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Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser has fought to reduce the rate of coronavirus infection in the United States capital.
In July, he ordered the wearing of masks in crowded outdoor venues, and the order has been largely obeyed: On Tuesday afternoon, more than nine out of 10 people walking through the city wore masks, and nearly all of the world in shops and cafes.
The rate of new infections has slowed considerably since the summer, but the threat of a second wave looms.
That’s true in many American cities, but what makes Washington different is that a significant portion of the threat comes from a single address, whose tenants have blatantly ignored the rules, and who haven’t even returned calls from Bowser’s office. who offers to help with the contact. tracking.
That address is 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – the White House, where more than a dozen workers have tested positive for Covid-19 in recent days, including the CEO. That compares with 28 new cases recorded Tuesday across the city of more than 700,000 people.
“We have come to the White House on a couple of different levels: a political level and a public health level,” Bowser said. A city health official managed to communicate by phone, the mayor added, but only “had a very superficial conversation that we do not consider substantial contact from the public health side.”
Worse still, Donald Trump, unfazed by his hospitalization for the disease, stood on the balcony of the White House Monday night and dramatically removed his mask, even when he was near official photographers. On Twitter, he told Americans: “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it rule your life, ”ignoring the 210,000 Americans who have died, including 631 in Washington.
Pennsylvania Avenue cuts from the top left to the bottom right of the downtown DC map: from the extreme wealth of the mostly white Northwest, where the White House and its assistant lobbyists are located, to the Southeast Low income, overwhelmingly black. .
The southeast version of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is a nondescript apartment block on the outskirts of town, just before it disappears into the poorer suburbs on the other side of the Anacostia River.
Orlando Pickens was sitting at a nearby bus stop, waiting for a ride home to Anacostia. Five people in his immediate family have died from the coronavirus, and he was not impressed by Trump’s bravado about the disease.
“He is talking about people who don’t have to take the buses. They don’t have to go to CVS [pharmacy],” he said.
As for the threat posed by the White House Covid hotspot, Pickens wasn’t overly concerned. “None of them are going out to Anacostia,” he observed.
That sense of security was not shared a few blocks along the three-lane avenue heading toward Congress, which stands as its pivot point between the northwest and southeast.
The Eastern Market neighborhood is a traditionally black area of Washington that has become increasingly mixed, attracting white residents for its lower home prices and its proximity to the political center of the city.
A growing number of restaurants and bars had clustered around the metro station. Their enthusiasm has been tempered by the pandemic, but their outdoor tables on chilly fall nights remain popular with political staff in Congress and the administration, raising fears that White House employees could spread the infection to a much less favored community.
On Saturday, as Trump was spending his first full day at Walter Reed Hospital, about a hundred residents gathered outside the Eastern Market subway station to protest the White House’s disregard for public health precautions and the immediate danger it posed to the people of Washington.
Rick, a city sanitation worker (who declined to give his last name), witnessed the protest.
“They said that the people coming out of the White House, the staff and the security, had to keep it down there,” he said, pointing to the northwest. “It is an access point. They didn’t want them here. They wanted them to stay there. “
Yolande Long, a human resources consultant working at Eastern Market, agreed that the idea of White House staff coming to the district to relax was cause for concern.
“In fact, it can have a devastating effect. A domino effect, ”Long said. But she added that she was much more concerned about the message being sent across the country from the White House balcony.
“For him to say that he now understands everything about Covid has far-reaching effects on the American public because of the fool we have living and working there and being the most powerful man in the United States and in the world,” he said.
One of Long’s colleagues is currently hospitalized with Covid, and he was not impressed by Trump’s tweeted claim that the United States has now developed “some really excellent drugs and knowledge” that led to his apparent recovery.
“The problem is that he is the only person who right now will have access to those drugs,” Long said. “If I, suddenly, came down with Covid. They wouldn’t treat me like him. “
Jeffrey Jackson, who sells incense and perfumes on the street at the corner of Pennsylvania and 8th Street, said he would expect hospital bills to be paid by publicly funded Medicaid if he gets sick.
“The average person living in poverty practically has Medicaid or Medicare, but that can change,” said Jackson, adding that the economic impact of the pandemic could bring him down first.
Around his shoulder he wore a bandolier with scent vials instead of bullets. It used to sell well, but with much less human traffic, sales were a fifth of normal before Covid.
“Trump is a businessman, but he is not a leader of people,” Jackson said. “He is doing things that no other president would do. You are not being responsible. You are doing things contrary to what the experts say. It’s crazy. “
