Where Have All the People Gone?: New York City in the Time of COVID-19

By Rainer Gruessner

This poignant book delves into the profound impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on New York City, aptly known as the ‘Capital of the World.’ Divided into three compelling parts, it unravels the harrowing narrative through text and captivating imagery.

In the first part, readers are immersed in a comprehensive chronicle of the pandemic, capturing its relentless grip on the city and its inhabitants. It delves into the multifaceted consequences that unfolded, encompassing the devastating toll on healthcare, the economy, culture, and the collective psyche of New York City. This section serves as a somber reflection on the overwhelming challenges faced by the city, painting a vivid picture of the trials and tribulations endured.

The second part presents a surrealistic photographic testimony, allowing readers to witness the haunting transformation of New York City during the COVID lockdown. Through historically unique images, the book spotlights the eerily deserted streets and iconic landmarks that once thrived with vibrant energy. This visual exploration serves as a poignant reminder of the stark contrast between the city’s bustling past and its hauntingly quiet present, leaving a lasting impression of the profound impact the pandemic had on its urban landscape.

The third part focuses on some positive aspects of the pandemic, despite its gruesome human toll, as it concerns many aspects of our daily life, work, and the environment. It exposes how and why the pandemic has changed our perspective on life.

Together, these three parts create a poignant and powerful account of the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on New York City. The book exposes the raw reality of the crisis while also offering glimpses of resilience and hope, showcasing the indomitable spirit of the city and its residents as they fought back against this devastating health crisis.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Oct 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9798886933987

Rainer Gruessner

Rainer Gruessner is an internationally known surgeon and considered a pioneer in organ transplantation. He was the first transplant surgeon to perform all types of abdominal transplants (kidney, liver, pancreas, intestine) from living donors. He served as chairman of the Departments of Surgery at the Universities of Zürich, Arizona, and New York State (SUNY Downstate). In 2020, he witnessed first-hand the horrible consequences that the COVID-19 pandemic had on New York City when it became the world’s epicenter. During the lockdown of New York City, he took historically unique photos across town which became a centerpiece of this first and comprehensive COVID-19 chronicle of New York City.

Book preview

About the Author

Rainer Gruessner is an internationally known surgeon and considered a pioneer in organ transplantation. He was the first transplant surgeon to perform all types of abdominal transplants (kidney, liver, pancreas, intestine) from living donors. He served as chairman of the Departments of Surgery at the Universities of Zürich, Arizona, and New York State (SUNY Downstate).

In 2020, he witnessed first-hand the horrible consequences that the COVID-19 pandemic had on New York City when it became the world’s epicenter. During the lockdown of New York City, he took historically unique photos across town which became a centerpiece of this first and comprehensive COVID-19 chronicle of New York City.

Dedication

To all New Yorkers who succumbed to the horrific COVID-19 pandemic

and their families.

Copyright Information ©

Rainer Gruessner 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Gruessner, Rainer

Where Have All the People Gone?

ISBN 9798886933963 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886933970 (Hardback)

ISBN 9798886933987 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023912959

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Preface

This book chronicles, in text and image, the horrific impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the ‘Capital of the World’, New York City (NYC). The idea to this factual and photographic testimonial was born during NYC’s lockdown in the first COVID-19 wave from March to May 2020. The photos taken at the time show how life came to a complete halt in one of the busiest cities in the world. The photos do not depict senseless and shocking wartime destruction as in present-day Ukraine but an eerie scenario of intact buildings and streets without people, a sight never seen before in the ‘city that never sleeps’ and usually boasts full of life with its bustling boroughs.

The photos were taken at key landmark sites, less known places and streets, subway stations, and at New York’s busiest (JFK) airport. The striking pictures bring back the fearful memories of a time when ‘angst’ about getting infected and uncertainty about survival preoccupied our minds.

The photos were shot on three different occasions: (1) on May 10, 2020, a sunny Sunday in NYC depicting streets and places that under normal circumstances are packed with New Yorkers and tourists; on May 8, 2020, a rainy Friday representing the gloomy and dreary atmosphere that overcame deserted NYC; and on May 7, 2020, a sunny Thursday evening upon return to NYC through the completely abandoned John F. Kennedy International airport as it has never been seen before. Interspersed are black and white photos displaying the depressed atmosphere in this typically so-lively metropolis. The elimination of life on some of the busiest streets and places in the world such as 5th Avenue, Park Avenue or Times Square gives rise to the perception of the advent of Armageddon.

Of note, the photos were not enhanced to preserve the utmost of their originality. This surreal photographic testimony of Covid-stricken NYC is not only a contemporary, but a true historical document of an experience that hopefully neither our generation nor generations to come have to ever experience again. The reason for entitling the book Where Have All the People Gone is explained in the Introduction.

The photographic testimony is embedded in two very different sections. The first section provides a chronicle of the pandemic as it manifested itself in form of a modern health scourge like the plague did in medieval times. This section summarizes the devastating medical, economic, cultural, and psycho-social impact that the COVID-19 lockdown had on New York City. The third section ends on a somewhat uplifting note and brings to light positive aspects of the pandemic, despite its gruesome human toll, as it concerns many aspects of our daily life, work settings and environmental issues as well as changed perspectives on life. Both sections also focus on lessons that we have learned from the COVID-19 pandemic and how we can better manage such catastrophes in the future.

