Here’s what you need to know:
- An Amazon warehouse worker on Staten Island was fired after leading a walkout.
- The Empire State Building, honoring emergency workers, alarms some New Yorkers.
- The Central Park field hospital opens today.
- Alone, 105, and in a nursing home threatened by the virus.
- The Empire State of Mind is anxious, depressed and disconnected.
An Amazon warehouse worker on Staten Island was fired after leading a walkout.
A group of workers walked off the job at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island on Monday, and a sickout called by Whole Foods Market workers is set for today, as front line workers protest what they see as inadequate safety measures and insufficient pay for the risks they confront.
Amazon fired one of the workers who led the Staten Island walkout.
The spread of the coronavirus is highlighting the economic inequality that is a fact of American life. While white collar workers have begun answering emails and crafting PowerPoint slides from home, service workers and laborers — at least those who have not lost their jobs — have continued to report to work, putting themselves and their families in the path of the virus.
“There’s absolutely racial and class inequities baked into this crisis,” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a radio interview on Tuesday about the protests. “If you are able to stay home, you are a privileged person in this moment and in this crisis.”
The Staten Island worker who was fired, Christian Smalls, said he had advised a colleague who was visibly ill to go home last week. She later tested positive for the virus.
Mr. Smalls said he had told management that the center should close for two weeks because there was no way to know how many other workers had been infected.
“She had been there the previous week,” Mr. Smalls said of his colleague, adding that other workers at the facility were complaining of symptoms like fever. “We don’t know how long she’s been positive.”
Not long after the protest, an Amazon spokeswoman said by email that Mr. Smalls had been fired because he had violated social-distancing guidelines and had come to the site Monday after having been told to stay home, “further putting the teams at risk.”
New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, called the firing “disgraceful” on Twitter and said she would ask the National Labor Relations Board to investigate.
Workers at Whole Foods have called for a sickout on Tuesday to demand paid leave for all workers who must isolate themselves and a doubling of pay to compensate for the risk of working.
The Empire State Building, honoring emergency workers, alarms some New Yorkers.
The tower lights of the Empire State Building blared red with a whirling red-and-white beacon on Monday night to pay respect to health care workers, police officers and firefighters who have confronted the spread of the coronavirus.
“Starting tonight through the Covid-19 battle, our signature white lights will be replaced by the heartbeat of America with a white and red siren in the mast for heroic emergency workers on the front line of the fight,” the building’s Twitter account said.
Some New Yorkers appreciated the tribute, but others found it less than comforting.
“The intention is great, but the effect is terrifying,” said one response to the tweet. “TURN IT OFF. TURN IT OFF,” said another.
Many who said that they lived close to the building expressed alarm at the signal. Others made memes.
In an unintentional nod at the city’s anxious mood, the tower also broadcast “Empire State of Mind,” the anthem by Alicia Keys.
The Central Park field hospital opens today.
Central Park, one of the world’s most well-known gathering places, will open its East Meadow to hospital patients today as the city continues to transform itself in extraordinary ways in the battle against the coronavirus.
A field hospital with 68 beds has been erected under tents on the meadow to treat coronavirus patients from Mount Sinai Health System’s hospitals in Brooklyn and Queens. It was put up by a nonprofit called Samaritan’s Purse, working with the city.
The move to leverage the park’s vast open space comes one day after a naval hospital ship docked on Manhattan’s West Side and an emergency 1,000-bed hospital at the Javits convention center opened its doors. Both of those are treating patients who are not infected with the coronavirus, to help free up beds in conventional hospitals for more virus patients.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said on MSNBC on Monday. “It feels like the kind of thing you experience in wartime.”
Alone, 105, and in a nursing home threatened by the virus.
For five years, twin sisters have visited their 105-year-old mother every night in her nursing home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, bringing dinner, feeding her, overseeing her medications.
But two weeks ago, nursing homes barred visitors. Now the sisters have no idea what condition their mother is in or whether anyone is taking care of her.
“We don’t know how she’s going to survive this,” said Gerry Baker, one of the sisters. “When we couldn’t see her, it felt as if my mom had transitioned and we were waiting to have the funeral.”
New York’s nursing homes have long been chronically understaffed, leaving family members to fill critical gaps, from feeding loved ones to checking for bedsores or infection. Now those family members are locked out, and existing workers are getting sick, quarantined or quitting because the work has become too dangerous.
At the same time, some nursing homes say they cannot get the personal protective equipment they need because it is going to hospitals. At ArchCare, which runs five nursing homes, workers wear rain ponchos and beauticians’ gowns. By Sunday the five homes had around 150 cases of Covid-19, and a number of deaths, said Scott LaRue, the president.
