The lessons of crises past
his will pass. This will pass through, and we’re gonna be even stronger for it,” Donald Trump said Friday, as he finally declared the federal state of emergency he’d been loathe to while running for reelection and that he says will allow for widespread coronavirus testing within days, though it’s not clear how vital that is given the community spread here. “We learned a lot, a tremendous amount has been learned.”
I’m not an epidemiologist, but I can assure you that the people in the news businesses are having the same tough time as everyone else keeping up with events — states of emergency, market mayhem, school closures, queues and quotas at groceries, a foolish and flailing president — for the front of the paper. Turning to the back, the question is how (and for how long) to cover sports in a world without them for now. For print readers, the question may be whether you want to touch the paper at all.
It’s a scary, humbling time to be alive, though they all are if you stop to notice.
Catastrophes tend to expose existing problems, like the insanity and obscenity of an employer-provided healthcare system and the limits of our leaders and institutions.
City Council Speaker Corey Johnson said Friday that “We came together after 9/11. We came together after Hurricane Sandy. We are strong people, we look out for each other. We’ll do that now. This is not business as usual, but it’s not a time to panic.”
Indeed. I have a few observations to share from those earlier disasters that might be worth sharing now, with all due respect to Gov. Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio and the other exhausted leaders here making difficult decisions from fast-moving information.
It was weeks after 9/11, and days after Oprah Winfrey had proclaimed him “America’s mayor,” that Rudy Giuliani, who’d pledged “our skyline will rise again,” declared that “the air quality is safe and acceptable” at and around Ground Zero. First responders are still dying now because he and other public officials made such declarations then.
I thought about that as de Blasio, with an eye on vulnerable New Yorkers and determined to take a different course on the issue than his predecessor, has fiercely resisted (at least as I write this Friday) calls from parents, elected officials including Johnson, and the teachers union to close the schools.
Many NYCHA buildings were ravaged during Sandy, with residents trapped without working elevators or electricity or water. Nearly eight years later, hand-washing is essential yet earlier this week about 6,000 NYCHA residents living in buildings without hot water or running water.
Just before Sandy, Mayor Mike Bloomberg, asked about what would happen at Rikers, replied: “Don’t worry about anyone getting out.” The medical examiner’s plan for a pandemic here says inmates will be ferried to Hart Island to dig graves if we get to that point. The Department of Correction plan for Rikers, obtained by news site
The City, isn’t much better. This even as Italy has had prison riots after visits were cut off (they haven’t been yet at Rikers, though the officers union is asking for that), and Iran freed 70,000 prisoners.
After Sandy ravaged corners of the city, New Yorkers saw what capable citizens could do when they stepped up and used technology to organize and take care of each other, delivering food, medicine and care where the government did not.
Finally, remember that every crisis is someone’s opportunity. The double disaster of Hurricane Katrina and the botched government response to it became the prelude to transforming New Orleans’ population and character.
Now, the coronavirus is already serving as a massive beta test for employers letting employees work from home. For colleges and universities and even primary schools to roll out distance learning. And as a buying opportunity for speculators who have been eyeing Manhattan’s Chinatown, among other places here, for decades as long-established businesses begin to shutter.
harrysiegel@gmail.com