Coronavirus — and the fear of it — threatens to do what terrorism and crime never could: clear New York's streets and turn us into 8.6 million misanthropic agoraphobes. JDavidsonNYC writes
Coronavirus could thin out the city’s crowds. Photo: Andrew Gombert/EPA/Shutterstock A few weeks ago, I found myself in an eerily quiet Chinatown during the Lunar New Year. The police had blocked off entire blocks for crowds that never showed up. A few troupes of celebrants beat drums and carried paper dragons through empty streets. Restaurants that are reliably packed on a Saturday afternoon stood vacant and glum. At the time, it seemed like an aberration.
We’ve been here before, within recent memory. SARS, Ebola, and swine flu blew through without bringing the city to its knees. “Infectious disease is a recurring theme in New York’s history, and so are panic and rumor,” says Sarah Henry, the deputy director of the Museum of the City of New York, who curated the 2018 exhibition “Germ City: Microbes and the Metropolis.”
We’re all too young to remember what may be the most, um, germane, example of a new plague striking the modern city. In the fall of 1918, the influenza pandemic that was ravaging armies and continents hit the East Coast, killing tens of thousands in a few months, before abating — for a while. The flu came in lethal waves, which made relief deceptive. Some cities shut schools, stores, and theaters for months.
Even for those who never get sick, it’s hard to fathom all the ways in which urbanites, caught between irrational denial and inchoate panic, will have to live against the grain, and how ill-suited we are to living apart.
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