NYC NOW - Evening Roundup: Hochul Meets with Trump, Animal Markets Open Again Post Bird-Flu, and NYC School Closures Five Years Later

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Gov. Kathy Hochul met with President Donald Trump Friday at the White House. Plus, wet markets across New York City are back after Gov. Hochul closed them to contain the spread of bird flu. And finally, we reflect on what school closures looked like for New York City five years ago, at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

From WMYC, this is NYC Now. I'm Jenae Pierre. New York Governor Kathy Hokel had a productive conversation with President Trump Friday at the White House. Hokel initiated the sit down. I reached out to the president yesterday, said I want to carry on the conversation that we had in the Oval Office a couple weeks ago. Earlier this week, the governor said the two have plenty to talk about, from infrastructure funding to the future of Penn Station and the congestion toll on drivers who enter Manhattan below 60th Street. Trump had previously ordered New York to halt the toll program,

but the MTA is fighting that in court. Where does one go to buy a live squawking, clucking, clucking, chicken in New York City? Well, there are about 70 live animal markets in the five boroughs, with everything from ducks and chickens to sheep and goats. Governor Hokel closed them for a week to contain the spread of bird flu, but now they're back. And their services remain in high demand. WMYC's Ryan Kailath explains.

Imagine your regular bodega. But instead of shelves stacked with goya beans, it's live chickens, turkeys, quails, even a few rabbits, stuffed into cages stretching up to the ceiling. Ah, 6320. Jose Fernandez bought his fourth chicken store, La Granha Live Poultry here in West Harlem, in 1999. He's raised three,

children selling birds. My question is, to whom? Why do your customers prefer live birds? That's good question. And the answer is... This is going to be easier in Spanish. His customers

are generally like him, Fernandez says. People with roots in other countries where they raise chickens outside, naturally. naturales and the carne is totally different. People who come here are people who remember

what real chicken actually tastes like, he says. Not that stuff you buy at the grocery store. Fernandez sells 4,000 chickens a week. To West Africans and Spanish speakers, Arab Muslims, and Chinese folk, he's

only missing one kind of customer. I don't have too many customers and the white people. I don't know. Because the white people not like Cook, not too much. Notice he's switched back to English to make sure I get this. For example, in my house, we cook every day.

So the white people, they're not going to do it. Maybe one day in the wheat they cook. That's it. New York has the most live bird markets of any state, according to a 2021 study. They receive daily deliveries from backyard flocks, factory farms, and everything in between, and sell about a million birds a month. For public health experts, that's a million chances to transmit a virus like H5N1, bird flu. Officials have counted 13 outbreaks in the city's live markets this year.

The same qualities that sort of define them as a live animal market also make them really high-risk sites for zoonotic disease transmissions. Anne Linder at Harvard Law School studies the risk of diseases jumping from food, animals to humans. You may remember this happening a few years ago with a different virus, but... If we're thinking about H5N1, this is a potentially really dangerous virus that sort of first made its appearance in the mid-90s at a live bird market in Hong Kong. Linder recognizes how important these markets are in their communities, but... If they pose a risk to public health writ large, how do you balance those two interests against each other? Some New Yorkers, are not interested in a balance.

Edita Burncrant is executive director of New Yorkers for Clean, Liveable, Safe Streets. It's an animal rights nonprofit that's documented conditions at certain markets. There's blood, feces, body parts, overcrowded birds. Many are sick. Many we found with open wounds because the birds are cannibalizing each other. I literally don't think there's anything any market could do to actually be shut down. Governor Hockel shut all the downstate markets for a week last month as bird flu spiked. But it's spiking again, and they're still open.

A spokesperson at the State Department of Agriculture says they may order another shutdown if there's persistent evidence bird flu's spreading in the markets. Back at La Grande, the farm in West Harlem, Tanya Cardenas, is picking out two chickens. A staffer hands them through a window, and eight minutes later, they come back in plastic. plucked and slaughtered. Why does she buy live birds every week? Because they're fresh. Yeah, so it's better.

She says these chickens are better, for her health, too. She wants to see the bird up close, to know that it's fresh and not going to make her sick. That's WMYC's Ryan Kailat. It's been five years since COVID-19 forced school closures across the nation and the world. After the break, we reflect on what that looked like for New York City Schools. Stay close.

