Explaining the New COVID Closures in Brooklyn and Queens

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Today, New York City began enforcing state-mandated shutdowns of schools and businesses in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, where there's been a concerning uptick in coronavirus cases. By the way, it wasn't until late into last night that the city's Department of Education released any sort of clarification about exactly which public schools would close under Cuomo's plans.

With me now to talk about this and to run through the latest COVID numbers in the five boroughs are Jake Dobkin, co-founder of Gothamist where he's been the de facto numbers-cruncher-in-chief for all things COVID-19, and Jessica Gould WNYC reporter, who was closely following the Department of Education late into last night. Jake Dobkin and Jessica Gould, welcome back to the show.

Jake Dobkin: Thanks, Brian.

Jessica Gould: Hey there.

Brian: Jessica, first, what's the latest on the school situation? How many schools ended up going fully remote as a result of a state-mandated shut down now?

Jessica: I was just looking over the numbers that the Department of Education sent and the way that they describe it, it makes me a little cross-eyed, but what we've determined is that about 130 New York City public schools at 170 locations are closed. The discrepancy there is that there can be schools that have multiple campuses, and some buildings have multiple schools. Charter, private and parochial schools in the red and orange zones are also closed.

I don't know if Jake does, but I don't have the exact number on that yet, but we're working on that. The latest on the mayor's press conference was that you can look up on this new searchable map that they have, whether your school and local businesses are closed or open, and that's at nyc.gov/covidzone, and I checked it out, it does work and it gives you your information.

Brian: It's good to know, there's at least that tool for people who can access that tool. Jake, let's run through some of the numbers. What prompted these partial shutdowns in Brooklyn, in Queens, was that the positivity rate in those 9 zip codes that De Blasio singled out was above 3%. Exactly how bad is the uptick in cases in those neighborhoods that the city and the state are concerned about and how does that compare with the rates of positivity overall in the city?

Jake: Brian, it's pretty bad. The zip codes of concern are running around 5% positive on average, while the rest of the city zip codes are running around 1%, so it's five times worse. Some of those zip codes, like the ones in Borough Park or down in Gravesend in Brooklyn, they're running up to 8% or 9% positivity on some days. It is actually quite high. If you look at the actual number of individual cases in each zip code, it's really this cluster in Southern Brooklyn centered around Borough Park, where the numbers of cases are very high. The other two clusters, the one-up in Queens, around Kew Gardens and the one down the Rockaways, they have high positivity ratings but fewer numbers of total cases.

Brian: Are there new spikes in cases spreading to neighboring areas? Like even though so many of the new cases are located in Orthodox communities that tend to be more insular, there aren't any fences around those areas, so to speak.

Jake: Exactly, and of course, people go back and forth. We've seen outbreaks up in Rockland and Orange County, it's because there's a lot of movement back and forth between the Orthodox areas in Brooklyn and the ones upstate in Westchester area, and of course, yes, people go back and forth. They go to schools, they shop outside their zip code. We've seen new zip codes added to the shutdown list and the watch lists over time because exactly, it's not like there's a fence.

Brian: Jessica, you tweeted, "Sirens. They're definitely increasing." Jake, your Gothamist co-founder Jen Chung tweeted, "Feels like March again." Jake, based on the numbers, does it look like a second wave is inevitable or right around the corner, because once you start on an exponential path, you can't really stop it?

Jake: Let's take the hospitalizations first, because they rose from about 200 people in the hospital about a month ago to almost 400 now, but you've got to compare that to the high of around 12,000 people hospitalized that we saw at the peak of the epidemic back in April. Though hospitalizations are rising, they haven't hit that exponential stage that you're talking about.

The question, are we in a second wave yet? I think you should really think of it by area. Yes, we are in a second wave in some zip codes. In Borough Park, I would say we're definitely into a second wave. Around the city as a whole, it's not clear yet. It really depends on what policies we follow, and whether people social distance, and whether these targeted shutdowns work, otherwise pretty quickly, we're going to be back in a situation where we have to either shut down whole boroughs like Brooklyn and Queen or maybe even go back to where we were having to shut down the whole city.

Brian: Jessica, for you, as an education reporter, is there evidence that schools in the areas or zones the city and the governor are watching closely that they haven't shut down yet, have experienced spikes in COVID cases?

Jake: No, and even in the areas that they have shut down the schools themselves, haven't had outbreaks. There's been a couple of cases here and there when they've gone into schools that had the zip codes with rising rates, they did testing, and they only found within several thousand, a couple of cases.

That said, the concern is that if it does grow in the surrounding area, that it would penetrate the schools and then the schools could become vectors and there's a lot of concern about that from March, but even in these hotspot zones, the schools were not yet outbreaks, and a lot of parents that I've talked to, not all, but a lot of them have said, "Why close the schools if the schools, the public schools in particular, aren't a problem?"

