Unreal, uncertain and mostly silent: life in the centre of New York’s coronavirus storm

‘How are you bearing up?’ ‘Is everyone terrified?’ ‘What’s the mood?’ These are the questions concerned family and friends are kindly asking about New York City which, according to my armchair epidemiology, is about ten days behind Italy and ten days ahead of Britain. It would be reckless to describe things as calm, not with a New Yorker dying every seven (?!) minutes, and refrigerated trucks parked ominously outside hospitals. But I sense no mass panic. Life, of a sort, still goes on. People run, dogs are walked, post is delivered, Amazon arrives, and the shelves are stocked with food. The absence of cars without the presence of snow is a novelty, as are the nods of camaraderie. Those who venture out mainly respect the cordon sanitaire — except for joggers; always the joggers — and the pavements are spotted with blue surgical gloves. But the inkblot of infection is spreading here like it’s spreading around the world.