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Will New York be the comeback kid? — 34 Comments

  1. In an odd sort of way, reading about the 1918-9 influenza epidemic is sort of encouraging. If the country can bounce back from that, then maybe we can bounce back from this as well. I think developing a vaccine will take too long, and it will depend on how fast they can come up with an effective treatment. We haven’t heard much about hydrochloroquine lately, but remdesivir seems to be showing promise. As soon as people have the sense that there is a treatment, they might be willing to come out of hiding and things can start to get back to normal.

  2. I remember reading these same kinds of articles after 9/11. Especially about NYC. I don’t even bother to read them, because they’re wrong. They also ignore all historical evidence to the contrary. Things will be back to some semblance of normal in a much shorter time frame than most people think. Granted, some of the bars and restaurants that we all go to will be gone forever. Some that do re-open will have new faces in them, because people moved on to other job opportunities. We’ll adjust, it’s one thing humans do remarkably well.

  3. NYC always seems to me to be bipolar and very dependent on who is mayor. When I first arrived in Connecticut there was a national physics conference in NYC. I was eager to go; this was pre-Guiliani days. I was never comfortable there. Times Square was a nightmare, and even walking on Park avenue at noon I felt threatened. I left and came home 2 days early of a 4 day conference.

    A decade or so later we took our young daughters for a 3 day trip. Stayed in the HIlton just south of Central Park. Times Square was wonderful. We had a great time and I never thought about the safety of ourselves or my daughter. Now, as far as I’m concerned it’s back to its old ways. I won’t go anywhere near it except to quickly drive through as it’s in the way to points south and west.

  4. Cuomo is whining for federal funds to resurrect NY.
    He has tapped out all the NY taxpayers, and NY was broke before the Wuhan Flu struck.

  5. New York is a hard place to live, you need to scramble. It is much easier in most of the country. For many unrelated reasons I would like to see things decentralized, just as in WWII we built a steel plant in Utah, refined uranium in Oak Ridge, and developed the atom bomb in New Mexico — all inland and away from the coasts — I’d like to see the financial centers in New York City dispersed and hardened communications networks put in place so that they could communicate even during a disaster. Another Carrington event, for instance.

  6. As we learn in the Book of the Prophet:

    And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
    Down the foggy ruins of time
    Far past the frozen leaves
    The haunted frightened trees
    Out to the windy beach
    Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
    Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
    With one hand waving free
    Silhouetted by the sea
    Circled by the circus sands
    With all memory and fate
    Driven deep beneath the waves
    Let me forget about today until tomorrow

  7. I cannot cite a major urban center that was ever destroyed by plague alone. Social collapse and violence, or invaders who have no use for or are unable to maintain urban centers, maybe.

    But this will be a blip on the record , and people will soon turn to wondering why the social reaction was as extreme as it has been. And maybe also why government agencies were either so inept, or even malfeasant. The latter, as in the case of some public health officials seeking to suppress data as part of an ideological agenda developed in the wake of HIV/AIDS , and the success of homosexual activists in quashing the public’s access to detailed data. This suppression is uneven though, and some blue states have released nursing home infection and death data, whereas others, have deliberately not. And some of course, dont even collect it.

    In reviewing a number of papers on public health policy in the not too distant past, I came across the factoid that during the days of the polio epidemics, one coulkd turn to the local newspapers, and find out exactly where acute cases had been diagnosed.

    I guess life was considered more important than feelings, in those days.

    In any event, if I think about it, I am probably a downstream result of the 1918 influenza epidemic.

    My maternal grandmother was a young married woman with 3 small living children, and when it was over, she was a widow with two of less than school age. Eventually, if a year or so can be called “eventually” she was introduced to a widower of the same age, same background, and in the same situation. They married, and my mother was one of eight produced by the second union.

    My paternal grandmother on the other hand, was pulled out of college by her panicked mother, never to return. It is highly unlikely she would have ever chanced to meet the young man from Kentucky who went to visit his relatives living nearby, had she not returned home.

    Makes me almost dizzy to think on it. But for obvious reasons the 1918 epidemic has always had a kind of backdrop role in the family history. Something like the Civil War, in that regard.