Brian: Listeners, if you have a question on COVID by the numbers, give us a call, how do things, where you are, as far as you could tell, compare to the way things were back in March or April? What are the results of your unscientific surveys? Are you hearing more sirens, or on a different note, maybe your child's school is in one of those red areas designated by Governor Cuomo? The number is 646-435-7280, again, that's 646-435-7280. Help us report this story, or you can tweet a comment or a question @BrianLehrer.

Jake, so much of the story of the city's and the state's responses to COVID has been the ongoing one-upmanship between the mayor and the governor. It really is an anything-you-can-do-I-can-do-better kind of situation. Mayor de Blasio laid out the city's plans to shut down schools and businesses by zip code. Governor Cuomo's state-mandated restrictions on the other hand, were set by these color-coded, more hyperlocal zones. It seems like a lot of the confusion about which schools would close, which businesses would close, came about because administration and school principals didn't know which zones their schools were in.

What can you tell us about why Cuomo decided to go with a zone map? The way you look at the numbers, as you crunch them every day on coronavirus in New York, are the color-coded zones that the governor designated so different from zip codes?

Jake: If you're a cartography enthusiast like I am, this is a fascinating area of study. Bill de Blasio suggested a zip code-based closure which I like, because it's easy to understand. Obviously, you know what zip code you live in, and you can pretty easily figure out what zip code your kid's school is, or where a restaurant is, but the thing is, if you use zip codes that would close down some schools and businesses that probably didn't need to be closed down, because it's not like within a zip code, which is a pretty big area, cases are spread equally. If only half the zip code is infected, maybe, if I owned a business in that zip code, I might be mad if the whole thing got shut down.

Now, Cuomo's map is more precise, which means it allows more schools and businesses to stay open but the disadvantage is it's very, very difficult to understand because not everyone knows how to read a map. That's something that a lot of people take for granted, but not everyone can even go to this COVID zone finder and really understand it. To me, during a public health crisis, you want to go as simple as possible so that the most people understand what they should do.

I actually think De Blasio was probably in the right here, and erring on the safe side using zip codes, maybe closing down more businesses is probably worth it, because if we don't, we're going to see the spread extend and pretty soon we're going to have to shut down the whole borough.

Brian: Alan, in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Alan.

Alan: Good morning. I'm getting off speaker. I just checked the 311 a little while ago, that their advice, if you live in one of the hot zone zip codes, and work in a non-hot zone zip code, what it advise about commuting from one to the other? They didn't seem to say, for the time being, that there's no restriction on commuting by bus or train from Midwood 11210, to the whole area of 11201. I'm wondering, if any one of your guests to feel that that's a wise policy or they should nuance that somehow?

Jake: Yes, we saw this question, especially around restaurants. Like, if you're a guest at a restaurant, can you come from Midwood and go to Park Slope and sit at a restaurant? Is that safe? What about at a school? If a kid lives in an infected zip code but goes to a school outside in a yellow zone, or in one of the safe zones, is that okay? As far as I can tell, we don't really have clear answers on a lot of these questions, and this is what makes me think that these zones are going to change fairly fast, and that we're going to have to go to a wider rule because people like you, your lives take you across these lines.

Jessica: For now, if you live in an area that's in a hot zone and you go to school outside of it, you can still go to school outside of the hot zone. You have not been prevented from doing that. Just to clarify on that point.

Brian: Jake Dobkin, co-founder of Gothamist, where he's been the de facto numbers-cruncher-in-chief for all things COVID-19. They update every day by the way, if you want to look at a good COVID tracker for New York, Gothamist's got it, and Jake Dobkin does it with producer, Zach Gottehrer-Cohen and a couple of other people. Jessica Gould is with us, too, WNYC reporter who covers education and is closely following the Department of Education's partial shutdown of schools in some of these hot zones, which has been so confusing even into late last night and early this morning. Jessica, how about that? How chaotic has this state-mandated shutdown of schools been for administrators, and staff, and parents?

Jessica: Well, it's been super chaotic and really confusing. I was talking to principals on Tuesday when Governor Cuomo released his map, and they were like identifying themselves as best they could on this map, which was hard to follow, and preparing to, and then subsequently informing families that they were going to close. Then midday yesterday, principals got a notice from the DOE that they had not been given any formal letter to send out yet and they were actually told to hold off communicating.

