It's more than two years since the first cases of COVID-19 were identified in Wuhan, PRC (December 2019), and the disease spread across the globe. It was declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020. Two days later, the first lock-down in New York occurred. That was the last day I was within the city limits of NYC - in a nearly deserted Flushing where I had a real estate matter to complete - until July 21.
I knew how bad it was - the Radomer Mutual Culture Center lost too many of its older and oldest members, some in nursing homes, some in the hospital, others at home, and as a member of the Cemetery Committee of the society I was one of the people tasked with responding to calls from funeral directors in need of a grave opening in our land at New Montefiore Cemetery. It was a difficult time and for a little while, I was feeling shell shocked by how many people I knew were dying. I had not been through anything like this since the 1980s when many of my friends died from AIDS, and that was a slow moving catastrophe compared to this.
By July I had enough of hunkering down at home, only going out to the supermarket or for walks in the outdoors. The spread of the disease seemed to have ebbed, though this tide never completely receded - two years on we are seeing another wave receding - and I donned my mask and took the train into Manhattan.
The city wasn't a desert but it wasn't busy. I posted photos I took on that day. These are selected from ones I didn't use. You can see that there is no crowd of commuters in Grand Central Terminal, only a scattering of tourists and a few commuters. There was little traffic on the street and everyone wore their mask, even outdoors.
During the 1 1/2 years since then there have been upticks in tourists and pedestrians, a steady increase in automotive traffic, while the number of commuters went up when cases went down, and then down when cases went up. I stopped going into the city the week of Christmas when Omicron was rising fast, and started back in two weeks ago when the number of commuters had fallen and cases were starting to decline.
Looking back, where are we? Well, there are a lot of people who think their right to get infected is sacrosanct so they resist vaccination and wearing masks - not in any way worried about violating the rights of others to avoid infection. Personally, I think they should be avoided or at they should have the courtesy to avoid being around people who don't want to be exposed to the virus. What happens to them is there own problem, though it seems they are the ones keeping the COVID death rate high.
I am vaccinated and wear a mask indoors because I don't want to get seriously ill. A side benefit is that I won't easily infect others if I am carrying the virus.
But enough. Here are some photos taken July 21, 2020.
https://kayester.blogspot.com/2022/02/tuesday-revisiting-first-day-back-into.html
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