NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / World

Covid 19 coronavirus: Is a second US wave starting? New Yorkers are steeling themselves

By Michael Wilson
New York Times·
22 Oct, 2020 04:00 AM7 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Robert James with his sons Presley, 4, left, and Wyatt, 7. He hopes to keep Wyatt in school. Photo / James Estrin, The New York Times

Robert James with his sons Presley, 4, left, and Wyatt, 7. He hopes to keep Wyatt in school. Photo / James Estrin, The New York Times

As the number of virus cases rises, anxious residents are taking precautions and making sure they are prepared this time.

A father of three in Brooklyn is back to stockpiling medicine and rubbing alcohol. A publicist has put her plan to return to her office in Manhattan on hold indefinitely. And a mother in Central Park has again — and again — delayed taking her 15-month-old daughter back to the toddler music classes she loved.

"Big groups of kids, we're not doing any of that," said the mother, Aneya Farrell, 34. "She hasn't seen a lot of babies over the past six months."

As New York City faces its first notable increase in coronavirus infections since a springtime surge killed more than 20,000, residents are again looking at their neighbourhoods and wondering, after each rise in numbers, each passing siren: Is this a second wave?

The recent increase prompted Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew M. Cuomo to order lockdowns in several parts of Brooklyn and Queens where the infection rate has risen most sharply. The restrictions mostly affected neighbourhoods with large Orthodox Jewish populations. But other neighbourhoods faced partial lockdowns, including the cancelling of indoor dining.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"It's scary and upsetting," Farrell said, "because we had such a good streak going."

The increases have rattled many people in those neighbourhoods and beyond, reminding them of the dark days of March and April when it was impossible to meet friends, eat out at a restaurant, go to church or visit parents.

Some New Yorkers see the rise in cases as a harbinger, the footfalls that announce an intruder's arrival.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"I feel like the second wave is here — that same kind of doomsday feeling," said Anya Ferring, 40, a fashion production consultant who lives in Far Rockaway, Queens, one of the neighbourhoods experiencing a partial lockdown.

During the pandemic, Ferring has mostly maintained masked social distancing around her friends, with the masks gradually coming off in the summer. But recently, several of her friends have tested positive for the virus or have had to quarantine.

Discover more

World

The pandemic's real US toll? 300,000, and it's not just from the coronavirus

21 Oct 07:15 PM
World

How a virus surge among Orthodox Jews became a crisis for New York

09 Oct 04:00 AM
World

New York back on alert as Covid-19 hot spots flare

05 Oct 01:30 AM
World

Warnings issued as virus cases rise in New York

29 Sep 01:25 AM
Anya Ferring's neighbourhood, Far Rockaway, is experiencing a partial lockdown. Photo / James Estrin, The New York Times
Anya Ferring's neighbourhood, Far Rockaway, is experiencing a partial lockdown. Photo / James Estrin, The New York Times

On a recent Saturday, she sat in Herbert Von King Park in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, with a friend, Kelly McKay, 39. Both wore masks.

"Summer is over, and the fun is over," McKay said.

In several interviews in the past several weeks, city residents shared deep frustrations with their fellow New Yorkers who don't appear to be following the same rules. The solidarity forged in the springtime outbreak appears, in some neighbourhoods, to have fractured in the fall.

Michael Mitchell, a 49-year-old therapist from Washington Heights, said he was dismayed by what he saw on a recent subway ride. "People were not wearing masks — I asked them to put them on, and they wouldn't," he said. "So I feel like that sense of community living that we had is broken."

Andre Williams, 45, the father who has resumed stockpiling acetaminophen and other supplies for his family in Clinton Hill, put it bluntly: "A lot of us took our eyes off the ball."

Jennifer Burchette, a 29-year-old publicist from Bedford-Stuyvesant who changed her plans to return to her office, said too many people are acting as if the threat has passed.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

"It's not over because you're over it," she said.

In a survey of 1,000 New York City residents conducted in late September, 72 per cent of the respondents said they expected a second wave of cases that will resemble the surge of April, according to the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, which released the findings on Wednesday. But beneath that fear were signs of optimism.

"It's not over because you're over it," said Jennifer Burchette. Photo / James Estrin, The New York Times
"It's not over because you're over it," said Jennifer Burchette. Photo / James Estrin, The New York Times

Seventy percent of the respondents said they planned to stay in the city for the duration of its recovery. And the number of people who reported feeling anxious or depressed more than half the time in the past two weeks dropped to 18 per cent and 19 per cent, respectively. In a survey in June, 28 per cent reported anxiety and 21 per cent reported depression.

