A post-pandemic, now-endemic snapshot of New York City during a Covid surge
Hi friends, thought I’d write an update from Brooklyn, and from the Northeast Tri-State area (“Tri-State” is loosely defined as the NY-NJ-CT region in which people live somewhat near NYC and can get to it within an hour-plus.)
It’s May. The weather is warming up, people are getting outside more… and at this time last year (2021) Covid cases had plummeted, everyone was newly vaccinated, and there was eager talk of a coming “hot vaxx summer” — which turned out to be true until it wasn’t.
Now it’s May 2022, and a very different picture. Multiple subvariants of Omicron and Omicron BA.2 have reached us, and the spread of disease is rampant. I’ve been possibly-exposed from three different directions in the past several days. Our planned friends’ picnic in the park tomorrow has dropped from 20 to 14 due to Covid and it may fall further. I cancelled a long-awaited club/dance event uptown last night; it’s just too risky especially right now.
I walk around outside a lot here in Brooklyn. Doing so, you overhear things. 1-sided cell phone conversations, groups of people at outdoor dining tables, etc. And I am overhearing a lot of chatter about how many of us, once again, are testing positive… and, sadly, this time around — and yes this is anecdotal — but it seems that those who test positive seem to be getting a bit sicker this time, compared to the Dec/Jan Omicron wave. One of my kid’s three teachers at the preschool down the street cleared her Covid in 5-6 days but she has remained sick, unable to return to work for like 2.5 weeks now. She’s around 30 in age and healthy-appearing. Other friends have reported longer fevers, worse sore throats. Just yesterday I was eating a Korean lunch plate while a young woman at the table behind me relayed the latest who-has-it to her friend, and then, speaking of a mutual friend, “I tried to tell him, ‘dude, if it feels like something is really scraping your throat… that’s not a cold.’’
Friends in the NYC ‘burbs, parents, are reporting a real wave of Covid cases running through middle schools and high schools right now. Again — this is in the Northeast, in May. Prognosticators a short while ago were telling us, well, looks like there’s a seasonal cycle to this thing, inevitable winter spikes and then spring gets much better, etc.
Nope.
If a new subvariant (or several, which is happening now) comes around and can spread more effectively and cause longer sickness on average…. guess what, Covid don’t care what time of year it is.
And the official NYC numbers (click here and scroll down just a little for the chart) — which show cases rising but not a high spike — are way, way, way underreported. You all probably understand this. Back during the Omicron Christmas/New Years spike, at-home testing kits ran out citywide. Completely. Bare shelves, hoarding, zero. EVERYBODY who had symptoms, or was exposed, or needed proof of a neg test, or was just worried, had to go stand in those long lines — get that rapid or PCR — and thus everybody was reporting into the official NYC numbers. And frankly, that’s the main reason why that spike looks so much worse than this one.
Now? Everybody is testing on their own, at home, with kits which are available everywhere. And when or if they test positive? They decide on their own how to handle it. Most people tell family, text friends, maybe post it on social media (or not)… and hopefully they strictly quarantine for the required # of days, but even that has become a policy blur in most people’s brains around here. Is it 5? Is it 10? Something something, “you know, they keep changing it.”
Bottom line: You can no longer trust the official case #s for even a clue of how bad a surge or wave is. I am telling you straight up, this current surge is nearly as rampant as Omicron Covid was four months ago. It’s EVERYWHERE and hitting a LOT of us. And I reckon only 10% to 15% of the actual cases of Covid right now in New York City, 10% to 15% at best, are being counted in official numbers.
Last time I posted on this topic, another poster dogged me about not having data. Well, I don’t. Nobody does. I know this kills the hard-facts-science-statistics types, it goes against everything you hold dear — but this is a moment where anecdotal input is more accurate than the official data, if you’re asking how Covidy is New York City right now. Trust more of what you’re seeing and hearing in the world around you. I am not this way (“don’t believe the government, believe people on your Facebook feed”) about almost anything else, but I am this way right now about the prevalence of Covid in Brooklyn.
Also — math time — this new round of Covid BA.2 subvariants is said to be, once again, maybe “twice as contagious” (it’s hard for the epidemiology field to get firm data on it so quickly) as what’s come before, which was X times more contagious than what had preceded it, etc, etc etc. I’ve lost count. Is this new Covid 16x more contagious than original Covid, or are we approaching 32x more contagious? It almost doesn’t matter. Some of the friends of mine who are sick now, were being a hell of a lot more careful than I was.
So, how do people seem to be responding to this?
Carrying on.
Dining indoors. Going to the gym. Going out to Broadway (if the show hasn’t cancelled, which a handful have done and will do). Going to a Yankees or Mets game. In the schools, teenage sports, in which the kids pant like dogs from exertion, are all on.
Over in Northern New Jersey (aka suburban NYC), the schools dropped their in-school mask mandates a while ago and are now dealing with large-scale Covid outbreaks. Some of these schools are making the kids put masks back on — some aren’t — but it’s pretty much too late, the spread is massive. Also, children and teenagers wear their masks carelessly no matter what; yes, masking helps, something is better than nothing, but your typical 12 year old is not going to wear it all day in a conscientious manner.
And people are coming to NYC from all over the world, yup the tourists are definitely here again, to sightsee and shop and dine and enjoy a show. I feel sure this is why we are getting those hyper-contagious new overseas BA.2 subvariants awful quick. They come here because a slice of all humanity comes here. Randy Shilts’ well known book “And The Band Played On”, which was the first full length book to chronicle the entire AIDS epidemic narrative-journalism style, opened with those portentous lines:
July 4, 1976
New York Harbor
Tall sails scraped the deep purple night as rockets burst, flared, and flourished red, white, and blue over the stoic Statue of Liberty. The whole world was watching, it seemed; the whole world was there. Ships from fifty-five nations had poured sailors into Manhattan to join the throngs, counted in the millions, who watched the greatest pyrotechnic extravaganza ever mounted, all for Americas 200th birthday party. Deep into the morning, bars all over the city were crammed with sailors. New York City had hosted the greatest party ever known, everybody agreed later. The guests had come from all over the world.
This was the part of the epidemiologists with later note, when they stayed up late at night and the conversation drifted toward where it had started and when. They would remember that glorious night in New York harbor, all those sailors, and recall: from all over the world they came to New York.
That was why Original Covid zoomed on in here from Wuhan, China without much delay. Then our own population density took care of the rest.
So here we are. We have collectively chosen to just live our lives here in the Big City, and it turns out that means we marinate in occasional surges and waves of Coronavirus. Like right now. Vaccinated mostly, yes we are, but still some of us are getting quite sick, and the continually growing data on “long covid” (debilitating symptoms that linger long past the clearing of infection) is worrisome.
So hello from Brooklyn. With respect to Covid and society right now, what are things like in your part of the world?
