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WASHINGTON – From her Brooklyn apartment, Ms. Abigail Chan, a Singaporean who has lived in New York City for 21 years, has to put her calls on conference, is in the private equity business, silent until the sounds from the street fade away.
For weeks, the soundtrack to New York City has not been the roar of traffic, nor the rattle and thunder of tracks, nor the daily hustle and bustle of the iconic economic engine and the melting pot of nearly 19 million people.
It has been the wail of sirens as ambulances race down empty streets.
“I get sirens all day, day after day,” he told The Straits Times.
Ms. Chan, 43, would normally travel every month to every corner of the United States, but she’s been hiding in her apartment for more than a month as Covid-19 ravages the city.
FAR FROM END
New York State now has more cases than any other country outside of the US. USA, As of Saturday (April 11), 174,489 cases according to data from Johns Hopkins University. “We are far from finishing fighting this,” said city mayor Bill de Blasio on Saturday, who wants city schools to be closed for the rest of the academic year until September.
“The number of hospitalizations appears to have reached an apex, and the apex appears to be a plateau,” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said Saturday in his daily briefing. “All numbers are on a downward slope. They are still increasing, but at a slower rate.
“We still have more infected people, we have more people admitted to the hospital, but we have a smaller number … Fewer people enter the hospitals, still net positive.”
But he warned that the city and the state are far from even the beginning of the end.
“It is stabilizing, but at a horrible rate,” Cuomo said. On Saturday morning, the death toll in the state was 8,627; On Friday, 783 people died from the virus.
RAFFLES GIRLS FRIENDS OF SCHOOL
New Yorkers have been living for weeks with hospital tents in Central Park. At major hospitals, patients wait hours to be admitted, lined up on stretchers around the block. Cable television channels interview exhausted doctors and crying nurses. Refrigerated trucks operate like morgues. Mass graves on Hart Island are being prepared for the bodies of the unclaimed.
Hart Island is located north of Long Island, the epicenter of New York’s coronavirus spread.
In Long Island City, where just over 1,000 healthcare workers have been affected by Covid-19, lives Singaporean film director Eunice Lau, who keeps in touch with Ms. Chan and another friend, Ms. June Lee. , also 43, who works in philanthropy. All three were contemporaries at Raffles Girls School. Now, in this great 2020 pandemic, they regularly register with each other.
“June sends us documents to read,” says Lau, who was the first of the trio to turn 44, just a few weeks ago. “Abigail alerted us that the World Health Organization said we need to get Tylenol, and she was struggling to find the last bottle when she was filming in Montana in March,” she recalled.
Like many people trapped at home in the city, Ms. Lau and her husband receive their needs in their building. But they venture twice a day for a short time to walk their dog Lulu. And especially when the sun comes up, there are still people outside.
“We see that there are people with animals, with children,” he told ST. “But I’m just trying to give them ample space, even if it means walking down the road. And I come out with a DIY mask … made from a scarf.”
“When we do our grocery shopping once a week, I’m obsessed with bringing wet wipes, cleaning everything, and using hand sanitizers. And I think that’s the best protection, plus going home to wash your hands first, for 20 seconds. at least “.
SARS MEMORIES
Ms. Lau is no stranger to a pandemic. In 2003, in Singapore, he lost an uncle, a doctor, to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars).
“I have seen how my uncle lost his life at 37, and you would think he would know better because he is a doctor, he is a surgeon, but no. So it can affect any of us and we may not survive when I understand it. So These are all very real things, and I think self-knowledge will help us make calm and sensible decisions to stay alive, “he said.
A frequently asked question is if New York is through the worst and if there is light at the end of the tunnel. In his briefing on Saturday, Governor Andrew Cuomo said: “If someone wants to say, ‘Well, here is the score at halftime and now I’m going to try to collect my bet because it’s halftime,’ it doesn’t work that way. The game has to end and this game is not over. “
Ms. Lee lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, close to large stores and pharmacies, and there is more activity in that area. But when she and her husband ventured into Chinatown on Friday, they discovered that even the places that were open two weeks ago were closed.
“It was very, very desolate,” he said.
“I think in terms of optimism, there will be light at the end of the tunnel, just because there has to be. We cannot be in a perpetual state of blockade as we currently are, with deaths and all that.” As for how long it will take us to get there, I think that’s the unknown. “
Another Singaporean in Brooklyn, 31-year-old actress Jody Doo, spends her time at home on a creative job, which includes reading books on Instagram Live, which helps others get stuck at home. His last reading: Roald Dahl’s autobiography, Boy.
RAINBOW IN WINDOWS
The mood outside is heavy, Doo said. Around their neighborhood, parents have begun to put rainbows on their windows to indicate to others that there are children in the home. It has become a game for children in the area to see a rainbow in a window. And every afternoon at 7pm, people cheer on healthcare workers, hitting pots and pans. Once, a neighbor played his saxophone for a time.
The four Singaporeans know people who have tested positive for Covid-19; Ms. Chan has had colleagues who lose their parents to the virus. But for Ms. Doo, it was especially moving when, not having heard for some time from a much older friend, who had been a mentor and grandfather figure to her, he called her building to find out how he was doing.
The next day, his wife called her back. Her husband had died of Covid-19, she said.
Doo cried that day two weeks ago, while playing the Animal Crossing video game, which has become a favorite pastime for many homebound.
She uprooted all the virtual cherry trees in the game with regret. Memories of her own grandmother also returned, she said.
“You always wish you could have spent more time together,” he said.
“If there is someone you want to talk to, don’t wait. Don’t reject it, because you don’t want to regret it.”
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