NEW YORK — As a Manhattanite currently on Day 17 of COVID-19- inspired self-quarantine/lockdown, I heard a sad ring of truth in Joel Kotkin’s latest article. “The End of New York,” his excellent, scary piece was titled on Friday’s Tablet. “Will the pandemic push America’s greatest city over the edge?”
Kotkin is a scholar with Orange County, California’s Chapman University and Houston’s Urban Reform Institute. Never mind his posts on the Pacific and the Gulf Coast. Kotkin’s essay gets nearly every point right about how this Atlantic city is in jeopardy of becoming a massive victim of this microscopic villain.
“What’s particularly ominous for New York’s future is that the best way to slow the spread of the virus —social distancing — works against the very things that make Gotham so appealing,” Kotkin writes. “The very pleasures and crowded realities of urban life, such as mass transit, are particularly susceptible to pandemics.”
As subway ridership plunges 60 percent, and commuter-train ridership plummets 90 percent, New Yorkers surely notice that COVID-19 seems to strike densely populated cities more than leafy, sprawling suburbs or sparse, wide-open rural areas. Kotkin adds: “In the long run, the extraordinary concentration of COVID-19 cases in New York threatens an economy and a social fabric that were already unraveling before the outbreak began.”
The COVID clampdown has forced the multitude of white-collar workers now operating from home to ponder this question: Why spend heaps of cash for tiny apartments in a city filled with deadly pathogens?
Even worse, New York City these days is filled with diseased psychopaths who occupy the streets and spread microbes on the subway, where every surface is a potential Petri dish. When they rip open garbage bags on sidewalks and pirate the recyclables within (while handcuffed cops simply look on), these vagrants make life dreamy for hungry, horny rats. These well-fed vermin do not practice birth control. Particularly from a public-health standpoint, what could go wrong?
Mayor Bill de Blasio (D – New York City) couples his incompetence with insouciance about anything but “social justice” and his daily gym workouts. Thanks to “bail reform,” he, Governor Andrew Cuomo (D – New York), and their Democrat colleagues from the City Council to the state legislature are responsible for freeing criminals onto the streets as soon as the police arrest them if even that happens.
Schools chancellor Richard Carranza, arguably further Left than de Blasio, shows little interest in actually educating kids. For him, it’s race, race, race. And when he’s not obsessed with that, he thinks about race. Most New Yorkers with school-age children must choose between sending their sons and daughters into the de Blasio-Carranza system of ethnic tension, social engineering, and campus disorder, or spending their hard-earned wages on private-school tuition, which rivals the cost of college.
The precious gifts that make all of this bearable — among them: Broadway, motion pictures, rock concerts, Yankees games, and dining exquisitely in delightful restaurants filled with other foodies — suddenly become unimaginable, if everyone must sit, dance, or dine six feet away from every other Gothamite for whom these are a few of his favorite things. Presumably, this would include one’s friends, lovers, neighbors, relatives, or spouse. “Honey, would you please walk over here so I can have some popcorn?” How will AMC and Regal sell movie tickets in such an environment?
Most seats on Broadway are packed more densely than subway benches, and usually for about $150 per ride. Great news! The germs are thrown in for free. Not even Hamilton could survive social distancing among its patrons who soon might glance at each other and think not, “Boy, are we au courant!” but “What disease is that guy carrying?”
Atop this — like a shifty, coughing bum wearing a soiled trench coat and waving a gun — stands New York City’s tax burden. It tells Gothamites: “Congrats for surviving all of this. Now, reach waaaaay down into your pockets and hand it over.”
All of these factors scream for two things:
a) Political leaders at City Hall and Albany who are focused on solving these problems right away, rather than fighting and fleecing their own constituents at every turn.
b) Tests, treatments, and vaccines, ASASP — as soon as scientifically possible. For this, America’s pharmaceutical companies deserve no more brickbats and, instead, sustained local and national applause. NOW!
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Deroy Murdock
New York political commentor Deroy Murdock is a Fox News contributor and a senior fellow with the London Center for Policy Research.
A lot of people screwed up….NY Gov. Cuomo didn’t order respirators when advised to in 2015….Barack Obama didn’t resupply masks after the swine flu…..Bill DiBlasio has done nothing right since becoming mayor of NY…but the DISHONEST and BIASED mainstream media want Americans to only blame Trump …..who in reality has done a very good job….
And do you happen to notice that all of them just happen to be Democrats? Coincidence? I think not.
This is what liberals and progressive globalist have been dreaming about. Agenda 21 where everyone is put into the cities in stackem packem high rises. A utopia with high speed rail and everyone live and works in the cities. No one owns private property out in the country or suburbs and that land is all seized and turned into wilderness zones where grizzly’s, mountain lions and wolf are the main inhabitants and it is off limits to man. No more commercial electricity and no more cars. Wind mills and solar panels occupy every square inch of the country. The progressives dream. Agenda 21 where a massive die off of humanity must occur. Wake up people vote any democrat out of office. They want you dead . See now how this agenda has backfired with this pandemic. See how dangerous. Read up on and understand Agenda 21 . Its being implemented all around you. The only thing slowing this is our great president Trump. He wont be there forever arm yourself with knowledge.
Not much sympathy given that dark forces led by the USA financed the social turmoil in Hong Kong that destroyed our mass transit railway system – firebombing stations, destroying ticketing machines and even turnstiles, closing down much of the system on several occasions and total closure over several days at one time. And even with this coronavirus crisis these thugs are still at it.
Good for them. In this case, it is the Chinese government that they are fighting against.
Such terrible dark forces led by the Christian country USA. LOL.
My guess is you live in Hong Kong and do so in order to live high on money you made in lAmerica. I will allow God time to judge you. He never fails.
Yes progressives want US dead they keep pushing third world way of life. Americans will vote if we are allowed and if its in English last voting cycle they only had 950 places to vote when this huge state we used to have 5000. But State Government do not understand why Americans are still alive.
But Agenda 21 is all about forcing Americans into high density cities in order to “save” the countryside for future generations. Forget freedom. The elite want to get rid of 6 billion people so we will be easier to control. And yes, they DO want to control every aspect of our lives.