Weather: Sunny but gusty, with a high in the mid-50s.
Alternate-side parking: In effect until Tuesday (Purim).
[Just in: Six people in New York have now tested positive for the new coronavirus, officials said on Wednesday.]
Two schools, in the Bronx and in Westchester County, were closed yesterday. A synagogue in nearby New Rochelle was shuttered. And nearly every one of the city’s 427 subway stations were disinfected with bleach.
These precautions and others came on the heels of the state’s second confirmed case of the coronavirus: a man in his 50s from Westchester. The first case was a Manhattan woman, 39, who had recently flown home from Iran.
As officials in New York are scrambling to curb the outbreak, they are also trying to ease the public’s fears. “You cannot contain the spread,” Governor Cuomo said yesterday. “You can slow it.”
Jesse McKinley, The Times’s Albany bureau chief, is covering the outbreak, and he spoke to me about the state’s response.
Jesse, how are state and local officials responding to the coronavirus?
The State Department of Health, in Albany, is testing possible cases and tracking people who may have come into contact with anyone who tested positive. City health officials are doing similar work.
Federal health officials are examining whether the virus is mutating and seeing if the mortality rate is getting worse.
[Worried about coronavirus on the subway? Here’s what we know.]
A lot happened in the days after the state’s first case was confirmed. What could happen by Friday?
New York officials have two playbooks. One was written by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2017. The other was written by state officials in 2015. Both were written after the H1N1 swine flu of 2009.
Those playbooks called for pretty extreme stuff: closing schools, calling off concerts and sporting events. I don’t know if we’ll ever get to that. But this could accelerate quickly.
What is it exactly about the coronavirus that worries New York officials?
Last week, I spoke with Howard A. Zucker, the state’s health commissioner. He said there were probably more people who have the coronavirus than officials have confirmed. That may mean that the mortality rate is probably lower than we realize.
But Dr. Zucker also said he worried that the coronavirus would “mutate to something which has more virulence to it.”
The state and city are working closely together. Did you expect that, given the tensions between Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio?
It happened in 2014 with the Ebola virus. They set aside their qualms and came together. This is Governance 101: You have to set aside the politics for a second.
But I also think there will be some friction between state and city officials, particularly if you have hundreds of cases and you start taking drastic steps, like closing schools. But right now, everyone’s on the same page because they don’t want the public to freak out.
Are there any big events that might force health officials to take decisive action?
In New York City, there are big public events all of the time. Tonight, the New York Knicks are playing the Utah Jazz at Madison Square Garden; the Brooklyn Nets are playing the Memphis Grizzlies at the Barclays Center. And baseball season is four weeks away.
It will be interesting to see if both city and state officials try to discourage people from attending things like that, or a Taylor Swift concert.
I’m sure that’s the only thing that could keep you away from a Taylor Swift concert.
Let’s be very clear: I am absolutely going to a Taylor Swift concert.
To draw attention to the worst potholes in western New York, one radio personality has filled them with pizza, chicken wings and Cheerios. [WKBW]
Coming up today
Solve puzzles onstage with comedians at “The Crossword Show,” at Caveat in Manhattan. 7 p.m. [$15]
Learn about the day-to-day experience of a New York City bus operator at the TransitCenter office in Manhattan. 6 p.m. [Free with R.S.V.P.]
Watch a screening of the LCD Soundsystem concert at Madison Square Garden that inspired the documentary “Shut Up and Play the Hits,” at Nowadays in Brooklyn. 8 p.m. [Free]
— Jordan Allen
Events are subject to change, so double-check before heading out. For more events, see the going-out guides from The Times’s culture pages.
And finally: Where’s the snow?
The Times’s Anne Barnard writes:
It rained again in New York City yesterday. And before those March showers, there had been only a trace of snow in Central Park last month — only the sixth time the park had no measurable snow in February since records began in 1868.
There was also no snow at the city’s airports for most of February, according to the National Weather Service — a record. But a few flakes fell on Saturday, the extra day of a leap year.
[New York City had one of its least snowy winters on record.]
The paltry snowfall has left children crestfallen, teenagers pining for snow days and commuters relieved. Coming on the heels of the world’s hottest year on record, the snow deficit was also a sign of climate change — though not in the way some people might assume.
Climate change, said Mark Wysocki, the New York State climatologist, leads to volatile weather patterns. In Central Park, for instance, the past decade saw both the second-snowiest winter — 61.9 inches from December 2010 to February 2011 — and the second-least snowy, this season’s 4.8 inches.
This winter was one of the top-10 warmest for many places across the country, including New York. For record keeping, climatologists define winter as December, January and February.
Chike Eleazu, jogging in Central Park over the weekend, said he associated snow with “a lot of unpleasantness,” but worried about global warming when it did not come.
“Obviously, something is not right,” he said.
It’s Wednesday — look up.
Metropolitan Diary: Packed In
Dear Diary:
The M.T.A. is governed by one law of physics: You’re never as crammed in as you think you are.
One morning, the downtown No. 3 train I was on arrived at 72nd Street, and four people made their way out of my packed car. Ten more got on.
Without a handrail or pole to grab onto, I stayed upright by being pressed up against my fellow commuters.
The train began moving, and we whirred past 66th, 59th and 50th Streets. Pulling into the 42nd Street Station, the intercom crackled to life.
“Gooooood morning, ladies and gentleman,” the train operator said. “Welcome to Times Square, or as we like to call it, the heartbeat of New York City. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, perhaps with a transfer to the 1, 2, 7, A, C, E, N, Q, R or W.”
The chest of every person near me seemed to swell with laughter. We must not have been as crammed in as we thought.
— Kristi Boyce
New York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com.
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