HELFWORKS

Attrition

Whether news gets delivered to your doorstep, or you glean it from your surroundings——vacancies in a parking lot, absent neighbors——it's very clear that some New Yorkers have left the city.

I read the argument in the Comments section of the New York Times. New Yorkers feel entitled to their second homes in the Catskills, or the Hamptons, places they heretofore only visited at vacation times. But rural locals, fearing transmission of the virus, resent their presence. Their towns don't have a large medical capacity, or even hospitals. New Yorkers buy up all the meat and wine in their small groceries. New Yorkers don't know how to behave, they say.

There are excusable and laudable cases. A doctor working here sent his family to the country to avoid infecting them. A woman, staying with her father in the midwest, has lent her apartment for free to a nurse heeding the call to come help the city. But in the Comments section, there's no reconciling two sides.

I sympathize with the small towners. Regardless of the property taxes New Yorkers pay for second homes, "Shelter in place", "New York on pause", "lockdown" are about staying where you are to contain the spread of the virus.

A week ago the Times reported New Yorkers buying and renting in the suburbs, a two-fold increase from previous years. "Time to Get Out of Dodge" the headline asserts. City-dwellers have abandoned New York for an expected easier life.

And so it may be. Far from the city people make adjustments for the coronavirus, but they are enjoying relaxation in their private outdoor spaces. That is a luxury most New Yorkers don't have.

The coronavirus is now almost everywhere, and no-one knows how this all turns out. Each county and state are on their own time schedules, and New York City is lagging all. New surges of infection are possible. My imagination conjures a deterioration to dystopian times, bands of desperate survivors roaming the land, seeking refuge. Will the city have more resources than elsewhere? Or will it be worse here, forcing me to flee, too? My fate would seem clear. Contaminated by New York, I'll be unwanted company, one among the zombie-like hordes invading regions beyond our bridges and tunnels.