And make certain not to practice your righteousness before men, in order to be watched by them. …
Matthew 6:1
The New Testament: A Translation, by David Bentley Hart
In an email to readers yesterday, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote:
Hospitals have been very reluctant to allow journalists in to report, in part because of genuine concerns about infection risk and HIPAA privacy rules. But this pandemic is a story that is best covered not from White House press briefings but from the front lines in the hospitals. I asked many hospitals for permission, and two did agree to let me and a video journalist inside. My column today … shares what we found. [italics added]
The visit left me deeply impressed by the doctors, nurses, technicians, respiratory therapists and cleaners who risk their lives by working each day in the “hot zone” where contagion spreads. Many confided their fears of getting sick and dying, or their worries about getting loved ones sick, and some spoke of their nightmares and panic attacks. Yet they soldier on with tremendous compassion. …
I recommend Nicholas Kristof’s op-ed:
Life and Death in the ‘Hot Zone’
“If people saw this, they would stay home.” What the war against the coronavirus looks like inside two Bronx hospitals.
By Nicholas Kristof
The New York Times
April 11, 2020
It’s an incredibly courageous — and in itself incredible — and also harrowing piece of reporting.
The true heroes of this crisis, this pandemic, are indeed the doctors, nurses, and other hospital workers; and the EMS workers, medics, and ambulance drivers.
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If I may add one further observation that I have been making in the past two weeks. As usual, it seems that, while some of the rich are fleeing New York City, it is ordinary people often who are the salt of the earth — the humble people who can’t leave. I have observed this several times.
About a week ago, I was on a bus in Queens that was more crowded than one would expect. Everyone seems uptight now about sitting or getting too close, and yet a woman was struggling to get on with an overloaded shopping cart — she must have been Jewish and shopping for Passover, judging by some of the items in her cart. The woman was from Manhattan, and getting back to Manhattan from Queens involved taking three or four buses. It was apparent that she wasn’t going to take the subway. The passengers on the bus, as I am finding with the transit riding public in the past couple of weeks, appeared to be mostly minority and not well heeled. When he observed the woman struggling, a black guy on the street who was not boarding the bus interrupted his walk to wherever he was headed to help her get the cart on. Then, a woman on the bus who appeared to be Hispanic spent ten minutes or so going over possible bus routes with the woman and inquiring from other passengers, all of whom pitched in with advice, the best route for the woman to take.
The bus emptied out, and the woman reached a point near the bridge where she had to get off and transfer for another bus to Manhattan. Passengers, myself included, made it a point to help her get her cart off, find the right place to catch the next bus, and help her get across Queens Boulevard with her cart to the right place.
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This past week, I was on a bus headed uptown on Second Avenue. A woman was getting off in Midtown. She looked like she could afford to live there. She had a couple of shopping bags. There was another woman wearing a mask seated across from me near the exit door. The bus goes all the way to East Harlem; this woman, from her dress, did not look rich. I felt she could have been a day care worker or some such type of work.
“Lady,” she said to the woman getting off, “you left your pocket book on the seat.” The woman was very thankful. The bus driver held up the bus so she could go back and get it.
I got off the bus a couple of stops later. “God bless you,” I said to the “day care worker.” “You did a good deed. You saved the woman’s day.” I was thinking how I would feel if I got home and realized my wallet, money, and credit cards were all gone.
— Roger W. Smith
April 12, 2020