  8. The extent of a recovery in NYC and on main streets all across the country depends upon how many small businesses are destroyed by the lockdowns. The more severe the lockdown, the more small businesses there will be that will never recover. Small businesses are the major source of jobs. I am not optimistic.

  9. We are indeed much less resilient, 99% of us. We give great thanks to the Progressive movement of the past 100 years, do we not? It has caused multi-generational osteoporosis and spinal collapse.

    Sheep are not resilient. As a rancher told me decades ago, sheep are either OK or they’re dead. A sheep that tumbles into a ditch and lands on its back cannot right itself, I am told. We are a nation of sheep. China above all sees this and will continue to steamroller us.

    I fault Trump and his obeisance (not too strong a word in this case) to Fauci especially. Fauci the non-economist, the non-epidemiologist, a truly awful lifer in the Deep State. Perhaps declaring a national emergency was necessary for Trump to get what he deemed necessary to be done, based on the tangled web of federal laws and regs, but I don’t know. What I do know is this gave license to tyrants like Whitmer, and Edwards of Louisiana, to assume full tyrannical garb.

    One good thing is that it is easier to get a service economy restarted compared to a manufacturing one, IMO.

    Southern states, TX, TN and GA are the first to cry “Freedom”. You may be sure the “Blue” states will be the last. Please do not tell me TN is not Southern, either!

  10. I was surprised to hear today that Cuomo has expressed support for regionalizing New York and permitting different regions to reopen on different schedules — so that we here in thinly-populated Central New York will not necessarily be tied to the entirely different problems of Gotham. New York is a large and very diverse place, far more so than most people who don’t live here realize. But Cuomo has never shown much understanding of that or sympathy for the state’s rural people — quite the opposite, in fact, to such a degree that there’s a vocal minority out here that has believed for years that he’s intentionally aggravating our economic woes to encourage as many of us as possible to move away. (We tend to vote red.) So, it was surprising and welcome for him to travel to Buffalo and express sensible ideas about distinguishing among the state’s various regions and allowing some self-determination as to when and how to reopen. I’m a little encouraged.

  11. @ Mrs Whatsit. Let’s hope that it’s not just ideology temporarily yielding to expediency, in the case of New York. Not we hope, a “Stalin has opened the churches!” kind of event.

    Funny; though I don’t know that much about New York State, and never bothered to learn, as a kid I was under the impression that there was a tier of prosperous middle class cities strung out to the west, where light industry and technology provided the economic basis for prosperity.

    Another link on public healh and ideology. This one from what would be classified as a local paper. The big guys don’t seem to have all that much curiosity as to why the information we receive is so personally useless. http://www.capecodtimes.com/news/20200323/pandemic-tests-limits-of-privacy-laws

  12. I attended a large family gathering at Disney World in the summer of 2006. The workers there claimed that they were seeing the very first large crowds since 9-11.

    I think that initially people will get on planes because they need to. Later, possibly much later, they will buy plane tickets because they feel, “why not?”

    The good news for NYC is that there is a great deal of essential business happening there. Many are cash rich enough that they can buy what they need to feel safe. The danger sign will be if some of them start leaving the city.

    The flip side is that NYC and the surrounding environs, aren’t just worse than the rest of the country in the level of infection, but massively worse. I always tend to think about such things quantitatively and in terms of cause and effect, but probably most people don’t. I suspect that the cumulative effect of the media coverage and spin will determine how people feel about that. But I won’t be going to NYC in the future if there is some new epidemic happening in some foreign country.

  13. “But Cuomo has never shown much understanding of that or sympathy for the state’s rural people — quite the opposite, in fact, to such a degree that there’s a vocal minority out here that has believed for years that he’s intentionally aggravating our economic woes to encourage as many of us as possible to move away. ‘

    I don’t live in NY and I don’t care to. The last I heard about Cuomo and the red areas of the state were his threats to simply steal their respirators if New York City needed them.

    If he traveled to Buffalo to notice his thuggery was unpopular, of course this is a Stalin-opened-the-churches moment. No one should be fooled.

