The Empire State Building lit up Monday night with revolving red and white lights resembling the flashing lights of an ambulance.
The iconic building, which is visible from my own neighborhood across the bridge, has often symbolized New York City. And it does again. But this time it symbolizes the crisis taking place in the city at the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, not just in America, but in the world.
With more than 41,700 confirmed cases of COVID-19 — including 1,096 deaths — as of Tuesday morning, New York City now accounts for more than one in five COVID-19 cases nationwide, and five percent of all cases globally.
New York City, is indeed, a city with a flashing emergency light.
Yet as even as the city is forced to set up makeshift morgues and refrigerated trucks to handle the sheer number of dead bodies, some right-wing media figures and pro-Trump conspiracy theorists still aren’t convinced that the crisis is real — or are claiming if it is real it’s being exaggerated by the media in an effort to hurt Trump.
Caroline Orr – Canada’s National Observer – April 1, 2020.
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