“I can’t test, I don’t have PPE,” he said. “What am I supposed to do?”
The Empire State of Mind is anxious, depressed and disconnected.
If in recent days you’ve felt like the collective anxiety in New York has been pervasive and overwhelming, a new survey suggests that you are right.
According to the latest week of data collected and analyzed by the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Health Policy, almost half of New York City residents — 44 percent — reported feeling nervous, anxious or on-edge three to four days a week or more. And 35 percent of city dwellers said they felt down, depressed, or hopeless a similar amount of the time.
The researchers had not asked those questions before, so it was not clear if those numbers were higher than normal.
But the percentage of respondents who said they felt “not at all socially connected” in what is normally one of the world’s most bustling cities doubled from the week before, to 43 percent.
The data offers a quantitative measure of the city’s psychological well-being at a time when New Yorkers find themselves under extraordinary economic, emotional and health-related duress.
The survey found that the number of people reporting that they know someone who has tested positive for the coronavirus doubled in a week’s time.
More than a third of respondents said they or someone in their household had lost a job.
Nearly 60 percent of those who pay rent said they feared being evicted. And a third of city residents said they were seriously considering moving.
“It is clear that the economic burden of coronavirus is falling disproportionately on the people in our city who are least able to afford it,” Dr. Ayman El-Mohandes, dean of the CUNY School of Public Health, said in a statement.
A New Jersey guardsman is the U.S. military’s first virus-related death.
A member of the New Jersey National Guard died on Saturday of complications related to the coronavirus, the first virus-related death of a U.S. service member, officials said on Monday.
The National Guard member, Capt. Douglas Linn Hickock, 57, was a drilling guardsman and a physician’s assistant who lived in Pennsylvania but was originally from Jackson, N.J., Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey said.
Mark T. Esper, the defense secretary, described Captain Hickock’s death as “a stinging loss for our military community.”
“Today is a sad day for the Department of Defense, as we have lost our first American service member, active, reserve or Guard,” Mr. Esper said in a statement.
Captain Hickock, a father of four, had been hospitalized for one week, before dying at a hospital in Pennsylvania, officials said.
Governor Cuomo said that 1,218 people had died in New York.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday that the worst of the outbreak was yet to come, even as another 253 people died in the state in a 24-hour period.
“If you wait to prepare for a storm to hit, it is too late,” the governor said. “You have to prepare before the storm hits. And in this case the storm is when you hit that high point, when you hit that apex. How do you know when you’re going to get there? You don’t.”
Here were some other developments on Monday:
New York reported almost 7,000 new cases of the virus, bringing the total to nearly 66,500. Most of the cases were in New York City, where, officials reported later on Monday, 38,087 people been infected.
The number of virus-related deaths in New York City rose to 914 Monday afternoon, up 138 from around the same time Sunday, officials said.
Seven employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority have died of the virus, including a bus driver in Brooklyn and a subway station cleaner in the Bronx.
Gov. Philip D. Murphy of New Jersey announced 3,347 new positive coronavirus cases in the state, bringing the total to 16,636. There were 37 new deaths, for a total of 198.
Gov. Ned Lamont of Connecticut announced 578 new coronavirus cases in the state, bringing the total to 2,571. There were two new deaths, for a total of 36 in the state.
Are you a health care worker in the New York area? Tell us what you’re seeing.
As The New York Times follows the spread of the coronavirus across New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, we need your help. We want to talk to doctors, nurses, lab technicians, respiratory therapists, emergency services workers, nursing home managers — anyone who can share what they are seeing in the region’s hospitals and other health care centers. Even if you haven’t seen anything yet, we want to connect now so we can stay in touch in the future.
A reporter or editor may contact you. Your information will not be published without your consent.
Reporting was contributed by Jonah Engel Bromwich, Kate Conger, Michael Corkery, Michael Gold, Christina Goldbaum, John Leland, Andy Newman, Noam Scheiber, Matt Stevens, Tracey Tully and David Yaffe-Bellany,
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMiTGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lm55dGltZXMuY29tLzIwMjAvMDMvMzEvbnlyZWdpb24vY29yb25hdmlydXMtbmV3LXlvcmstdXBkYXRlLmh0bWzSAVBodHRwczovL3d3dy5ueXRpbWVzLmNvbS8yMDIwLzAzLzMxL255cmVnaW9uL2Nvcm9uYXZpcnVzLW5ldy15b3JrLXVwZGF0ZS5hbXAuaHRtbA?oc=5
2020-03-31 14:21:35Z
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