    He’ll get right back to screwing the red areas of his state into the ground just as soon as he thinks can get away with it- if he ever even actually stopped, which I doubt.

    Hence, believing that, I doubt New York will be the comeback kid, at least under present management. After 9/11, the country rallied around the city because everyone thought it was America under attack and not simply New York.

    Subsequently, I’ve spent last twenty years watching the inhabitants of the city rejoice at expressing their contempt for me and people like me, most recently by demanding the rest of the country stay shut down until the economy implodes while NYC hasn’t even been bothered to shut down the festering petri dish of their subways.

    You can’t get away from the politics of this. If some huge fraction of the country has concluded NY hates us, we won’t be willing to expend tourist dollars there, period. And the politics of this has only just begun.

    It will get worse, and uglier.

  14. Michael Godwin’s article inclines me to believe that NY may come back, but not if Cuomo is still in charge.
    Cuomo’s coronavirus nursing home policy proves to be tragic: Goodwin
    By Michael GoodwinApril 21, 2020 | 10:03pm

    https://nypost.com/2020/04/21/cuomo-coronavirus-nursing-home-policy-proves-tragic-goodwin/

    The letter was heartbreaking as it recounted the death of an 88-year-old woman in a New York nursing home. But it was also angry and accurate about a strange New York policy that is ­fatally wrongheaded.

    “I am wondering who will hold Gov. Cuomo accountable for the deaths of so many older people due to his reckless decision to place covid19 patients in nursing and rehabilitation homes,” the letter began. “I am writing as a daughter who lost her beautiful 88 year old mother who was receiving physical therapy at one such facility.”

    The writer, Arlene Mullin, went on to recount examples of the governor promising to protect the elderly because of their known vulnerability. She noted that he named his stay-at-home order after his own mother, Matilda ­Cuomo, and talked several times about protecting her.

    Mullin had another complaint, too — that the media never asked the governor about an order mandating that nursing homes admit and readmit patients who tested positive for the coronavirus, despite the extraordinary number of deaths among the elderly.

    That drought ended Monday when The Post’s Bernadette Hogan asked about the policy at ­Cuomo’s daily briefing. His ­answer was stunning.

    “That’s a good question. I don’t know,” the governor said.

    He turned to Harold Zucker, the state health commissioner, who confirmed the policy, saying “if you are positive, you should be admitted back to a nursing home. The necessary precautions will be taken to protect the other residents there.”

    The second part of Zucker’s answer is debatable, the first part is not. The disastrous results speak for themselves.

    He wasn’t terribly complimentary about the Mayor of NYC either.

    Mayor de Blasio’s streak of being worse than useless continues. Having nothing to do and little to say, he’s resorting to stunts to try to get attention.

    First he put out a nutty request for New Yorkers to snitch on those who don’t follow social-distance rules. The result was a deluge of middle fingers, penis pictures and profanity, The Post reports.

    Then he tried to invoke a headline from the 1970s, when the city needed a federal bailout. “Mr. President, are you going to save New York City, or are you telling New York City to drop dead?” It’s safe to assume nobody under 50 understood the reference.

    Tuesday, he vowed that New York is going to throw a ticker-tape parade for health care workers. He said it will be “the first thing we do” when the pandemic ends.

    Prediction: His next demand will be that the feds pay for the parade.

  15. Less resilient… toxic manhood… feminist ascendance… no babies requiring replacement immigration to hide the decline, ladies redid schools, men purposeless and without fathers cant build or work on things…

    yup.. certainly prepared the way to fall…

  16. A Treeper makes the obvious comment about de Blasio’s snitch line, especially since there has already been a case elsewhere of someone being reported for violating social distancing by posting a picture…taken last year.

    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/21/new-york-snitch-line-bombarded-with-subversive-liberty-memes-vulgar-pictures-and-propaganda-against-the-state/
    Mike Lee DelMarcelle says:
    April 21, 2020 at 10:05 pm
    I’m just wondering, if De Blasio hasn’t anticipated all the insults his site was going to get bombarded with, has he thought this out? How do the people viewing these snitch photos know they are current. The pictures sent could be from 6 months ago when there was no lock down and they are going to ticket or arrest people. Lawsuit opportunity!

