The BroadsheetDAILY ~ 5/8/20 ~ Pandemic Progress ~ Rate of Local Infections Continues to Decline – ebroadsheet.com

Governor Cuomo has issued an executive order requiring all people in New York to wear masks or face coverings in public, including when taking public or private transportation or riding in for-hire vehicles.

More information: coronavirus.health.ny.gov/home or call 1-888-364-3065.All non-essential workers must continue to work from home and schools and everyone is required to maintain a 6-foot distance from others in public

Pandemic Progress

Rate of Local Infections Continues to Decline

A total of 703 residents of Lower Manhattan (among 2,400 who have been tested) are confirmed to have been infected by the pandemic coronavirus, according to statistics released by the City’s Department of Health (DOH). These numbers are current as of Thursday afternoon (May 7). Given the current City-wide mortality rate for COVID-19 (the disease caused by coronavirus) of approximately 7.9 percent, roughly 55 of these patients appear likely to die.

This updated tally for confirmed cases of coronavirus indicates that the total number of local residents known to be infected has jumped by 43 new cases, or approximately 6.5 percent, since May 1 (the date of the Broadsheet’s previous update of these statistics), when the total number of Lower Manhattan cases was 660 patients. This does not necessarily mean that the local rate of infection is growing at 6.5 percent per week, but may be a reflection more patients being tested. And this rate in local infections has now declined for several consecutive weeks, since plateauing at above 30 percent in early April.

According to the DOH data, the local infection rates (outlined out by zip code) break down as follows:

• 10280/Battery Park City South (below Brookfield Place): 38 confirmed cases, an increase of 3 new cases since May 1

• 10282/Battery Park City North (above Brookfield Place): 64 confirmed cases, an increase of 0 new cases

• 10007/Southern Tribeca (West Street to Broadway, north of Vesey Street and south of Chambers Street): 48 confirmed cases, an increase of 3 new cases

• 10013/Northern Tribeca (north of Chambers Street and south of Canal Street): 225 confirmed cases, an increase of 15 new cases

• 10006/Greenwich South (Broadway to West Street, south of Vesey Street and north of the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel): 21 confirmed cases, an increase of 0 new cases

• 10004/Southern FiDi (West Street to the East River, south of Beaver Street): 28 confirmed cases, an increase of 2 new cases

• 10005/Eastern FiDi (Broadway to the East River, south of Maiden Lane, north of Beaver Street): 54 confirmed cases, an increase of 2 new cases

• 10038/the Civic Center and Seaport (Broadway to the East River, north of Maiden Lane and stretching a few blocks beyond the Brooklyn Bridge): 225 confirmed cases, an increase of 18 new cases

These data indicate that, among the total of 2,400 Downtown residents who have been tested for coronavirus, 29.2 percent have been confirmed to be infected. This metric represents an additional falloff from the May 1 data, when 33.9 percent of all tested patients were confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus. (Neither of these yardsticks can be extrapolated to mean that the similar percentages of all local residents are infected, because these tests — which are in seriously short supply — are being selectively administered to patients with severe symptoms, or those who are deemed to be at heightened risk of exposure.)

The combined population of these eight zip codes is approximately 81,000 residents. The total of 703 confirmed cases translates into an overall rate of infection of roughly eight-tenths of one percent for all Lower Manhattan residents. This indicates that local infection rates are holding steady from May 1, when the overall rate of infection for Lower Manhattan residents stood at the same level.

This translates into Lower Manhattan’s eight zip codes being among the least penetrated by the pandemic coronavirus, and among those where COVID-19 is least prevalent out of all the communities in the five boroughs of New York City.

Matthew Fenton

Quittance for Those Who Never Quit

Gateway Tenants Say Thanks for Being There During the Tough Times

Tenants at Gateway Plaza, Battery Park City’s largest residential complex, have partnered with their landlord to raise tens of thousands of dollars to thank staff members for keeping the facility running during the pandemic coronavirus.

The project began in April, when a group of residents came together and launched a GoFundMe page, asking neighbors to contribute to a fund that would be distributed among Gateway employees. Within two weeks, the GoFundMe page had accumulated more than $25,000.

This prompted Gateway’s management to commit to matching whatever the neighbors contributed. Gregory Tumminia, Gateway’s general manger, says, “the LeFrak, Fisher and Olnick families — who make up the ownership of Gateway — have been working tirelessly since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic to provide a safe and supportive environment for their residents and employees.

