF, July 14, 2022, https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/latest-data-on-covid-19-vaccinations-by-race-ethnicity/.

8. Emma G. Fitzsimmons, Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Otterman, “New York City Mandates Vaccines for Its Workers to ‘End the Covid Era,’” New York Times, October 20, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/20/nyregion/nyc-vaccine-mandate.html; Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Otterman, “9,000 Unvaccinated N.Y.C. Workers Put on Unpaid Leave as Mandate Begins,” New York Times, November 1, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/01/nyregion/nyc-vaccine-mandate.html. On transit workers, see Clayton Guse, “MTA becomes one of NYC’s least vaccinated public workforces,” Daily News, November 2, 2021, https://www.nydailynews.com/2021/11/02/mta-becomes-one-of-nycs-least-vaccinated-public-workforces/.

9. ADL, Hate in the Empire State: Extremism and Antisemitism in New York, 2020–2021, May 19, 2022, https://www.adl.org/resources/report/hate-empire-state-extremism-antisemitism-new-york-2020–2021.

10.See citywide total of shooting victims in New York City Police Department, CompStat YEAR END 2020 FINAL (January 14, 2021), 30.

11. Shannon Young, “Timeline: Countdown to Cuomo’s Downfall,” Politico, August 3, 2021, https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2021/08/03/timeline-countdown-to-cuomos-downfall-1389414; Yoav Gonen, “Eric Adams Wins NYC Mayoral Election, Earning His Chance to Make History in Post-COVID Era, “The City, November 2, 2021, https://www.thecity.nyc/2021/11/02/eric-adams-wins-nyc-mayoral-election-leading-in-covid-era/.

12. Justin Fox, “New York, I Love You, But You’re Bringing Me Down,” Bloomberg Opinion, March 9, 2023, https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2023-opinion-how-livable-are-cities-three-years-after-start-of-covid/new-york-city.html.

13. Dave Crenshaw, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, May 11, 2023.

14. Rachel Hadas, “The Second Shot,” Pandemic Almanac (Princeton, NJ: Ragged Sky Press, 2022), 58.

15. Alexandra L. Naranjo, interviewed by Stephanie Khalifa for the Staten Island Coronavirus Chronicle Oral History Project at the College of Staten Island, May 16, 2021.

16. Christopher Tedeschi, interviewed by Denise Milstein for The NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Project, January 25, 2021.

17. Jessica B. Martinez, interviewed by Ryan Hagen for The NYC COVID-19 Oral History, Narrative and Memory Archive, March 3, 2021.

18. “Lexicon of the Pandemic” appeared first in Covid Class 2021, a platform for students in David Rohlfing’s English 12 class at Pace High School.

19. Mackenzie Kwok, “The Bitterness I Eat,” was written and performed for Annie Lanzillotto’s virtual talk show, Tell Me a Story.

20. Steve Zeitlin, “The Island of Pandemica,” Published with permission of the author.

8. Reflections, 2023

1. Lena H. Sun and Amy Goldstein, “What the End of the COVID Public Health Emergency Means for You,” Washington Post, May 4, 2023, https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2023/05/04/covid-public-health-emergency-end/; and Kathy Katella, “3 Things to Know About JN.1, the New Coronavirus Strain,” Yale Medicine, January 31, 2024, https://www.yalemedicine.org/news/jn1-coronavirus-variant-covid.

2. N. P. Johnson and J. Mueller, “Updating the Accounts: Global Mortality of the 1918–1920 ‘Spanish’ Influenza Pandemic,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 76, no. 1 (2002): 105–15, doi:10.1353/bhm.2002.0022. Figures on the death toll of the flu in New York City vary. Francesco Aimone’s figure of thirty thousand includes deaths from both flu and pneumonia, a common combination of illnesses that contributed to the deadly nature of the flu. See Francesco Aimone, “The 1918 Influenza Epidemic in New York City: A Review of the Public Health Response,” Public Health Reports volume 125, Supplement 3 (2010): 71–79. Useful books on the flu epidemic of 1918 include Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); and Laura Spinney, Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu and How it Changed the World (New York: Public Affairs, 2017).

3. Dave Crenshaw, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, April 17, 2023.

4. Richard Brea, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, April 17, 2023.

5. Re’gan Weal, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, March 23, 2023.

6. Veronica E. Fletcher, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, March 23, 2023.

7. Steven Palmer, interviewed by Robert W. Snyder, March 4, 2023.

8. Keerthan Thiyagarajah, interviewed by Joyce Ma for the COVID-19 Asian American Oral History Project at LaGuardia Community College, CUNY, December 23, 2021.

Conclusion

1. Paul Starr, “Reckoning with National Failure: The Case of Covid,” Liberties 1, no 3 (spring 2021): 73.

2. Klinenberg, 2020, 366–69. The point on the interdependence of strangers was once made by the late Michael Harrington, citing Karl Marx.

Annotate

Next Chapter
Contributors
PreviousNext
Copyright © 2025 by Robert W. Snyder
Powered by Manifold Scholarship. Learn more at
Opens in new tab or windowmanifoldapp.org