COVID-19 burns across much of the nation: 48,000 new cases Tuesday, up 82 percent from two weeks ago; eight states set new highs. National totals: almost 2.7 million cases, 127,700 deaths.
Too late, local politicians are retreating from reopening plans. (Let's not even discuss the federal non-response beyond a word: murderous.) Mayor Bill de Blasio says New York City restaurants won’t resume indoor service next week; nor will those in New Jersey. (My local favorite, Gabe McMackin’s The Finch, closed for good.) This seems essential; JPMorgan analyzed credit card and viral data to show a correlation between restaurant spending and new infections (along with a correlation between supermarket spending and falling infection rates).
Arizona just shut bars, water parks, gyms, movie theaters; Texas closed bars; Florida banned indoor bars; Miami-Dade County closed beaches, set a curfew, limited hotel pool bars; California banned bars, indoor dining in 19 counties covering 70 percent of the its population; L.A. County closed beaches, canceled July 4 fireworks. New York City is keeping locations of its fireworks shows secret to discourage attendees from camping out.
The stock market has been performing remarkably (or cluelessly) well in the face of this disastrous news: down 4 percent in 2020, up 25 percent from its late March nadir. But it remains jittery: roughly two in five S&P 500 companies won’t issue guidance about expected performance for the next two quarters, citing viral uncertainty.
Despite fears of viral spread from #BLM protests, COVID-19 cases in New York have remained steady: after finally dipping below 1,000 cases a day on June 6 (from a peak of 11,571 on April 14), they fell as low as 391 Sunday before climbing back above 500 cases each of the next two days. Still, every resident I talk to falls somewhere between “wary” and “terrified.”
The Girlfriend and I ate dinner outside a restaurant once, had dumplings at an outdoor table in Chinatown, enjoyed a drink another time; we also have al fresco dinner reservations with friends Thursday night. Up and down streets in Downtown Brooklyn, Fort Greene, Chinatown, SoHo, restaurants have set up barriers (often smelling of fresh-cut plywood) on streets and sidewalks to demarcate new dining space; many have umbrellas for rain or sun protection. (Our umbrella in Chinatown, insufficiently secured with a couple of bricks, blew inside out; a passing pedestrian helped the proprietor reassemble it.)
All this congregating unnerves some. A friend posted on social media: "Restaurants are setting up tables against storefronts and also on the street where parked cars would usually be, leaving a narrow walkway between packed tables for maskless diners to navigate. This is concerning on many levels, not least of which is that there's nothing to prevent nonchalant passersby from sneezing all over your spaghetti. I don't know about you, but this is FREAKING ME OUT.”
Another friend responded: “Restaurant owners are caught between a rock and a hard place. Much of their overhead never went away, and they have new outlays to create a safe serving and dining environment. I'm in no hurry to patronize an outdoor café for the reasons you've cited but have no answers for people whose livelihood is circling the drain.”
As is standard in CoronaWorld, absence of certainty leaves us all making decisions in a vacuum. Hair cuts? (The Girlfriend got one last week; she’s willing to buzz my mostly bald pate, so I skip that quandary.) Doctor’s visits? (We’ve done those.) Dentists? Taxis? Subways? Playgrounds? How safe are hard surfaces?
Summer schools, for enrollees like The Girlfriend’s college-aged son, are all online. But fall plans remain uncertain: The Son is set to return to his New Jersey private college and dorm come late August. My sister’s public college on the Eastern Seaboard is set to reopen, too. Bureaucrats at institutions public and private are all swinging (or whistling) in the dark.
Following is a social media conversation started by alums from Bard College, my alma mater, a couple of hours north of New York City in the Hudson River valley:
Friend 1: “I was disheartened to hear the vagueness of the reopening plan on the president’s call today. He seemed to yada-yada over all the important details around distancing, wearing masks, testing, etc., instead placing responsibility for safety of students and staff on a third-party organization they've hired to provide public health expertise. He is scathingly dismissive of online learning (no news there) and instead seems to be justifying the decision to bring students and staff back on an argument about how universities have existed for 1,000 years, so we need historical perspective. I'll be blunt: I think reopening in August is irresponsible.”
Friend 2: “No good choices right now. We know the schools need tuition income. We have a diabetic sophomore we’re supposed to send back to D.C.; we’re making plans to do that, but everything feels like a bad plan these days, and there is zero chance it will be anywhere near resolved before we have to act.”
Friend 3: “Senior heading back for his last year. Scary for us but he wants/needs to get back to his life. Ultimately we need to trust him and hope the school gets it right.”
Friend 4: “Absolutely irresponsible, especially since a lot of students are from New York already and have been through hell. Why reopen the box too soon?”
Friend 5: “I keep hearing over and over: ‘Everyone needs to get on with their lives.’ But at the expense of … their lives?”
Friend 6: “My daughter is starting at Emory this fall. Like many schools, they are starting earlier and running through Thanksgiving. Freshmen will take finals online. The next semester is TBD. I live in Maine where Bowdoin is restricting its Fall semester to incoming students only. There is no golden ticket, perfect plan. So many of these young adults are just that: young adults. They cannot stay at home until….. It is their world as well as ours to navigate.”
Friend 7: “I have a son starting at Bard in August. I swing between fear and calm. They have what seems to me to be a very substantial plan in place. Will students follow it? I don't know. Do I believe that my child will make intelligent decisions? Yes. Will I be checking in with him a LOT? Yes. Am I happy that his class is the one to shoulder this grand experiment? No. Does he need to begin to navigate through his world? Absolutely. His father is a theater professor at another private college in upstate New York. They in NO WAY have even close to as specific a plan as my son’s college.”
Friend 8: “I live in Rhinebeck now, so my concern is with uncareful Bard-ons spreading the disease in my community, where many aren't young and fit. If Bard does it safely, deliberately and with a few minor, thoughtful measures that will reduce the risk of contagion, and contain the spread when it appears, then I have little to worry about. Hiring a public health company sounds sensible, if they will do the hard work of organizing testing, managing the isolation and contact tracing of positive cases.”
Friend 9: “That’s what they said was their plan. Testing, isolation/quarantine in a separate location, online learning until they are cleared. Meals delivered to their rooms. And yes, depending on what state officials are saying at Thanksgiving, students may not be allowed back for finals and have to do them online. It’s all about how they handle an outbreak when one happens. That and depending on peer pressure and personal responsibility to have students follow rules and protocols.”
Friend 10: “Freshman drop-offs will be staggered Aug 4-7: health screening, only two people allowed to drop kid off, no visits, lots of mask protocols.”
Friend 11: “Unless every student will have a negative test prior to stepping on campus, Bard will probably have an outbreak. Social distance will end at the keg that first weekend. You cannot ‘social distance’ in a Double!”
Friend 12: “I live in a town where Bard kids live. I don’t wanna die cause kids are bored or someone needs a haircut or drink or whatever the fuck and can’t wait a couple more months for the infection to get down to 1:1.”
Friend 13: “I think of how young and impulsive I was when I went to Bard and it fills me with fear for my kid heading to Colorado State. So many more people.”
Friend 14: “At the college where I work, the University of Iowa, students living in the dorms and using meal plans have to sign an updated housing/dining contract freeing the university from liability for COVID-19 infections. Nothing screams 'RUN FOR YOUR LIVES' like a liability clause. I'm very disturbed by my institution's planning and priorities in this disaster.”
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