The COVID Shutdowns, Five Years Later

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Five years ago today, if you measure it as five years ago on the Monday, schools were closed for the first time in New York City and elsewhere, and lockdown took hold for most people as the COVID pandemic was beginning its mass murder of 47,000 New Yorkers and eventually a million Americans, according to government and private COVID tracker numbers. New York City got labeled the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, perhaps the world, remember that? But for people deemed essential workers, their job was to go forth and serve. We use the term essential workers for first responders, healthcare providers, food delivery workers and others to this day. As this was happening five years ago, a journalist named Mitra Kalita, whose reporting is often on Jackson Heights, Queens, where many essential workers lived and live, and which might have been the epicenter of the epicenter, Mitra Kalita launched a startup news organization that she called Epicenter-NYC. It continues to this day on the lasting impact of COVID, its intersection with immigration issues and more.

Here's one archive clip of Mitra on this show. This is from March of 2021, when she was helping get people access to COVID vaccines, which, if you remember, were originally scarce and very in demand. She told the story of an immigrant who got caught in between aspects of the bureaucracy while trying to get a shot.

Mitra Kalita: There was an essential worker who's undocumented. As you know, Brian, it's been a really challenging year for people on many fronts, but even just like renewing your passport. Some consulates have been closed. The back and forth is very difficult with foreign government. This person has an expired foreign passport. His embassy, which is Japan, I won't give you his name, but I can tell you he's Japanese, wouldn't issue a new ID. Now he's scared to make the appointment because he's afraid of, "I have this expired passport. I'm really not supposed to be here. I'm waiting on the renewal." Again, in order to get a vaccine, you have to engage with the system, and so people are, I think, afraid of even just being found out at this point in some scenarios.

Brian Lehrer: Some of you may be feeling that there are echoes of today in being fearful of engaging with the system just because you might be found out with respect to your immigration status. Mitra Kalita here in 2021. She joins us again now, still the publisher of Epicenter-NYC and CEO of the parent company URL Media. Hi, Mitra. Always good to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Mitra Kalita: Thank you, Brian. It's wonderful to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Can I ask you, first, just to say how you're feeling or what's been most on your mind on this poignant five-year anniversary. A lot of people, programs on this station, many other things, and organizations, and individuals, and families have been looking back on this as a big round number anniversary and remembering where they were.

Mitra Kalita: Yes. I'll begin with gratitude. I still live in Jackson Heights. It's been home on and off for more than 20 years. Where I was five years ago, I was really grateful that I had taken the time to get to know my neighborhood, and that people did, as you say, turn to us, turn to me, my husband, our family, for help navigating this moment. Of course, that led us to launch Epicenter to respond to that need.

The other way that I'm feeling is less grateful, which is it does feel like every aspect of what we stand for, especially here in Queens, which is the most diverse borough, arguably, on the planet. We're defined by this, were known for this. My father came here in 1971, lured by this. It feels like every aspect of life here is under attack. To think about five years ago when people would at 7:00 PM clang pots and pans out their windows and there was just this cacophony in appreciation, so people didn't feel so alone.

I'm in a very privileged position in New York City, where I lived in this neighborhood, people in this neighborhood know me. I can walk down the street. That is a sense of privilege, to feel like you belong. We're not really hearing that appreciation anymore, and that is of grave concern to me right now.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we will open our phones pretty wide here, but if you were anything you would call an essential worker during the early days of COVID, call and tell us your story from then and how you look back on it now and how you're doing or what you're doing now, and if what was going on then led to this. 212-433-WNYC. Primarily, if you are anything you would call an essential worker during COVID lockdown's early days, call and tell us your story from then and how you look back on it now. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

We can take some other calls as well from people thinking around all the coverage of this five-year anniversary about how COVID has affected your life, your personal life, your business, your community. 212-433-9692. Hello, Jackson Heights, Mitra's neighbors or anyone else. Mitra, do you want to look back on the founding of your news organization, Epicenter-NYC?

Mitra Kalita: Sure. It was founded pretty organically in terms of, if we situate back in the spring of 2020, I was still an executive at CNN. I was handling coverage of this story by day, by night. It's CNN, it's 24 hours, and yet a lot of what mainstream media and national media was serving was disconnected from the ground reality. That's not the fault of CNN, but it is the reality of a pandemic, COVID-19, where it's defined by turning inward.

People's questions are as existential as, "I need a COVID test. I don't know if I will live or die," to as, I don't want to say frivolous, but less important like, "I need yeast because I've taken up baking and that's the only thing keeping me going in my house right now." We launched as an email group for people just to kind of turn to each other to get through this. There's elements of mutual aid that inspired us journalistically.

Five years later, we now run four email newsletters, we have 35,000 people who subscribe to them. I still feel like the gist of who we serve and why we do this is the same. Of course, it's gotten bigger, I don't know everybody anymore. I really cannot tell you what the yeast situation at the store down the street is. Significantly, we've expanded beyond Jackson Heights. We really are serving much of New York City.