My understanding is that's because the data crunchers at the DOE were feverishly working to overlay the governor's map on the mayor's map and make sense of the differences between the two and figure that out. We only got official word about these closings at 8:00 PM last night for schools that were going to close this morning. Principals, some had just decided to go ahead and inform their families anyway, but this is a lot of uncertainty. It's a lot of uncertainty for parents who need to find childcare. It's a lot of stress for kids who had just started school last week, in most cases.

I heard there were lots of tears and then, principals are having to figure out how to transition their schools to fully remote learning after putting all of this effort into this in-person puzzle that they've been figuring out for months. That's super stressful for them as well. It's supposed to only be for two weeks minimum, but it's unclear, and there were all these staffing decisions based on the hybrid model, and all these substitutes hired, and now some schools are reconsidering whether they need all those substitutes, and moving kids around into other classes because of this. It's a lot of disruption.

Brian: Rochelle, on the upper Westside you're on WNYC. Hello, Rochelle.

Rochelle: Hi, can you hear me?

Brian: I can.

Rochelle: Okay, great. Thank you, Brian. I think you are the bomb and this is the first time I managed to get through. I grew up in Borough Park. I am a Borough Park escapee. I'm a very young 72. I have a brother who still lives in Borough Park. He is a rabbi. He is a brilliant man. He had COVID, he almost died. He called me before Yom Kippur, to wish me that God should give me whatever I need. "Rajala, you should have only have what you need." I said, "Schmaw, what are you doing for Yom Kippur? Are you going to be social distancing and wearing a mask?" He said, "I'd rather not talk about it. I really just called to wish you a good year."

I said, "Schmaw, how can you ignore this? Aren't you worried about your family and community?" Anyway, you get the gist. The point that I wanted to make is that with all the concern from Cuomo and de Blasio, and everything I've been hearing about poor communication and called being culturally competent in the way they communicate. I used to have my own communications company before I retired. There's something critical that nobody knows except an insider and I'm going to tell you what it is. Each Hasidic group is like a small group with their own rebbe. If the rebbe tells them, you don't have to do this, that is what they do.

Now, I have to tell you, I always thought my brother was a brilliant man. He's a Talmudical scholar, but I see now that this is a cult thinking, and I must add, that it enraged me to the point that I was thinking of calling the mayor's office and the governor's office and giving them his address.

Brian: Rochelle, what's your best understanding of why your brother, who's a rabbi, and others like him, I guess don't accept the science, or don't accept the social distancing, or think that congregating in large groups is more important?

Rochelle: Okay. I'm going to tell you what I think. I don't believe my brother is involved in Trump in politics, which is what you might think initially. He believes, this is what he believes, if you are a pious Jew and you do what you are supposed to do, then you will be protected. In other words, it's up to God, it's up to Hashem. It doesn't matter what you do or you don't do, because it's in God's hands and he doesn't deal with politics.

When this first all started and the bakery around the corner from him got swastikas in the mail. I said, "Aren't you concerned about your children?" He has 12 married children and something like 150 grandchildren. I said, "Aren't you afraid for all your children and grandchildren?" He said, "That's not my job. My job is to study Torah." He's retired now.

Brian: Rochelle, I'm going to leave it there for time. Thank you very much for your call. We appreciate it. I guess, a window into the complexity, even within one family of coronavirus religion, and politics, and behavior right now. You got to love a 72-year-old who uses the phrase, "The bomb." Jake, before we run out of time, on the numbers, which is what you're following, per the New York Times, more than 40% of patients in intensive care units at hospitals in Paris have COVID-19.

How does that compare with what hospitals in our area are seeing right now with this spike? People who might minimize it would say, "Yes, we've got tons of cases, but we don't have a lot of hospitalizations or deaths, so this is not the dire emergency that some people would make it out to be." Would that be true based on the facts?

Jake: So far we have not seen a huge increase in hospital admissions. For instance, yesterday, there were 79 and the city and a week before, about 74. I can also look at the visits to emergency rooms around the city, and we can even segregate that by age. Though we have started to see an increase starting around October 4th, the increase has not yet been huge, but as we knew from the first outbreak, it takes some time before, when somebody is infected before they show up in an emergency room and then they have to be admitted to the hospital. Then there's some days before they reach the ICU, and then some days more before, unfortunately some of them die.

It's possible that it's just too early yet and we'll see some big outbreaks or it's possible that maybe the second wave is going to be different from the first. Possibly, because so many people in New York have already had it. Perhaps we have some level of immunity, and perhaps our mask wearing, and the social distancing that a lot of people are doing, will help keep these hospitalization and death numbers down.

Brian: We will pick this up with the mayor on tomorrow's show. We thank Jake Dobkin, co-founder of Gothamist, where he's been the de facto numbers-cruncher-in-chief for all things COVID-19 and Jessica Gould, WNYC education reporter. Thanks.

 

Copyright © 2020 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.