  17. Art,
    I will never forget my wife’s delight in her 3 pregnancies and subsequent births. It’s magical. Same goes for my two daughters in laws, and daughter.

    Whatever you may wish, it’s always women and children first in my world.

  18. I have always said; if I had never married nor had a family, and had a large pool of money I would live in a hotel in New York city. It’s a helluva town! I love the energy, the diversity, the culture, the museums, Central Park, the rivers, the architecture, the history, the entertainment…

    I’d own as little as possible; no home, no car, no furniture… When I wanted a change of scenery I’d buy a plane ticket, pack a bag and ask the doorman to hail me a cab to Kennedy or Laguardia.

    Without a large pool of money it would be a very challenging place to live.

  19. I can see several different futures after this virus and I don’t have a strong prediction which will hold. I can picture a quick economic rebound to near full employment (although some sectors and individuals will remain severely impacted), but I can also envision a slow, difficult climb back.

    I think New York will be affected, perhaps worse than any other U.S. area. I recently read an article about an expensive (1million+ for the smallest units, over 40M for the most expensive), high rise apartment building that was scheduled for completion in a few months, but will miss some key construction deadlines due to the lockdown. The experts quoted in the article were confident everyone involved would use the clauses (centered on dates and delays) to back out of their commitments. I think folks with the kind of money to live comfortably in NYC, but with enough additional money to not HAVE to live comfortably in NYC will flee. Even if there are cures for this virus, as neo speculates, won’t they worry about another?

    Young folks (“if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere”) will likely continue to cram cheek to jowl in small apartments and new immigrants doing service work will remain, but the super wealthy? Why would you try to raise a family there if you own other properties? Maybe a small apartment for Dad to use when he’s in the city, but why keep everyone else in town? This virus has shown that 99.9% of the U.S. can be relatively safe during a pandemic, but if you’re stuck in New York, fuggedaboutit!

  20. I was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Nassau County. You couldn’t pay me to live in that area again. I was walking around Manhattan during Labor Day weekend and all I could think was “people choose to live here?”

  21. All this talk about whether we will bounce back yada yada yada yada is so ludicrous. Humans are by our very nature the most resilient and forward looking species in the known universe. We have come back from events that have devastated us and continually come back stronger. Covid is just a small zit that is on its way to popping in the course of history. We will adjust to insure that we continue forward – maybe the necessary adjustments will cause NY to change, but I find it hard to believe it will be molded into something completely different. Technological improvements will come that will make NY safer – think better filtered duct systems in large apartment complexes, UV light technology implemented at the retail level, germ resistant rails and better ventilation in subway cars. Government changes will come such as better stockpiles for hospitals to weather storms (at least until the government forgets and sells the stockpiles off). Some people will leave NY as quickly as possible but the young, who thankfully have no long term memory, will still flock to the city and replace it with the energy only they can provide. And NY will continue on.

  22. Closest topic thread to the virus, so here’s the Morning Update: despite the upticks yesterday, all the metrics got back on track today. In fact NY showed a 2000 decrease in cases. I was so shocked I had to double check it. In fact I don’t really believe it as worldometers active cases are cumulative, so at best we would see no increase. It is likely a reporting error.

    Serious cases have now been on the plateau for 8 straight days. I take this as the most telling indicator as it’s a direct reported metric, though not as direct as deaths. However, the fact that this trend in serious cases lines up with my derived “active minus recovered” again gives me a bit more confidence that my derived metric is really in gaussian mode and on the downward slope.

    As I mentioned to Bryan another thread, the Northeast desperately needs spring: sunshine and warmer temps will greatly help with the virus. We are getting about 1 day in 4 or 5 of bright sunshine. However, it’s a winter pattern where a bright day is cold. Yesterday, cold (40s) and rain…perfect virus weather. Today, bright sunshine, but 40 degrees and a wind chill in the low 30s. As my wife often states, in the Northeast there’s always payback in the weather. We had a very warm, mild winter, so now we get winter in April when we least need it to get healthy.