I'm really proud of what we've built, but I also feel like there's aspects of the last five years, I wish that there was more media like us, that there was media intended with this ambition of helping people at the outset. I feel like a lot of the journalism that I was trained in gives you stories and then you feel pretty helpless after you read them. There was something very idealistic about how Epicenter launched, and I really do cling to that today.

Then the other piece is that we're not only represented by what's on our website or in the email newsletters. In our community engagement, we deliver information at food pantries. We're at churches and bingo nights in East Elmhurst and Corona and parts of Brooklyn and the Bronx. We do a lot of work in schools.

I do feel like the delivery of news and information, which feels so important right now, is something that defines us because we don't just do it in the article format that you and I might have been trained in, we really try to ask people, like, "What is it that you need? What is the information I can provide? Is that information sometimes connected to a service, and can we perhaps help you unlock that in helping you get to what you need more out of your news media?"

Brian Lehrer: That's so good. That's so important, and so many kudos to you for doing what you do.

Mitra Kalita: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: For coming on the show-

Mitra Kalita: Oh, thank you for your role in it.

Brian Lehrer: -so many times.

Mitra Kalita: Thank you. I feel like we got to our subscribers partly because I did this show, I think, about 20 times, if I'm-- maybe 18 or 20, something like that. Yes. I do feel like we had a fleet of people who heard us and said, "I want to be a part of the solution." A lot of volunteers that helped folks get vaccinated and secure some of these needs. We also had a lot of subscribers that just would say, "We want to feel empowered by the news that we're reading. We want to feel a part of the solution." I thank you, Brian, for you and everyone at WNYC, your role in that.

Brian Lehrer: Listener texts a few other categories that I didn't mention in my partial list of essential workers to please mention Uber, Lyft, and Yellow Cab drivers. Listener writes, "I was one of them. Drove every day, drove people, food, anything." This listener also shouts out food workers. I said delivery workers, but this listener is also mentioning food workers, so I think the people who cooked food in restaurants and things like that. Of course, there are others we can add to the list of essential workers as well.

Mitra Kalita: The grocery stores as well. I think for a lot of people, that venturing once a week out to get their food, but those workers were there every day.

Brian Lehrer: Leslie in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Leslie.

Leslie: Hi, how are you? Long time listener [unintelligible 00:11:41]

Brian Lehrer: Thank you.

Leslie: Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. You got a little static or feedback on the line. I don't know if your radio is on in the background, but give it a shot.

Leslie: Okay. Yes, I'm OB/GYN. Actually, was working at a public hospital at the time. It was quite daunting in so many ways just experiencing a pandemic in this time period at my age and journey as a physician, and [unintelligible 00:12:15] time, but I think what stands out for me is how the city united so wonderfully in so many ways. Everybody stood together. Although the governor at the time had, well, in hindsight, obviously, challenges as far as the nursing homes and such, I think it's the sheer lack of federal response at that time which caused and resulted in so many lives lost, unnecessary politicization of a pandemic.

Brian Lehrer: Leslie, I'm going to have to go and take some other callers because I think our connection is just too bad. Hopefully, people were getting the gist of some of what you were calling. Thanks. Give it a try another day. I think to help respect Leslie's effort at very least, here is another physician calling in. Sunny in Lower Manhattan, maybe if you were able to understand Leslie, you can pick up where she left off.

Sunny: I couldn't understand a lot of what she was saying, but I called in because I just wanted to talk about my experience. I'm a physician by training, but I had stopped practicing medicine years ago. During COVID, I heard the call for volunteers, and so I volunteered on the weekends taking care of patients while I did my regular job Monday through Friday. I don't know that any of us have really processed the trauma. I know that I haven't, because I volunteered at a hospital that I used to work at, so I knew what it was like. It was like being in a science fiction movie seeing all the rooms that are usually not used as ICUs with all the patients on ventilators.

I saw the best of humanity and I saw the worst of humanity. It was really shocking how people, even in the medical field, were already starting to spread misinformation about vaccines, but then I was there volunteering, and I met this doctor from Montana who was in his 80s, who had never been to New York, but heard about how they needed physicians here and he flew here to volunteer, and he was high risk because he was elderly. Again, the best of people and the worst of people.

I truly cannot express to you what it was like being inside a hospital. I was at hospice medical director, so I'm familiar-- death and dying was what I did before I stopped practicing medicine. Even for me, it was-- I lost a colleague friend of mine. When I hear people talking disinformation, it's really infuriating having seen it for myself and having lost somebody that I know who's out there taking care of patients.

Brian Lehrer: Sunny, thank you. Thank you very much for your work and for remembering it like that, which I think is meaningful for people. Susanna in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Susanna.

Susanna: Hi, Brian. Thank you so much for taking my call. I, one, just want to say thank you to you as you were such a compass to me throughout the entire pandemic and beyond. I worked in the restaurant industry in 2020 and throughout the height of the pandemic, and still am there today. We called ourselves, famously, the non-essential essential workers at the restaurants because we were in fine dining. We were serving duck breast and fancy wines and we were like, "What are we doing here?" We were providing this really important social aspect. We were giving out three course menus, four course menus for New Year's Eve.

What I saw eventually was, when people "went back to normal" and restaurants started "coming back," there was a disappearance of appreciation, there was a disappearance of understanding that there are still cracks in the restaurant industry, that we are still behind, that restaurants are still working on extremely thin margins, especially the cost of eggs is through the roof. There are things that we're dealing with that there is just a lack of seeing the service workers, seen aspects of the restaurant industry that were broken open. I just wanted to give all restaurant workers a shout out because I see you.

Brian Lehrer: Susanna, thank you very much for making people feel seen. Jen in the East Village, you're on WNYC. Hi, Jen.

Jen: Hi, Brian. Thanks to all the callers. This is a great conversation I'd shared with your screener. This time five years ago, I was directing a program in the East Village for unhoused women and children, and trying to figure out how to operationalize some response in the facility to make sure everybody had masks and any kind of protective gear that we could provide them while trying to figure out how to get distance learning to work for all the kids who would now not be in school, and I had a high school kid at home wondering what was going on.

People forget, five years ago, this was a death sentence. People did not know what was going to happen. The ambulances were going by all the time. There was just such a great, big void and unknown, and that trauma is still with us. I just want to give a shout out to all of the essential workers who run our city shelters or private shelters who had to come to work to keep those facilities operational, even when others didn't. Currently work with one of the humanitarian emergency relief and response centers with migrant families who are now facing the unknown themselves, and really privileged to do that work. Thank you for listening.

Brian Lehrer: Jen, thank you very much for your call. Mitra, back to you. To Jen's last comment there, you told us off the air that it feels like there's such a through line between New York City right now and the COVID crisis of five years ago. You also mentioned that the cutoff of DEI funding from the Trump administration is very connected to health equity, which is one of your main topics at Epicenter-NYC. You want to talk a little bit about that through line?

Mitra Kalita: Yes. I think the problems have not gone away. You can cut off DEI funding, you can cut off federal funding for health research, but what has been unveiled, whether it's five years ago or even decades ago, many of the health equity programs that are rooted in trying to fix generations of harm have not been magically solved overnight. One of the challenges of this moment is that the funding's been taken away, the programs are being taken away, and yet, who do people turn to when they're in need yet again, as five years ago, they turn inward to the communities, whether that's your ethnic community, your neighborhood, the people who you know and trust.

What I am worried about in the city right now is that the helpers, which I would regard the people who called us and said, "We'd like to volunteer and help link people to COVID vaccines," or "We understand that the undocumented are an important part of our essential workforce, are there ways that we can make them whole or help them navigate how to stay legal or get legal in America right now?" Those ties are basically keeping the City running, and arguably, this country running.

Without funding, the federal funding, for example, for programs like vaccines, but even free lunch or breakfast or summer programs, that need doesn't go away. We held an event last week at Elmhurst Hospital to mark five years of COVID in the epicenter of the Epicenter, which Elmhurst Hospital was that image across all the news networks, and one doctor stood up and he said, "We're really in the middle of three pandemics. There's, of course, COVID, but there's also mental health and substance abuse. I feel like we're in the epicenter of that."

He crystallized it in a way where we all were just nodding because we see it every day around us. We see it on the subway, we see it in our neighborhoods. Again, where will these people turn in the absence of program? Whether you call it DEI or a health vaccine program or whatever we call them, the issue is that they're still going to need help. I feel like outlets like Epicenter are very stretched right now in fielding these calls from people saying, "Well, where do I go?"

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to let you close by just telling people how they can see your stuff just as readers or how they can access your material as people reaching out who do need some kind of practical help, which, of course, you've been describing as part of your mission, but I just want to read one more text from another listener who works in a field that I don't know that we've ever mentioned as an essential worker. Listener writes, "I am an oil truck driver delivering heating oil to homes for heat and hot water. We worked through the entire pandemic. No place to eat, no place to use a bathroom.

I work around the southern Long Island Railroad train line. Seeing all the train stations, parking lots completely empty was like the first episode of the Twilight Zone called Where is Everybody? Most terrifying was seeing seven elevens boarded up, long lines at gun stores, and COVID test sites." That memory from an oil truck driver, who I'm glad texted in. Mitra, how can people see Epicenter-NYC, or even reach out to it for help?

Mitra Kalita: Sure. Our website is epicenter-nyc.com. There, you should be able to navigate signing up for our newsletters, reaching out to us. Our email, though, is very simply hello@epicenter-nyc.com. I do check that inbox. Then just personally, I'm pretty easy to find online, Mitra Kalita. You put me into any search engine and a number of ways to reach me should pop up. Again, Brian, I just want to say thank you to you and your listeners because every time we do this, they do reach out. Again, I think that is what's keeping our city going right now. I'm really, really grateful for it.

Brian Lehrer: Well, if you you'll keep coming on, we'll keep having you.

Mitra Kalita: I will.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for all your work over these five years. Mitra Kalita. That's, by the way, if you are looking to write to her, K-A-L-I-T-A, Kalita. Thanks, Mitra. We'll talk.

Mitra Kalita: Thanks, Brian.

 

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