Driving Through the Pandemic

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

🗓️ 27 October 2020

⏱️ 20 minutes

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Summary

It feels like a lifetime since the coronavirus pandemic transformed Americans’ daily lives, seven months ago, and fatigue is setting in even as the disease ravages new regions. The staff writer Jennifer Gonnerman talked with one of the people who has a unique perspective on those terrifying first weeks when the world seemed to be ending. Terence Layne is a bus operator for New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority and a chief shop steward for the Transport Workers Union. The city’s transit workers were among the hardest hit of all essential workers, and over a hundred and twenty M.T.A. employees have died from the virus. Yet Layne kept showing up for his shift, day after day, even as the city streets went quiet. Jennifer Gonnerman wrote about Terence Layne in the August 31, 2020, issue of the magazine.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.4	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The coronavirus is hitting yet another peak.
0:17.4	Cases are rising in so many parts of the country, and Europe is also battling a resurgence.
0:23.0	The last seven months have lasted half a lifetime, and yet it feels like the pandemic is
0:27.9	beginning all over again. Staff writer Jennifer Gahneman talked recently with one of the people
0:34.0	who witnessed this whole tragic episode in our history up close.
0:38.7	His name is Terrence Lane, a bus operator in New York City.
0:43.2	Now, transit employees were among the hardest hit of all essential workers in New York.
0:48.1	More than 120 have died from COVID.
0:51.4	And yet all the same, Terence Lane kept showing up for a shift, day after day, even as the
0:57.3	city streets went quiet.
1:00.9	So we just passed the museum of natural history at 79th and
1:12.6	Central Park West.
1:14.5	You know, with that I saw in the front
1:16.5	that statue
1:17.6	of Teddy Roosevelt
1:20.4	with the Native American and the African
1:22.3	walking alongside him, you know, that's New York
1:24.5	City's version of the Confederacy
1:26.1	or a Confederate symbol. And people, you know, want to insist York City's version of the Confederacy or a Confederate symbol.
1:28.3	And people, you know, want to insist that that's not a symbol of white supremacy, but I don't,
1:33.3	if that's not a symbol of white supremacy, I don't know what is.
	...

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