Who we need to care for now

The millions of fortunate New Yorkers now burrowing into the safety and relative comfort of home should remain concerned about the many people left to weather the coronavirus pandemic without sufficient help.

It should be clear by now that this crisis does not neatly exclude anybody, no matter how much money, power, youth and good health they possess. It should also be clear that leaving thousands of our neighbors exposed to the virus means the plague will continue its deadly rampage.

Some of the most vulnerable and overlooked people are the 30,000 New Yorkers who have intellectual or developmental disabilities and live in congregate settings. They are a subset of the 140,000 people in our state who have autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy and other developmental issues.

“Those 30,000 people are living in group homes and residences throughout New York State,” says Marco Damiani, the CEO of AHRC New York City. “Some people are pretty capable and they just need a few hours a day of help. Others are really people who have chronic healthcare conditions and it’s not unlike a small nursing home.”

The problem is that it’s difficult to implement social distancing and other measures to stop the spread of coronavirus in nursing homes and small group homes.

“We have 800 people living with us. At this point, 45 have tested positive. Another 95 to 100 are showing symptoms,” Damiani told me. That’s an infection rate that could be higher than 17%.

“We have over 100 locations around New York City, so we’re staffing these places up. We have nurses and direct support professionals who are doing an amazing job working with this population. But they require the kinds of support that many people in nursing homes do,” he says.

The therapists and counselors who work with the developmentally disabled should be considered frontline workers and provided with personal protective gear — and training — so they can continue doing their work safely.

“I think we’re good for another three weeks or so,” Damiani says. “The government’s been helpful. They’re beginning to provide some funding stability for the next several weeks. I’m concerned that getting past April, we need to be strong. Our workforce needs to be intact and we need to be able to come out of this crisis.”

That goes double for the 4,000 men and women who staff the city’s ambulances. The city’s uniformed emergency medical technicians and paramedics have been answering more than 7,000 calls every single day — more than the volume of calls on 9/11.

They come in direct, daily contact with people who are sick from coronavirus and ferry them to the hospital, and they need more than just masks and gowns to work safely.

Oren Barzilay, the president of Local 2507, which represents EMTs and paramedics, says 50 of his members have tested positive for coronavirus and hundreds more show symptoms. Barzilay told me these first responders need full-body protective suits to prevent more of them from getting sick.

If we don’t have enough ambulance personnel to respond to calls — whether for the virus or for heart attacks and other “normal” emergencies — our already overstretched health system could collapse.

And even before the current crisis ends, we should boost the pay of these frontline workers. EMTs get a starting salary of $16 to $17 an hour, only slightly above minimum wage. Barzilay told me the low pay leads to high turnover in the ranks, with as much as 75% of the workforce leaving the job within five years.

“We are never going to be the same; we can’t forget what happened here,” Cuomo said at a coronavirus briefing this week. “I don’t think we get back to normal. We get to a new normal.”

The new normal needs to be a city where we take much better care of the most vulnerable and the frontline workers who serve them.

Louis is political anchor of NY1 News.