Category: Uncategorized

Posted on

Coronavirus Update From New York City: June 11, 2020

First of all, I apologize for getting this post out very late in the evening. Today,,and this week, quite frankly, have been extremely busy and hectic for me, and one result of that is a post that’s coming out later than I had hoped.

Anyway, New York City started the first phase of reopening last Monday. What this means is that industries such as non-essential construction, manufacturing, and wholesale trade (to name a few) are getting back in business here. For more details on what this first phase involves, I encourage you to visit the section of my state’s website that addresses what industries can open up during this first phase.

I must emphasize that this is only the beginning of the reopening process. Not everything is open–far from it. In fact, different regions in New York State are opening in phases, and there are four phases involved in reopening. I’ve heard that some regions are up to the third phase of four, which means that said regions are seemingly getting close to normal. New York City, however, has some work to do before getting to even the third phase, as we have barely entered the first phase. We are continuing in the right direction here in New York City, but we still have a little ways to go, I think, before we get back to “normal,” whether that be the old normal or a “new normal.”

As to where that leaves me, I have an office job, so I am in what you may call a “Phase Two” industry (the next phase of reopening). What this means is that, as we head towards the end of June, I might have the ability to go to my physical office again, with “might” being the key word. The reason I use the word might is because there’s no rush to get back to the physical office I work in, as the office I work in has discovered that we can by-in-large do 95% of our the tasks from home. Even when we do reopen our physical office, I’m expecting this “new normal” to look different from the old normal.

So, that’s pretty much it from me, and again, my apologies for getting this post published so late today. I hope others are doing well!

Posted on

Coronavirus Update From New York City: June 4, 2020

The news in recent days has focused more on the unjust police killing of George Floyd (and its aftermath) than the coronavirus, and understandably so. That being said, as there is an ongoing coronavirus situation in my city and state, I would like to provide my usual weekly update.

On all fronts, everyone in my family is doing physically okay. All of us remain healthy, though allergies definitely continue to be an issue! The other day I had a coughing fit because of those allergies while I was outside, and I was legitimately worried that someone would confront me for the coughing fit! Thankfully, that didn’t happen.

While I already mentioned above that I’m not going to go too much into the situation with the anti-racism protests in New York, it’s worth my mentioning that I don’t live near the center of it all, so the abnormally heavy police presence that some of you may be hearing about from New York doesn’t apply to me. It applies to my friends who live in or near areas where these protests are happening, though.

New York City seems to be continuing to go in the right direction with regards to the coronavirus. We have not started our reopening process yet, but Governor Cuomo has said that if we continue heading in the right direction in New York City, we might be able to begin the reopening process on June 8th. Fingers crossed. Hopefully by this time next week, I will be talking about a New York City that’s beginning a safe reopening process.

People may be wondering how the protests over systemic racism (which I unequivocally support, not that the protests need my support) may affect COVID rates. Based on what I’ve seen on television, it looks like the overwhelming majority of protesters are wearing face masks, which are key in trying to keep the coronavirus from transmitting to others (even if you have it yourself). Since so many of the protesters are wearing face masks, I am not as worried as some about how the protests may affect coronavirus transmission. We’ll see if my lack of worry holds true.

I hope others are doing okay!

Posted on

Coronavirus Update From New York City: May 27, 2020

I hope that everybody had a good Memorial Day weekend!

Everyone in my immediate family remains healthy. That being said, I’m glad that I’m not spending tons of time in public, because at times I get allergies that can cause me to have coughing fits (and coughing fits that can result in people being concerned about me). Employment continues to not be an issue for me, though I am knowing more and more people who are having issues with being furloughed or unemployed.

The situation is continuing to move in the right direction in New York City and New York State.

At the state level, nine of the state’s ten regions are beginning the process of reopening their economies, though I must emphasize that it is a process. There are four phases involved in reopening a region in New York, and these regions are only beginning to enter the first phase. Nevertheless, it is a positive step that we’re seemingly having the pandemic enough under control that we can begin to reopen things. It is also a positive step that daily deaths from COVID-19 in New York State has dropped below 100 on a regular basis.

The only region that has not begun that process of reopening is…New York City. We don’t yet have the adequate contact tracing, and we don’t yet have a high enough availability of hospital beds to reopen safely; for those two reasons, we are not able to reopen yet. That being said, our numbers are trending in the right direction even in New York City, and I am hopeful that in the next couple of weeks, New York City will also begin the process of a measured and safe reopening.

With many places reopening (including most of New York State), I think it is worth discussing what the “endgame” is for these weekly COVID update posts. My plan is that I will continue doing these update posts until it is clear that New York City is opening up safely (which, to me, means that the situation in New York City looks okay for a month to six weeks after beginning to reopen). I think it is important to document for curious readers how the reopening process is going, and whether the situation continues to improve or not where I am. If, after four-six weeks, the reopening appears to be going safely, then I will wind down these weekly update posts. However, if the much-feared second wave of the virus comes, these weekly updates would return at a later point. And, of course, if the reopening doesn’t go well, then I will continue these updates, so that my readers know how things are going in New York.

I hope that others are doing well! I’m hearing mixed reviews of how reopening is going in various states and regions.

P.S. For those of you into numbers, I encourage you to visit New York’s Regional Monitoring Dashboard. This dashboard allows you to see how all the regions of New York State (New York City being one of them) is performing with several critical metrics that need to be met before reopening begins: decline in hospitalizations, decline in hospital deaths, new hospitalizations, hospital bed availability, ICU bed availability, testing capacity, and contact tracing capacity.