  23. }}} And although we’re far less resilient today,

    Actually, I think our resilience itself is untrammeled. But it’s never been challenged or tested, so we are more than prepared to whine before we get to the part where we endure.

    Remember, 1918 was not the first time this had happened in the world, and it likely won’t be the last.

    After the Black Plague of the late 1300s, the survivors went on as before, and with a lot greater joy in living.

    I would argue that 1918 was a large part of the reason for the “Roaring” of the Roaring 20s…

  24. BTW, speaking of “forgetting”, a more comparable example is the 1958 Asian (H2N2) flu.

    https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1957-1958-pandemic.html

    The estimated number of deaths was 1.1 million worldwide and 116,000 in the United States.

    That’s with a US population only 55% of its current number. So, to have a comparable per-capita number, you’re looking at 207k deaths in the USA alone.

    There’s reasonable question of whether there will be a lot more than that worldwide.

    And no one shut down the world economy, no one sheltered in place, no one ran around like Chicken Little… :-/

  25. I will never forget my wife’s delight in her 3 pregnancies and subsequent births.

    according to feminists they had too many children and should have aborted them, even AFTER birth… so why side with them when i am agains that, and for what you just said? you assume i am against women? why? because they equated a horrid movement as the only thing?

    After-birth abortion: why should the baby live?
    https://jme.bmj.com/content/39/5/261

    Whatever you may wish, it’s always women and children first in my world.

    Just cause i am against a communist ideology that loves to murder babies doesnt mean i am against women as people… in fact, they are more miserable now than before… they are unhappy, nasty, without partners, often if they do have kids they are in poverty, and so on and so on…

    the trope that if your not for communism with women, your against women is a lie

    The Red Pill is a 2016 American documentary film directed by Cassie Jaye. The film explores the men’s rights movement, as Jaye spends a year filming the leaders and followers within the movement.

    The Red Pill shifts from Jaye’s investigation of what she initially believed to be a hate movement to more sympathetic coverage of the movement. The shift is shown in the film through Jaye’s questions about her own views on gender, power, and privilege. The Red Pill also discusses issues facing men and boys such as male suicide rates, workplace fatalities and high-risk jobs, military conscription, lack of services for male victims of domestic violence and rape, higher rates of violent victimization, issues concerning divorce and child custody, disparity in criminal sentencing, disproportionately less funding and research on men’s health issues, educational inequality, societal tolerance of misandry, male genital mutilation and men’s lack of reproductive rights.

    Alan Scherstuhl’s review for The Village Voice suggested that many of those providing funding for the film may have themselves been men’s rights activists (MRAs), thereby creating a conflict of interest. Jaye has said that the suggestion the film was funded by MRAs is “a common lie that keeps spreading”. Jaye stated that “our five highest backers … are neither MRA nor feminist. I would say three out of five of them didn’t even know about the men’s rights movement, but wanted to defend free speech,” and that the film’s backers and producers would have no influence or control of the film.

    MEETING THE ENEMY A feminist comes to terms with the Men’s Rights movemen
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WMuzhQXJoY

    in the soviet union the movement caused the collapse of the population
    a population that doesnt have children is not one that celebrates women
    a population that turns owmen into men and destroys the future requiring them to be replaced is not one that celebrates women
    a population that equates cigarettes and alcohol and sexua debasement of women as “liberating” is not one that celebrates women
    a population that hates half its children and wishes them dead for being born, is not one that will survive

    A population that does that and more, is to be extinct or taken over
    which is the point…

    we will be communist soon.. because we cant separate feminism from women
    and feminism is FOR communism, and men who are too weak to fight and all that. there is no other kind.. they can claim there is, but that is a grain of sand giving its power to the former socialist version..

    they will make socialism in the country the way they did in Germany – voting

  26. 4 Feminist Lies That Are Making Women Miserable

    Too many women map out their lives with work at the center and eventually wish they hadn’t. My inbox is loaded with women’s emails saying they wish someone had told them this sooner. By Suzanne Venker

    https://thefederalist.com/2019/11/12/4-feminist-lies-that-are-making-women-miserable/

