A City at the Peak of Crisis

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2020

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Experts predicted that Wednesday, April 15th would be a peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in New York City, its epicenter. On that day, a crew of New Yorker writers talked with people all over the city, in every circumstance and walk of life, to form a portrait of a city in crisis. A group-station manager for the subway talks about keeping the transit system running for those who can’t live without it; a respiratory therapist copes with break-time conversations about death and dying; a graduating class of medical students get up the courage to confront the worst crisis in generations; and a new mother talks about giving birth on a day marked by tragedy for so many families. The hour includes contributions from writers including William Finnegan, Helen Rosner, Jia Tolentino, Kelefa Sanneh, and Adam Gopnik, who says, “One never knows whether to applaud the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life, or look aghast at the human insistence on continuing with some form of normal life. That's the mystery of the pandemic.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the New Yorker Radio Hour.
0:10.7	I don't even know if this thing is working.
0:13.7	Well, I guess it is. Seems to be shown my voice there.
0:17.7	Yeah, so it's really quiet, and it is 538 a.m.
0:26.8	A. A. guy rides his bicycle down here and is at a bench and is doing some kind of leg exercises.
0:34.2	And he's the only human around on the boardwalk besides me.
0:41.6	Ian Frazier was out before dawn recently on Brighton Beach.
0:45.7	He watched the sunrise over the Atlantic Ocean.
0:48.9	It was April 15th, 2020.
0:51.4	As of that morning, the New York City Health Department reported more than 110,000 people
0:56.0	diagnosed with COVID-19 and nearly 7,000 dead. The actual number may be much higher.
1:04.4	We're in an epicenter of a disease. The reason that this is an epicenter is that nature made this as a perfect place for
1:15.0	things to come together. I mean, the way the salt water and the freshwater combined, the way, you
1:21.0	know, the Sound and New York Harbor and the Hudson River coming in, and then these islands,
1:26.9	this archipelago, and it's just such a perfect combination.
1:30.3	I really feel like you just see God here because you see massive things happen.
1:38.3	That's, I think, Rockaway Point, and that is Sandy Hook.
1:47.1	And those two points funneled the surge during the hurricane, during Sandy, and it just sent water like just blasting over to Staten Island.
1:57.5	I mean, it's just, it's like God just saying, pay attention, you know,
2:03.9	like, here's a revelation of what the future is going to be like. You're going to get slapped
2:09.6	upside the head by nature like you've never seen. The day that was dawning, April 15th,
2:17.1	was a day that experts had predicted the pandemic would be at its height in New York, or I guess you could say it's worst.
	...

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