NOW IS THE BEST TIME EVER TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR
Fearing a ‘Twindemic,’ Health Experts Push Urgently for Flu Shots
As Summer Wanes in N.Y.C., Anxiety Rises Over What Fall May Bring The coronavirus has retreated in New York, but the rituals of September are disrupted, and a sense of foreboding remains about a possible second wave. ....... In March and April, as ambulances raced through neighborhoods and refrigerated trucks sat humming behind hospitals overwhelmed by the pandemic’s dead, summer seemed a distant fantasy. Then it arrived as promised: The city unveiled in a series of phases that brought its streets back to something closer to life. The coronavirus infections dropped, the curve flattened, dinner and drinks were served beneath the stars, and friends reunited in parks and on beaches as if home from a war. ............ a deep and intense anxiety over what might lie ahead, as summer gave way to autumn and a new rash of frightening unknowns ........... Schools, the economy, crime, food, shelter, travel and access to family, planning a vacation — nothing feels like a given in these waning days of August. .......... Neither of his two children, away from classmates for months, has fallen ill since March — not a sniffle. “Unprecedented in my house” ............ the upcoming schedule at his 5-year-old daughter’s school — five days in the classroom every three weeks — will at least give her some interaction with other children ......... Visitors and newcomers to the city quickly pick up on the anxiety. ........... Now, even as the threat of illness has diminished, the lure of the suburbs grows. Seeing others depart brings unsettling questions: Are we doing the right thing by staying? This will all pass, right? .......... “It is so difficult to have your own space in this city” ........ She’d been considering moving for a while, but now it seems more urgent. “Maybe Westchester, maybe New Jersey” ............ “There is an impending-doom feeling.” .......... “The level of anxiety is increasing, not decreasing” “People are squeamish.” .......... consistent unease about losing a job or, for those who already have, finding a new one or returning to work after being furloughed. ............. “In some ways it’s more stressful than ever, thinking about what life will look like,” he said. “A friend asked me yesterday, ‘What’s the future of work?’ I have no idea.” ........ He said he wished there was a finish line, no matter how far-off. “There’s no set time. If there was a set date, you could say, ‘OK,’ and prepare for that. But there isn’t.” ....... “In the first 16 weeks this was like a natural disaster, like an earthquake or tsunami. It didn’t seem fair to ask, ‘Well, what are you doing about this?’ But by September, people are starting to make decisions for themselves or their families. ‘Am I going to move out? Am I going to stay? What am I going to do about this?’”
New York’s School Chaos Is Breaking Me So this is how it feels to be abandoned by your government....... when I lie in bed struggling to figure out how to balance physical risk, economic sustainability and emotional well-being, I can’t make the equation work. ........ A friend who works in chronically underfunded city high schools pointed out that privileged parents like me are getting a taste of something that other urban parents have always gone through. .......... I’m one of many relatively rich people experiencing what poor people experience all the time — total abandonment by our government. .......... Recently I ran into an acquaintance, a psychotherapist named Lesley Alderman, who told me that among her patients, those with young children were generally struggling the most. “Parents with young kids, they’re tearing their hair out,” she told me. Many of them, she said, “want their kids desperately to go back to school, and then there’s this kind of guilt: ‘Am I selfish for wanting this? Am I putting my kids in jeopardy? Are we putting the teachers in jeopardy?’” ........... There are only two ways out of pandemic-driven insecurity: great personal wealth or a functioning government. Right now, many of us who’d thought we were insulated from American precarity are finding out just how frightening the world can be when you don’t have either.
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