For weeks, bus drivers in New York City begged their bosses for N95 masks to protect themselves against the spread of Covid-19. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, heeding the advice of the Centers for Disease Control, insisted they weren’t necessary, only to change course at the beginning of April.
The USNS comfort, the navy hospital ship deployed to New York City this week, was supposed to house 1,000 patients. Instead, it’s taken in only 20, refusing to accept New Yorkers suffering with coronavirus.
On Monday, Amazon fired a warehouse worker who had been protesting about conditions at a New York City facility during the coronavirus outbreak. Chris Smalls, an assistant manager and organizer, had led a walkout demanding Amazon temporarily shut the facility for cleaning after multiple workers tested positive for Covid-19.
As the novel coronavirus rages in New York, killing more than a thousand and locking down millions, Governor Andrew Cuomo has emerged as the hero of the moment. On television, he is everything Donald Trump is not: calm, coherent, and blunt, in a strangely reassuring way.
With more than twenty thousand conformed COVID-19 cases, New York is the American epicenter of the pandemic. The state is effectively locked down. And its governor, Andrew Cuomo, is a media star.
Douglas Washington knows people like him are standing between modern civilization and the abyss. “It’s been rough,” Washington said. “I’ve been in the industry almost 25 years and I’ve never witnessed—I don’t believe anybody has witnessed—anything like this.”
Gov. Andrew Cuomo “has emerged as the executive best suited for the coronavirus crisis,” wrote the New York Times’ Ben Smith, sharing a sentiment that has hardened among close watchers of New York politics.
Rebecca Parson, like many progressive insurgents running for Congress, was hoping to ride a strong ground game to victory. Knocking on doors in Washington State’s 6th Congressional District, which ropes in most of the city of Tacoma, she was aiming to lay the groundwork to pull off an upset again Derek Kilmer, a centrist Democrat and deficit hawk.
Bowing to overwhelming pressure from teachers, union leaders, and elected officials, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Sunday evening that he will be closing the city’s public schools, the largest school system in America.
“The New York Times was a timeless blend of past and present, a medieval modern kingdom within a nation with its own private laws and values and with leaders who felt responsibility for the nation’s welfare but were less likely to lie than the nation’s statesman and generals,” Gay Talese writes in The Kingdom and the Power, his 1969 account of the inner workings of the New York Times.