"In the face of this pandemic, it is encouraging that so many people continue to maintain their hope, a great sign of our resilience as New Yorkers," said Ayman El-Mohandes, the dean of the school.

The recent increase in infections has led some of those New Yorkers who are staying put to make fast decisions in the face of a potential lockdown. Foremost for many were choices that involved schools.

The parents of more than half of the system's 1.1 million students have opted to keep them home at least through November.

Others leaned hard the opposite way. Robert James, a single father of two children, said he planned to keep his 7-year-old son in school as long as possible. "I didn't want my kid to have a full year out," he said. "I thought if I didn't put him in now, I might not get the chance, especially with a mayor with an itchy trigger to pull them out."

He added, "It's as safe as it's going to be right now." If the positivity rate rises to 3 per cent and the city closes the schools again, "the kid stays home," he said. (The current seven-day citywide rate is 1.7 per cent.)

Many who endured the spring's lockdown in the city are facing a possible second wave with an informed resolve to prepare, to have the things they wish they'd had then. For some, that means buying groceries and toilet paper in bulk. Others are visiting parents and grandparents while that still feels safe.

Erin Kommor and Keith White, both actors in Washington Heights, plan to get a dog to keep them company if they're stuck inside. They said they monitor the positivity rates in daily emails from the city. "Not time to be stupid, I guess," Keith White said.

Others are consciously embracing the parts of the city they missed most during the last lockdown. Kitty Hatfield, 75, in SoHo, said she planned to get an insulated pad to use at her favourite restaurants, for as long as they're open, so she can sit outside when the temperatures drop. Her plan: "Put more clothes on and keep doing what I'm doing," she said.

Jessica Yan and Chris Uller have been travelling to Fort Tryon Park in Manhattan to find rock walls for climbing, with an urgency steeped in concern that at some point, they won't be able to.

"I feel like a future wave is something that's in the back of my mind, but I also feel like there's a point at which we have to prioritise mental health as well," Yan said.

Sezer Benoit-Savci, 17, who graduated from high school in the spring and is taking a gap year, showed up for his new job at the grocery-eatery Lea in Kensington, in an area where indoor dining is now banned. "Being shut down and locked in my house would be unfortunate," he said.

Like the rock-climbers in Fort Tryon Park, Rachel Tigay, a 53-year-old high school social worker, has been focusing on exercise. She regularly meets friends for bicycle rides in the city. "I'm biking more than I ever have," she said.

A sense of panic seems offset by experience: New Yorkers have lived through this before. Many of those interviewed expressed confidence in their ability to keep themselves safe, comforted in knowing that what they've been doing for months has worked so far.

"We'll be watching the numbers, but it won't affect our behaviour because we're already working from home," said Ted Altschuler, a 57-year-old theatre director who lives with Mitchell, the therapist. "We're going to remain cautious."

Joe Sigona, 73, of Kips Bay in Manhattan, recently sat reading a newspaper in Bryant Park — his "open-air library." He watches the numbers, but plans to adhere to his simple strategy that has thus far seen him through: "Stay to myself, stay out of crowds, stay away from people," he said.

Zoe Neuschatz, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, said she and her boyfriend had been mostly staying at home since the pandemic began, and they have no plans of letting up and have even considered stockpiling supplies.

"Maybe it's my post-trauma stress from the spring," she said. "I'm a nerd about it. I take it seriously, always."


Written by: Michael Wilson
Photographs by: James Estrin
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES

Save

    Share this article

    Reminder, this is a Premium article and requires a subscription to read.

Latest from World

Sport

Emma Raducanu criticises Wimbledon electronic line calls after loss

05 Jul 03:26 AM
WorldUpdated

Texas flash flood death toll rises to 24

05 Jul 03:26 AM
Entertainment

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

05 Jul 12:36 AM

There’s more to Hawai‘i than beaches and buffets – here’s how to see it differently

sponsored
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from World

Emma Raducanu criticises Wimbledon electronic line calls after loss

Emma Raducanu criticises Wimbledon electronic line calls after loss

05 Jul 03:26 AM

Comments came after she queried a crucial line call in her match against Aryna Sabalenka.

Trump responds as Texas floods leave 24 dead, girls missing from camp

Trump responds as Texas floods leave 24 dead, girls missing from camp

05 Jul 03:26 AM
Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

Nip/Tuck and Home and Away star Julian McMahon dies aged 56

05 Jul 12:36 AM
'Ready to engage': Hamas signals openness to US-backed ceasefire

'Ready to engage': Hamas signals openness to US-backed ceasefire

04 Jul 10:08 PM
From early mornings to easy living
sponsored

From early mornings to easy living

NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP