Photography: © Charlie Bennet 2021 Text: © Helena Gustavsson 2021 Graphic Design: Jon Palmqvist Senior Editor: Gabriella Sahlin US Editor: Mythili Sampathkumar Repro: Charlie Bennet and Jon Palmqvist Print: Livonia Print, Latvia 2021 ISBN 978-0-578-88400-4 (US) 978-0-578-88401-1 (Sweden) www.winifredpublishing.com Instagram: @winifredpublishing © ON PAUSE 2021. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
/ Contents How ON PAUSE was born
008
Asthma Alley
100
The Arrival
011
A Quarantini To Go
105
Interview: Sach Takhar
016
Interview: Maillard Howell
110
Facts: New York State on PAUSE
024
Interview: Karlin Chan
118
Transmission
028
Elbows and Screens
125
A New Normal
034
Interview: Emily Takoudes
128
Interview: Icelean Scales
038
Interview: Pablo Lopez Jr.
136
The Essentials
044
Pandemic Bookshelves
142
On the Frontline
049
Cancel(ed) Culture
148
Interview: Colleen Smith
054
Tiger King and the Governor
154
Interview: Selma Slabiak-Casner
062
Interview: Anjali Tsui
160
Mask Up
071
Interview: Sharon Kleinbaum
166
Interview: Nasser Jaber
076
Facts: Timeline
174
Facts: The Tests
084
Love and Hate
178
No Tests, No PPE, No Ventilators
085
Back on the Streets
184
Facts: Lifesaver or Snake Oil?
090
Acknowledgments
190
Interview: Dawn Hewins Kelly
092
Photo Index
192
/ The Arrival Times Square deserted. Penn Station and Fifth Avenue too. Empty stoops, empty subway platforms. Bird chirps instead of car horns. Only ambulance sirens break the silence. Occasionally a plastic bag in the role of tumbleweed. A ghost town. No one could imagine that’s how New York City would be described that early spring of 2020. Dead perhaps—the city has been proclaimed dead quite a few times before, by art critics and real estate investors—but hardly a ghost town. Humans leaving the city, animals moving in. Instead of restaurants, dishes. There was always a pile of dishes. Instead of the movies, the daily briefing from Governor Cuomo. How many had died today? On New Year’s Eve 2019, reports emerged about a pneumonia outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan. The illness, caused by a novel type of coronavirus, would be known as Covid-19. On March 1, 2020, New York registered its first positive case: a 39-year-old woman who had recently traveled to Iran. The woman, a healthcare worker, had self-quarantined in her home after returning to New York and not even her husband got infected. More worrisome, however, was the second case. Lawrence Garbuz, a lawyer, tested positive on March 2 in New Rochelle, a suburb a short drive from midtown Manhattan. The 50-year-old had recently been in Miami but had not traveled to China, Italy, or any other place considered hotspots for the virus at the time. Experiencing symptoms of illness in late February but not yet aware of his future diagnosis, Garbuz attended events at his local synagogue and continued his commute to his office near Grand Central Station in Manhattan. By the time he tested positive for Covid-19, Garbuz had already spent several days in the hospital. The synagogue became an early hotspot for the virus—at least fifty people associated with it or Garbuz soon tested positive. By March 10, people in New Rochelle were ordered to quarantine and a local “containment zone” was created. Schools inside it were ordered to close and large gatherings banned. There were now 173 positive cases in the state, most of them still in or near New Rochelle in Westchester County, but a few dozen had been detected in New York City as well. Fears grew that what was spreading in the suburb would soon cause much worse problems in the densely populated metropolis. Advertising campaigns were launched to instruct New Yorkers to wash their hands, reduce overcrowding, and stay home if sick. On TV, people began to talk about “social distancing.” The annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade was cancelled and gatherings over five hundred people banned. Some stocked up on canned food and hygiene products. But most New Yorkers continued to live their
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lives—people commuted to work and school, went to brunch, visited grandparents, elbowed their way to the bar, said hello with a handshake and goodbye with a hug or kiss on the cheek. Later in March, President Donald Trump would make his now infamous prediction that America would be open again by Easter. The president held on harder and longer to unfounded optimism and ignorance of science than most other officials, but in the early days of the pandemic New York’s leaders also acted like the dangers of the virus were exaggerated. The day after the first case was confirmed in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio encouraged New Yorkers to go on with their lives and “get out on the town despite coronavirus.” The Mayor recommended seeing the movie The Traitor at Lincoln Center. Just two weeks after the first case in New York, all the city’s cinemas, theaters, concert venues, and nightclubs were shut down and restaurants limited to takeout and delivery. Ordering the closure was not an easy decision, said Mayor de Blasio, explaining that “these places are part of the heart and soul of our city. They are part of what it means to be a New Yorker.” He added, “But our city is facing an unprecedented threat, and we must respond with a wartime mentality.” Pressure was mounting to close public schools. Mayor de Blasio first resisted, but a day after New York City recorded its first death from Covid-19 on March 14, he declared the city would move to remote learning. The order affected over two million children, teachers, and parents, and the number of daily interactions drastically decreased. On March 22, Governor Cuomo announced that New York State is “on pause” and that all non-essential businesses must close. The lockdown began. But it was too late, all over town people were losing their sense of smell, coughing, feeling nauseous, getting fevers. Many were already gasping for air. Hospitals would soon be overwhelmed, funeral homes too. New York was now on its way to becoming the global epicenter of the pandemic. It would soon turn into a ghost town, full of future ghosts.