To read more…

A Call to Alms

Community Leaders Partner with Food Charity to Feed Downtown Residents in Need

In the best of times, some 1.4 million New York City residents chronically suffer from what is called “food insecurity.” But these are not the best of times. The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has shuttered stores, isolated the elderly and handicapped in their homes, and posed multiple other challenges for those whose grip on daily sustenance was already tenuous before the onset of the crisis.

In response, a broad array of non-profit and public service organizations are stepping up, creating new distribution networks and recruiting cadres of volunteers, to bring food to the doorsteps of people who might otherwise go hungry.

One of these is Rethink Food NYC, a non-profit organization that works to recover nutritious excess food (sourced from restaurants, grocery stores and corporate kitchens) and use it to provide low or no-cost meals to New York City families in need. To read more

‘The Doctor Told Me My Chances Were 50-50’

A Widely Admired Community Leader Recalls Her Life-and-Death Battle with COVID-19

Daisy Paez, a District Leader, makes a point

at a late-February meeting of the New Downtown Democrats.

Daisy Paez, a Lower East side activist who has served for years as a local District Leader, is a universally revered matriarch among Downtown’s political and community family. She recently returned from more than a month of hospitalization, during which she nearly died from COVID-19, the disease caused by the pandemic coronavirus.

“It felt like somebody just snatched me from my life and threw me into this horrifying ordeal,” she recalls. “In the beginning, I remember hearing how people would get really ill, and that if you had a cough or a high fever, you needed to see a doctor. But I was fine. Then, in the last week of March, I started feeling sick. I went to the CityMD urgent care facility on Delancey Street, and they gave me a flu test, which came back negative. They also gave me a test for COVID-19, and told me the results would be available in about five days.”

Later that week, she says, “it really hit me. I had a low-grade fever, but it wouldn’t go away. And I started feeling so weak and tired that I had trouble walking. Then, on April 1, I couldn’t stand up. And I had this violent, dry cough. It was hard to breathe.”

To read more…

Letters

Esplanade Traffic

To the editor:

I am finding it impossible to walk on the esplanade with all the speeding bicyclists and runners (most not wearing face masks).

After the bike path was built on West Street, I believe biking on the esplanade where elderly and children walk is far too dangerous – even pre-pandemic.

Maria K.

NEWS FROM PREVIOUS EDITIONS

OF THE BROADSHEETDAILY

What Comes Next?

Assembly Member Proposes Post-Pandemic New Deal

Yuh-Line Niou, who represents Lower Manhattan in the New York State Assembly, is pushing for a comprehensive package of legislation to address a broad range of needs that are expected to follow the ongoing crisis sparked by the pandemic coronavirus.

The 25 bills she is sponsoring include measures to help with joblessness, housing affordability, healthcare, childcare, and rising poverty rates, as well as tax reform that seeks to relieve the burden on low-income individuals and small businesses, while raising revenue from people and firms with the resources to pay more.

“In this moment, many are now realizing the critical role that government can and should play when faced with a crisis of this magnitude,” Ms. Niou says. “It must also be noted that many of these problems exist only because we have for too long followed a demonstrably flawed economic policy that sacrifices strong public institutions in exchange for endless tax breaks for the wealthiest among us.”

To read more…

Community Board 1

In case you missed the April 2020 board meeting,

click here to the link of the power point presentation.

Merchant Munificence

Alliance Throws a Lifeline to Lower Manhattan Small Businesses

The Downtown Alliance is launching a new program to help storefront businesses in Lower Manhattan, via which it plans to give away $800,000 in grants.

The Small Business Rental Assistance Grant program aims to offer immediate help to shops currently providing vital services to residents and essential workers in Lower Manhattan during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and is funded with contributions from Brookfield Properties, Silverstein Properties and the Howard Hughes Corporation, as well as $250,000 from the Alliance itself.

Local businesses are encouraged to apply, by browsing: Downtownny.com/RentAssistGrant

To read more…

Free Lunch, and Much More

The City is providing free “Grab and Go” meals for anybody (not just students) who needs or wants them, at 435 public schools throughout the five boroughs.

Two facilities in Battery Park City—Stuyvesant High School (345 Chambers Street, near North End Avenue, and P.S./I.S. 276 (55 Battery Place, near First Place)—have been designated to serve Lower Manhattan as “Meal Hubs, each weekday, from 7:30 am to 1:30 pm.