You're listening to NYC now. Five years ago, on March 15th, then Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to shut down New York City schools to slow the spread of COVID-19. WNYC's education reporter, Jessica Gould asked some key city officials, parents, and students about their memories of the historic decision and whether they do anything differently. It's Friday the 13th in March of 2020. Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency for New York City. A sense of dread is setting in as the first known cases of COVID emerge in New York City.

But the school system is still open. Former Mayor Bill de Blasio remembers he was intent on keeping it that way. I felt very strongly that if we close the schools that would be devastating for kids emotionally, in terms of health and well-being, physical health, mental health, terms of learning, but also for parents. The mayor meets with top officials in the bunker-like basement of the Office of Emergency Management in downtown Brooklyn. Former Schools Chancellor Richard Caranza remembers the big screens showing infection graphs.

I'm not talking about spikes in a 24-hour period. I'm talking about spikes in a eight-hour period. Like in the morning, we have a briefing and it's certain indicators. And then by the afternoon, we have another briefing, and it's completely a different. chart and worse. Ursulina Ramirez ran operations for the school system. It was her job to keep the schools going. But attendance is way down and more and more teachers are calling out sick.

She starts sending bureaucrats with teaching licenses from the central office out to schools to fill the gaps. It was that moment where I started freaking out as a person who was in charge of operations for the safety of kids and the facilities. and I was like, I don't know if we're going to be able to sustain this. Teachers Union President Michael Mulgrew meets de Blasio at the Emergency Command Center. Him and I had some real difficult conversations. And his concern was that if we closed the schools for five weeks, we're never going to open them for the rest of this year. And I said, if that's what we need to do to keep our community safe and our children safe,

then that's what we should do. I said, we're not bargaining with a virus. Mulgrew has a press conference saying the teachers' union is going to court to ask a judge to order the closure of schools. But de Blasio is still reluctant to make the move. How would parents maintain their incomes? What about health care workers who need child care? Who would watch the kids? But one thing that seemed to be clear around the world, don't let your health system collapse, don't let your hospitals collapse.

The public schools closed and there was no other option for those families. those workers would just have to stay home, or at least a lot of them. But pressure is mounting to close as the city records its first known COVID death. Kate Blum was communication director for the city's schools. She says emails from parents were coming in fast and furious. Some of them were like, I can't believe you are endangering me and my family by not having already closed schools. And then on the other side, there was, please don't close schools.

because I need, you know, to be able to go to work. Cities across the country announce their closing schools, and a dozen members of Congress call on de Blasio to do the same thing. Hundreds of teachers plan a sickout from work. That's when I said, okay, we are just out of ammunition here. We have to make this decision. We have to act on it. And it was tortured.

And when I announced it to the public, I felt pain and I said it. I felt I was a decision that had to be made, but I really thought we were entering into something that was going to cause a lot of pain. Ramirez recalls crying with her team. She tears up again talking about it. We're about to close the school system down, and I don't know what that means for our kids. The next day, it's a new world. The education department plans to open child care centers for essential workers and meal distribution sites.

Teachers start training for this new experiment in remote learning. There's a desperate story. scramble to outfit kids with iPads and Wi-Fi. Sirens start blaring, a lot. Looking back, officials say there were no good options. Here's Teachers Union President Mulgrew. We had no choice. People keep forgetting how fast New York City piled up 20,000 dead. Former operations head Ramirez still says it was necessary to close that march to reduce the spread. But she thinks the consequences have been dire. I think it has really harmed a lot of our kids, not just on the educational side, but on the social emotional side.

Knowing what I know now, I would have had every kid in school starting September. Again, former Mayor de Blasio. You know, kids lost a lot. Remote learning did not work. I mean, again, noble effort, better than nothing. Didn't work. So, you know, to me, when we look back on all of this, anywhere that could keep schools open originally should have

and everywhere should have brought schools back starting in September of 20. As the education reporter and as a mom, I see how many kids have struggled. Test scores went down. Mental health suffered. Teachers who kept working through it all remain exhausted. So many New Yorkers died. We're still figuring out all the impacts.

The story goes on. Maybe you can hear it in my voice. I just tested positive for COVID. That's WMYC's Jessica Gould. To help mark the fifth anniversary of the virus shutting down life in our region, we want to hear from you. What changes, good or bad, came to your life during the COVID shutdowns that have persisted to this day?

Send a voice memo with your story to your voice at WMYC.org. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WMYC. I'm Jene Pierre. Have a great weekend. We'll be back on Monday.