By Buck Sexton
The air is clean and crisp
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brought back to the terrible reality of our circumstances here in America’s biggest city. It was almost certainly a COVID-19 patient on the way to a hospital because of trouble breathing. There are thousands of them. Our medical teams’ desperate fight to save as many lives as possible is constantly underway. The wailing of first-responder vehicles is a constant reminder. Without any other ambient noise – with construction sites and the hustle and bustle of the city at a standstill – the sirens’ sound waves reverberate off the steel and brick cityscape for miles in every direction. On an early spring day with beautiful weather, the empty streets in Midtown Manhattan are unsettling on their own. It’s the empty storefronts, however, that are the clearest indicator of what’s going on here... Every store, other than groceries and pharmacies, is closed. Walking around Rockefeller Center, one of the most famous tourist spots in America, it’s apparent that these commercial enterprises aren’t planning to open anytime soon. Metal gates are pulled down... Doors are padlocked... Some have removed merchandise from their window displays, no doubt concerned about the 75% spike in business burglaries over the past month in New York.
when you walk through New York City’s Times Square these days. There are few vehicles on the road due to the pandemic lockdown. Scientists estimate that carbon monoxide in the air is down an incredible 50%, along with major reductions in a variety of other air pollutants. There is also a strange silence around you as you walk – unprecedented in the life of this city. Honking horns define the sound of New York as much as skyscrapers do the sight of it. If you can forget for a moment the tragic reasons for the eerie quiet, the city has never sounded so calm. If you went outside and closed your eyes right now where I live in Midtown Manhattan, you could almost convince yourself that you’re far away from the city. The silence and rush of clean air overtakes your senses. I tried it over the weekend. As a sensory experience, it allowed a brief mental escape. But as uncharacteristically quiet and clean as New York City streets have become, one cannot escape for long the painful truth of why everything has slowed down. The “city that never sleeps” isn’t in a slumber – it’s in a coma. Within moments of closing my eyes, I heard an ambulance siren. Instantly, I was
American Consequences
91
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