    1. Women Don’t Need Men
    2. Men and Women Are the Same, Or Gender Is a Social Construct
    3. The Biological Clock Isn’t Real
    4. A Career Is More Meaningful Than Marriage and Children

    Women will not be capable of being drafted..
    meaning the next war will not only remove men, but destroy social fecundity

    but look at that list… its not a list of liberation
    its a list made by people who wanted to TAX womens labor
    which was what marx said…

    A Good Man Is Getting Even Harder to Find – WSJ
    Women can’t find men who make as much money as they do – NY post
    Is There a Shortage of Men Worth Marrying? | Psychology Today
    Lack of ‘economically-attractive’ men to blame for decline in marriage rates, study suggests
    Broke men are making it hard for women to marry
    Why American Men Are Getting Less Marriageable

    all those women will NOT share the joy you saw with your wife and others
    they wont have that experience… they will have exterminated their familial lines
    they will be very upset that the advice given to them lied about their fertility
    lied about their natures of being hypergamous…

    and left them old… taxed up the wazoo… and alone..

    if you think thats great for women, i certainly dont..

    hows this for sad, they are doing this waiting for men that will never come
    and they dont know that this has a very low success rate.. spending huge sums

    Single women are paying thousands to freeze their eggs – but …
    Delayed Childbearing: Should Women Freeze Their Eggs …
    An ‘expensive lottery ticket’: Freezing eggs offers women hope …
    More and more women are freezing their eggs

    [since they pushed the men out of college there are no men equal to marry, so men are unsuitable… families are not possible… and the joy of the birth you claim is a distant fantasy that cant happen]

  27. “New York is a hard place to live, you need to scramble. It is much easier in most of the country.”

    That was part of the appeal of the Sun Belt megalopolis “Edge City” that I moved to after moving from Manhattan to the rural South (having been conned by a “friend” that there was a great opportunity for me there–that turned out to be a form of legalized slavery). I didn’t have the money to get back to NYC, but I was told that this “city” (actually a suburb wrapped around a ghetto and a barrio) was “a more liveable version of New York City.” Semi-true then: the rents were cheaper, although most of the jobs were of the low-paying service-economy type. But not true now: rents have gone through the roof. And yet the place remains a cultural wasteland.

  28. I seem to recall articles a few years ago about how small businesses and stores were having a hard time in NYC due to high rents and landlords preferring to keep properties empty for various perverse tax reasons.

    Will those conditions still apply after the lockdown? If a thousand small shops close their doors, will that cause rents to go down and make life easier for the shops that remain?

    (Of course, it being NYC, I fully expect that the government will do anything except get out of the way…)

  29. “A lot of people hate New York and would say “good riddance.””

    I can only speak for myself, but I don’t believe most red-staters like me actually “hate” New York city. It’s just not our kind of place. I prefer a more quiet rural setting for my life.

    Some people dislike my kind of place and much prefer the energy and vitality of a big city like that. That’s okay. There are advantages to city living and because of that, there are twice as many people living in NYC than there are in my entire state (KY).

    I’ve been to NYC quite a few times. And not just as a tourist. I’ve worked there. It is a place I do enjoy, but in small doses. I don’t think I would ever consider moving there – just as most New Yorker’s would ever consider moving here to Bullitt county.

    Where the resentment (not hate) comes in is when the people of a place like NYC decide that what’s good for them must also be good for all the rest of us, and decide to try and impose it on us for our own good.

    I could come up with more than a few examples from the age of Trump, but the best example is from over 30 years ago. Back in the 80’s, during Reagan’s term, there was a move to rescind the federally mandated 55mph speed limit and revert back to letting the states decide for themselves. The push-back on that came almost entirely from the northeastern region – mostly NY and NJ. If the states could set their own speed limits, why would someone from NY or NJ even care what the speed limit is in a place like Montana or Tennessee.

  30. NYC’s recovery will depend substantially on who is elected Mayor in 2021. If it’s somebody like Guiliani, the city has a chance. If it’s Comrade Commissar DeBlasio again, or one of his YCL followers, to quote New Yorkers, “fuggedaboudit!”

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