Being a historical document, the text is filled with original citations of leading NYC newspaper and media articles to offer the highest degree of authenticity and documentation as the pandemic unfolded. This allows the reader to reflect on the many original quotes of authentic stakeholders rather than receiving secondhand information through editorial re- or para-phrasing and wordsmithing. The editorial difficulty then was to link these different quotes into a cohesive, understandable and logic sequence which sometimes required a rearrangement of sentence and paragraph order. This was necessary to provide continuous reading flow.

This book is intended to be a chronicle and a reminder of how terribly the COVID-19 pandemic plagued NYC and how New Yorkers fought back and eventually overcame this devastating health crisis.

Introduction

Where Have All the People Gone?

I chose the title ‘Where Have All the People Gone?’ in analogy to Pete Seeger’s song, ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’

In this anti-war song, the flowers represent both the eternity and the cycle of life. One learns in the first verse that the flowers are picked by young girls. Only in the last verse it becomes clear that the graveyards of the soldiers who had married the young girls had turned to flowers.

The lines of this five-verse song were taken from the traditional Cossack folk song ‘Koloda-Duda’ in Mikhail Sholokhov’s novel ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ from 1934 [1,2]. The novel describes the struggles and suffering of the Cossacks during the First World War and the Russian Revolution. In 1965, Sholokhov was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel. Of note, the Don flows through Ukrainian ethnic territory for about 155 miles [3] and the current Russian war against Ukraine has started in the Donbass-region. Pete Seeger wrote the lyrics to ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’ in 1955, but they could not be any more current in symbolizing the insanity and madness of war.

‘Where Have All the People Gone?’ is not about a military war between nations but about a global war against an invisible enemy, the coronavirus, which took all of the world hostage. This book focuses only on the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the self-declared ‘Capital of the World’, New York City. It provides a chronology of the events as they unfolded in the City during the first five waves of the pandemic. This photographic testimony of completely deserted streets and places in Manhattan during the lockdown are a drastic reminder of how quickly public life not only came to a standstill but just about disappeared.

In the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, not soldiers as in Seeger’s song went to graveyards but defenseless citizens did. Within a time span of only two years (2020 to 2022) from the first documented COVID-19 case in New York City to the end of the statewide mask mandate in schools, about 40,000 New Yorkers died and more than 300,000 New Yorkers, at least temporarily, left the ‘City’. In fact, New York City was abandoned by more people during the pandemic than any other city in the nation. This book provides striking images of empty streets, places, airports and subways that are usually bustling and full of New Yorkers and tourists. The photos give the impression as if the ‘City’ had been annihilated leaving all buildings intact but all life erased.

In contrast to the song ‘Where have all the flowers gone?’, this book entitled ‘Where Have All the People Gone?’ ends with an uplifting message. This book documents the few positive elements that the pandemic had on many aspects of life despite its horrific medical and economic impact. It will be on our generation to provide guidance to the next generations on how to successfully fight medical catastrophes that threaten all of humankind and not just individual nations. Ideally, the answer to ‘Where have all the people gone?’ has to be that the survivors of this terrific pandemic created a better world for their children and grandchildren.

References

https://ig.ft.com/life-of-a-song/where-have-all-the-flowers-gone.html, accessed 4/2/22

https://performingsongwriter.com/pete-seeger-flowers-gone/, accessed 4/2/22

http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CD%5CO%5CDonRiver.htm, accessed 4/2/22

Section I

Chronology and Impact of

COVID-19 on NYC

Chapter 1

39,902

Thirty-nine thousand nine hundred and two.

This is the number of how many New Yorkers have died between the first documented COVID-19 case in New York City (NYC) on March 1, 2020 and the end of the statewide mask mandate in schools on March 7, 2022. ¹

The ongoing pandemic is the deadliest disaster by death toll in the history of New York City. ² "New York City saw 20 percent of the nation’s deaths in the first wave, despite making up just 3 percent of the U.S. population…Epidemiologists have pointed to New York [City]’s density and its role as an international hub of commerce and tourism to explain the early spike in cases and deaths." ³

In total, almost 2.3 million or 1 in 4 New Yorkers were diagnosed with Covid-19 by the time the mask mandate had ended on March 7, 2022. About 0.3% of New York City’s population and 1.7% of infected New Yorkers died as a result of this pandemic. ¹

Of the five boroughs, the death rate in absolute numbers was highest in Kings (Brooklyn) and Queens counties. When the death rate was based on population, the Bronx and Queens counties had the highest numbers of fatalities. Of note, Manhattan had a significantly lower death rate (0.2%) than the other 4 boroughs, but this number may be falsely low due to the droves of New Yorkers who abandoned Manhattan, at least temporarily, during the pandemic. In fact, Manhattan suffered the biggest population decline, 117,375 people, among all US counties. ²,⁴,⁵

COVID-19 not only affected New York City’s boroughs disproportionally. It was also not an equal-opportunity killer. ⁶

Black, Hispanic, Indigenous and People of Color and other racialized minorities were impacted the most. Older people, individuals with comorbidities, specifically diabetes, hypertension and obesity, and high-poverty areas had the highest infection and death rates. In that regard, New York City was no different than the rest of the nation. However, these health disproportionalities due to economic and