Children and families are welcome from 7:30 to 11:30 am, and adults will be given food from 11:30 am to 1:30 pm. All adults and children can pick up multiple meals at once. Parents and guardians may pick up meals for their children.

No registration, identification, or documentation is required. Vegetarian and halal are available at all locations. No one will be turned away at any time, but no dining space is available at these facilities, so meals must be eaten off premises.

The Food Chain

More than 30 Lower Manhattan restaurants and bars have set up GoFundMe pages to raise money that will help them pay employees and otherwise remain viable during the economic downturn induced by the pandemic coronavirus.

Each of these campaigns is an opportunity not only to help your favorite eatery, but also to make less likely the very real prospect that—come the next recovery—our streetscape will be populated entirely by corporate chains and denuded of locally owned small businesses.

The Downtown Alliance has set up a page with links to each, click here.

Remembering a Fallen Healer

A Local Leader Recalls Tribeca’s Nisar Quraishi

Russ Schulman, a longtime resident of Tribeca and the associate executive director at Manhattan Youth, says of Dr. Nisar A. Quraishi, “he was my primary care physician for decades, and a trusted friend.”

Dr. Quraishi, who died from COVID-19 (the disease caused by the pandemic coronavirus) in April, at age 73, was a Tribeca pioneer, hanging out a shingle in 1976 at the then-new Independence Plaza, just a few years after earning a degree in medicine in his native Pakistan.

“I loved him from the first moment,” Mr. Schulman recalls. “He was always very thoughtful, very kind and reassuring. A great doctor, in every sense.”

To read more…

Where the Sidewalk Forfends

Data Scientist Finds That Downtown Footpaths Impede Social Distancing

Although Lower Manhattan is among the communities least affected by the pandemic coronavirus anywhere in the five boroughs, it faces one increased risk that most other neighborhoods do not. A new analysis shows that narrow sidewalk widths in the square mile below Chambers Street make it especially difficult to practice social distancing here.

Meli Harvey, a senior computational designer at Sidewalk Labs — an urban innovation organization owned by Google, which aims to improve civic infrastructure through technological solutions — has completed an inventory of sidewalk widths throughout the five boroughs.

“It started a few weeks ago, when I was walking around Boreum Hill, where I live,” Ms. Harvey recalls, “and noticed that it was tough to walk while avoiding people. The width of the sidewalks make it necessary to move into the street. And suddenly, I made the connection between sidewalk widths and social distancing. I have also worked in the Financial District, so I immediately thought of that area and its narrow sidewalks, too.” To read more…

An April Intervention

The Hunter and the Hunted, Along with a Haunted Onlooker

Isaiah Berlin famously observed that, “the fox knows many little things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” A Lower Manhattan resident thought of this on a Saturday afternoon in mid-April, when Downtown was locked down, but he ventured outside — desperate for fresh air, seeking signs of life — and was confronted by this tableaux in the Battery. The raptor perched on the park bench knew one big thing: that he was too large to get beneath the seat, where his lunch awaited. And the squirrel below knew one little thing: that he was safe as long as he stayed where he was.

Click here to see the fate of the squirrel

1450 – Jack Cade’s Rebellion-Kentishmen revolt against King Henry VI

1784 – Only known deaths by hailstones in US in Winnsborough South Carolina

1792 – US establishes military draft

1840 – Alexander Wolcott patents Photographic Process

1847 – Scot Robert Thompson patents rubber tyre

1861 – Richmond, Virginia is named the capital of the Confederacy

1878 – First unassisted triple play in organized baseball, by Paul Hines

1879 – George Selden files for first patent for a gasoline-driven automobile

1919 – First transatlantic flight take-off by a navy seaplane

1919 – Edward George Honey first proposes the idea of a moment of silence to commemorate The Armistice of World War I, which later results in the creation of Remembrance Day.

1933 – Mohandas Gandhi begins a 21-day fast in protest against British oppression in India.

1942 – Aircraft carrier USS Lexington sunk by Japanese air attack in Coral Sea

1945 – V-E Day; Germany signs unconditional surrender, WW II ends in Europe

1961 – First practical sea water conversion plant-Freeport, Texas

1967 – Muhammad Ali is indicted for refusing induction in US Army

1979 – Radio Shack releases TRSDOS 2.3

1987 – Gary Hart quits democratic presidential race after Donna Rice affair

1988 – Mike Tyson crashes his $183,000 Bently on Varick St

1993 – 16 year old Keron Thomas disguises himself as a motorman & takes NYC subway train and 2,000 passengers on a 3 hour ride

Birthdays

1326 – Joanna I of Auvergne, queen of France (d. 1360)

1753 – Phillis Wheatley, American poet who was both the second published African-American poet and first published African-American woman.

1846 – Oscar Hammerstein, Germany, opera/playwright

1884 – Harry Truman, Lamar Missouri, 33rd President (D) (1945-1953), (d. 1972)

1926 – Don Rickles, Queens NY, comedian

1928 – Theodore Sorenson, presidential advisor (JFK)/author (1000 Days)

1940 – Peter Benchley, NYC, novelist (Jaws, The Deep), (d. 2006)

1945 – Keith Jarrett, jazz musician/film composer (Nachtfahrer)

Deaths

1904 – Eadweard Muybridge, English photographer (horse trot), dies

1982 – Gilles Villeneuve, Canadian auto racer, dies in racing accident

Hostel Intentions

Downtown Hotel Business May Be an Enduring Casualty of Pandemic

As local travel and tourism have ground to a halt in the wake of the pandemic coronavirus, one Downtown business sector is undergoing what may be a permanent transformation. By any reasonable yardstick, the hotel business in Lower Manhattan has been drastically overbuilt — the result of nearly two decades of giddy speculation, by developers.

Today, there are 37 hotels operating in the square mile below Chambers Street, offering more than 7,900 rooms, according to the 2019 Lower Manhattan Real Estate Year in Review, a report from the Downtown Alliance.

To read more…

COVID-19 and your pets.

A Guide from the Mayor’s Office of Animal Welfare

Click here to read about

how to care for your pet during the COVID-19 Pandemic

To the community,

Three weeks ago, we launched the Taste of Tribeca Community Fund.

Since then you have given us over $60,000 and with this we have purchased over 4,800 meals from 10 Taste of Tribeca restaurants for delivery to 11 New York City hospitals, plus FDNY Ladder 8, FDNY Engine 7, the NYPD 1st Precinct, and NYC Department of Sanitation Manhattan District 1.

You have helped to keep these restaurants in business, and in turn the restaurant teams have been doing some of the most important cooking and meal service of their careers, for the healthcare workers on the front lines against Covid-19.

The importance of your contribution cannot be emphasized enough. As another organization doing similar work has put it, we are not merely sending care packages as a thank you to the healthcare workers. We are providing them with basic nourishment, which they have no time to buy on their own, and in some areas no one even from whom to buy them.

And in our little corner of the city, we have restaurants willing and able to serve and for whom our large orders are essential to the continued operation of their business.

We are now down to our last few thousand dollars, which, at our current pace, will last us another few days to a week. We would love to keep going until at least May 15, so please consider donating again if you can, and share our mission with your families, friends and colleagues. Your continued generosity and support will directly benefit our restaurants, our neighborhood, and the healthcare heroes in our great city.

Thank you from all of us at Taste of Tribeca!

If you can help us, we would appreciate it.

Here is our most recent campaign update sent to donors, plus our GoFundMe and Instagram feed. Our current meal count is over 5,000.

Thank you,

Bettina Teodoro

‘As Sick as I’ve Ever Been in My Life’

One Survivor’s First-Person Account of Grappling with the Coronavirus

(Editor’s Note: This narrative was supplied to the Broadsheet by a Battery Park City resident who has asked to remain anonymous.)

When I first heard about this, back in late January or early February, I wasn’t sure how it was different from a more serious version of seasonal flu, because the narrative was familiar — starting in Asia, and coming from some kind of animal population. The one difference I remember noting was that this sounded much more contagious.

After that, I didn’t think much more about it for several weeks, other than to frame it as a kind of “second” flu season. But near the end of February, the beginning of March, my perception changed, along with everybody else’s. This was clearly different, because of how it had jumped to humans, and how aggressively it was spreading.

To read more…

WANTED:

Your Coronavirus story in one hundred words.

Please send an email to editor@ebroadsheet.com

———————————————————————————–

New Amsterdam Market returns in virtual format, as a service to the growing community of purveyors, distributors, producers and other small businesses who are creating regional, sustainable, regenerative, healthful, and equitable food systems.

Click here to find our first Directory of Purveyors.

Please email your suggestions to: directory@newamsterdammarket.org