P.P.S. I actually intended to publish this tomorrow. I thought I had this scheduled for tomorrow at 6, but instead I published this today at 6. Oh well. Tomorrow evening is busy for me anyway, so perhaps it’s better that I have my update today. Future update posts will be on Thursdays, starting next Thursday.

Posted on

Coronavirus Update From New York City: May 7, 2020

I hope that all my readers are doing well, staying healthy, and staying safe.

I continue to remain physically healthy, and so does the rest of my family. We also remain financially healthy, as nobody in my family has lost jobs due to the pandemic. I have also been able to get two things done on the blogging front:

  • I had a guest post on another blog. Namely, I had a guest post on how segregation in a major city is not just a Philadelphia issue (the blogger has written about racial segregation in her home city of Philadelphia, among other things). Thanks to fellow blogger Kayla for publishing this post, and I encourage you all to check out her blog, Dear Destiny!
  • I now have a page on my blog titled “2020 Coronavirus Diary.” On that page, I have links to all of these weekly update posts on the coronavirus in New York, as well as blog posts relevant to the coronavirus. This page was created with the goal of others being able to see what the virus was like in New York City, an epicenter of it.

While I’m happy these things happened, these are really temporary distractions from the current grim reality. Last week, I made a mention of my mom’s calculation that we have sixteen friends, family members of friends, or friends of friends who have died from the coronavirus. Now, I think that count is above twenty.

My state is continuing to experience declines in hospitalizations, intensive care unit admissions, and deaths. A few weeks ago, we were losing 700-800 New Yorkers a day. Now, we’re losing 200-300 New Yorkers a day. Granted, every life lost is awful, but I present this contrast between 700-800 daily deaths and 200-300 daily deaths to hopefully show others (particularly those who are eager to reopen before hospitalizations and deaths drop down significantly) that these measures, harsh as they may seem, are saving lives.

Hopefully, these positive trends in New York continue in the coming weeks. On May 15th, parts of the state will start to reopen, starting with parts of the state that haven’t been as severely affected by the coronavirus as other parts of the state (so New York City is likely not reopening on May 15th). At that, New York will start with some industries in less affected parts of the state where social distancing can still be practiced in the work that is done (for example, some forms of construction). Given how badly New York has been hit by the coronavirus, Governor Cuomo seems to be (rightly, in my opinion) taking a cautious approach to reopening the state.

So, when you’re hearing stories around this time next week about New York starting to open back up again, that may apply to people in parts of the state, but it likely won’t apply to New York City.

Do you have any outstanding questions about how I’m doing or how New York is doing? If so, feel free to ask in the comments section below!

Posted on

Coronavirus Update From New York City: April 30, 2020

As I started thinking about what to write for today’s coronavirus update piece, it dawned on me that I’ve been providing updates for nearly a month and a half. Indeed, I provided my first update on March 19th, and here I am, providing my seventh weekly update at the end of April!

There have been no changes in terms of my own health and my family’s health. No change is good news, as it means none of us have still received coronavirus symptoms. All of us in the household are definitely looking forward to the day that we can see whether we have already contracted the coronavirus and were possibly asymptomatic. That being said, I would like the antibody testing for the coronavirus to get more accurate first before getting a test myself, because apparently, the current antibody tests (tests that look for antibodies to determine whether someone has already gotten the virus) are quite inaccurate and have the potential to mislead people into thinking they were already infected.[1]

While the death rate has lowered overall (more on that in the next paragraph), one thing that has set in, at least in my family, is the magnitude of the losses we have suffered from the coronavirus. My mom calculated recently that we have sixteen friends, family members of friends, or friends of friends who have died from the coronavirus. I think that number has gone up since my mom did her count a couple of days ago. That’s a lot of loss.

Speaking of the overall death rate, while the numbers are still way too high, they are also trending downwards. The number of coronavirus patients in hospitals and in the intensive care units at hospitals are also down. While I don’t feel that New York City is ready to reopen yet, I do find it encouraging that social distancing seems to be working (though I wish we started it sooner…some experts assert that starting this sooner could’ve saved many thousands of lives in New York). If we get a resurgence of this in the fall, as some experts are predicting, I definitely hope that an early and aggressive effort at social distancing can minimize loss of life.

If you are curious to see up-to-date information on what the coronavirus numbers are like in New York City, I definitely encourage you (in addition to reading my posts on Thursday) to consult this coronavirus tracker provided by a publication called The City. This tracker provides you with information on the number of new tests and cases per day, both city-wide and by borough (I’m in Queens). Their tracker also provides you with information on hospital and ICU admissions, among other things. So, if you’re eager to see what the situation is in New York City but you just can’t wait for my next Thursday update post, feel free to consult the tracker.

Before ending this post, I should note that I will have a new page on my blog called “2020 Coronavirus Diary.” While these posts definitely are valuable in the here-and-now for providing updates on how I’m doing and how New York City is doing, I think these posts could also be valuable years and even decades from now when people are wondering what it was like to be in the epicenter of that pandemic in 2020. It’s not something I have up right now, but I hope to get the page up over the weekend.

That’s pretty much it from me. How are all of you doing?

[1] https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/27/reliable-antibody-tests-coronavirus-207589