NYC NOW - September 1, 2023: Evening Roundup

Episode Date: September 1, 2023

New York City schools are preparing for a potential school bus strike, days ahead of the first day of school. Plus, the MTA has removed a feature from its tap-and-go payment system, OMNY, after privacy advocates raised alarm. And finally, WNYC’s Sean Carlson talks with Empire Center researcher Bill Hammond about New York City’s first wave of COVID-19 in the Spring of 2020. A recent analysis called it one of the deadliest outbreaks of the virus in the world.

Good evening and welcome to NYC now. I'm Jenae Pierre for WNYC. New York City schools are preparing for a potential school bus strike that could affect tens of thousands of students who are just days away from starting school. The city is offering some students' prepaid metro cards and free ride share service if a strike happens. But Chalkbeat reporter Michael Elson Rooney

says that might not be a perfect solution. For ride shares, the big issues can be those, you know, don't come with built-in attendance. And so require parents and caregivers often to be in the cars supervising students, especially those with disabilities who might need someone there with them. The president of the union, representing about half the city's bus drivers, is calling for better wages and health benefits for their members. The MTA says it has removed a feature from its tap-and-go payment system Omni, After privacy advocates raised alarm, the website had a check trip history feature that allowed anyone with the writer's credit card information to track the person's movements in the subway system.

Privacy advocates say an abusive partner or stalker could use the data for nefarious purposes. MTA officials say the feature was intended to let customers easily track their trip history. The agency is considering other options. Stay close. There's more after the break. During the city's first wave of COVID-19, back in the spring of 2020, some 23,000 New Yorkers died of the virus. A new analysis from the Empire Center reveals that it was one of the deadliest outbreaks of COVID-19 in the world, second only to a winter outbreak in Mexico City. Researcher Bill Hammond argues that New York politicians could have avoided some of the early missteps in how they handled the pandemic. and saved lives if they were better prepared.

He talked with WNYC's Sean Carlson. This is one of those things that I think a lot of people will feel validated in that New York's first laboratory confirmed case of COVID was reported back on March 1st of 2020. But you looked at retrospective data showing that the virus likely arrived and peaked much earlier than officials actually thought. What does that timeline look like? In order to get the level of fatality we got in New York City, it must have begun in late January or early February.

And it started really explosively spreading in late February into early March and then peaked mid-March, maybe late March. These are only estimates, so you can't be completely sure. But that is, as you say, it's about a month earlier than the timeline that we were aware of when it was unfolded. holding. Given that testing for COVID was so scarce early on, what could have officials done to get a better picture? What was happening? Well, as you say, testing was extremely scarce. And I think this is a problem that's going to come up in future pandemics, that it takes time to develop tests, manufacture them, distribute them, start implementing them. So we need something else. Another way of spotting an outbreak and tracking it on a population-wide basis. One positive thing that we've seen

COVID arrived, is this testing of sewage effluent, right? So you're looking for signs of the virus in sewage, and if you see it, you could maybe gauge by how much of it is there, how many people have the virus at any given time. When another virus comes along, that sounds like a promising way of being alert to whether it's in the state and whether it's spreading or not. Another approach is one that actually New York City does use to some extent, and that's called syndromic surveillance. And that's where they routinely anvass hospital emergency rooms and doctor's offices and ask,

what are the symptoms of people coming through your door? And they try to spot trends. And in fact, there was a noticeable upward trend in flu-like symptoms in New York City in late February. Say we knew then what we knew now, say in January, say in January, February of 2020, how could it have changed the messaging and actions that city and state officials took at that time? Well, if you remember back to January and February, the message coming from both the city and the state was there's nothing to worry about yet. I don't know whether the health officials under them felt the same way they did, but the top officials, the ones who

were doing most of the talking to the media, were seemingly focused on putting out a reassuring message and not unduly panicking people and not unduly slowing down the economy, which unfortunately was the wrong message to be sending. Yeah, to play devil's advocate to a certain degree, we were hit pretty early on in the pandemic. Doesn't that make it harder for officials to have had all of the answers right away? Recognizing the hindsight is 2020 and not being overly judgmental, I think the signs of trouble should have been more obvious. New York is a center of international travel and tourism. It should assume that any virus that is in China, and certainly any virus that is spreading

like that in Italy, is going to be in New York sooner rather than later. And I don't think they should have been continuing to hammer home that message that we don't have any positive tests here, go out your lives as usual. I think they should have been sending a note of caution. And I think they should have recognized that actually a little bit of slowdown and activity was warranted under the situation. So Governor Cathy Hockel has commissioned an independent investigation into the state's response to the pandemic. Do you think that'll be enough to address some of the issues that you're raising? I mean, it's hard to know. I have some concerns, though, because it was done through a contract with a consulting firm. I'm assuming it's a good consulting firm, but it doesn't have subpoena power.

It doesn't have any authority to hold public hearings. And maybe most concerningly of all, it doesn't report to the public. It answers to the people who are paying its fee, and that's the executive branch and the local administration and her commissioners. All of that does not necessarily mean that it won't be a good report. It just sort of reduces the chances of rising above the political interference that it's likely to run into. And we need something more like the 9-11 Commission, some kind of bipartisan public investigation of the events to learn the lessons of 2020. That's Bill Hammond, researcher at the Empire Center talking with WNYC's Sean Carlson.

As we head into the Labor Day weekend, thousands are expected to line the sidewalks of Brooklyn for the West Indian Day parade Monday. The parade marks the final event of New York's Carnival Week. It'll kick off at 11 a.m. at Rochester Avenue in Crown Heights, then head west along the eastern parkway. Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Renozzo says the parade is a recognition of the contributions Caribbean people have made to New York City. And it's allowing for folks for the West Indies to really put their culture, their food, their music, front and center. And they to just enjoy being West Indiana. Each year, Caribbean communities present their best masqueray costumes and steel pan bands

all along Eastern Parkway. Juvei celebrations will also be going on all weekend. Hope you can get out and enjoy some of the weekend celebrations. And if not, there's always the backyard barbecue. Thanks for listening to NYC now from WNYC. Just a heads up, we won't be dropping the usual three episodes on Monday, just one in the middle of the day. So give us a listen before you jump into the Labor Day festivities. Quick shout out to our production team. It includes Sean Boutage, Ave Carrillo, Audrey Cooper, Leora Noam Kravitz,

Jared Marcel, Jen Munson, and Wayne Schulmeister, with help from the entire WNYC Newsroom. Our show art was designed by the folks at Buck, and our music was composed by Alexis Quadrado. I'm Jenae Pierre. Have a great holiday weekend.