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< Colleen Smith 39 Emergency Medicine Physician
/ Colleen Smith 015
I’ve held a phone next to a dying person’s face so many times. Just to let the family see them for the last minute or two of their life. Many patients spoke different languages. So many times, I heard ‘Te amo mija’ in Spanish or ‘Ya lyublyu tebya’ in Russian. There were many other languages that I can’t repeat but I just knew they were saying some version of ‘I love you.’ Having had to do things like that is what makes me feel angry at the situation. It could have been handled so much better. I’m an ER doctor at Elmhurst Hospital in Queens. During one shift in early March, the Emergency Department just filled up with patients who were having trouble breathing. Often a Covid patient’s oxygen will be so low that when they get to a hospital, they need oxygen so badly that they’ll pass out or suddenly stop breathing. It’s like they’ve held on to the last second but just can’t take another breath. I’ve had many patients with Covid walk into the Emergency Department, collapse, and nearly die in the waiting room because their oxygen was so low. When we give patients oxygen, they may spend hours to days with a mask pulled tight against their face to push air into their stiff lungs. We make them roll on their stomach, on their back, or on their side every couple of hours. Sometimes that helps keep us from having to intubate them. They can’t take off the mask for any real amount of time. They can’t eat. We take the mask off to give them a sip of water and then put it right back on. If we do have to intubate them, we put them to sleep and give them medicine to make the body relax. We put a tube down their throat and attach it to a ventilator, the machine that breathes for them. We keep them sedated, a state where they’re almost asleep but not quite. We want them to be able to breathe a little bit on their own. But they can’t be too awake either—the breathing tube is uncomfortable. Often the patients are confused. If they wake up, they may struggle and there's a risk that they could pull the breathing tube out because they don't know what's going on. We have to watch them very carefully to be sure they stay comfortable. Still, after being intubated, patients who survive can have memories like being stuck in a terrible dream and many struggle with PTSD. There is also a tough physical recovery, they have to work really hard to get their strength back, even to be able to walk. Often intubation isn’t enough. Patients’ bodies just stop working before their lungs can heal. It’s as if they drown as their lungs slowly fill with liquid. As that happens, their bodies don’t get oxygen and their blood pressure starts to go down. Their kidneys don’t get oxygen and die, and they need dialysis. Their liver doesn’t get oxygen and starts to die. The brain doesn’t get oxygen and starts to die. And then eventually their heart just stops. Because Covid is so contagious, a patient’s family isn’t allowed to be with them in the hospital. The nurses and doctors are the ones to hold hands and comfort patients. Before we intubated a patient, we would help them call their family. We made as many calls as they needed, knowing that their chance of death was around 80 percent, and they may never speak to their loved ones again. We would loosen the mask during the calls and hold it to their face until they wanted to talk. Then we would lift it off for a few seconds allowing the pa-
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tient to say a few words, then press the mask tightly back on their face for them to get some oxygen while their family spoke. Once the virus got to the Elmhurst neighborhood, it spread like wildfire. Elmhurst is largely an immigrant, non-English speaking community. Many folks in the Elmhurst area are our essential workers. Before the outbreak, communication from our public health system didn’t address the language barriers. It was also difficult for people to quarantine since many of them live with very large extended families. Early on, no one met any of the criteria set up by the CDC for testing so the State Department of Health wouldn’t allow us to test people even when it was clear that the virus was spreading in our community. The CDC fumbled testing and didn’t update guidelines in a timely way. For example, even though we knew there was a huge outbreak in Italy, our criteria for testing did not include travelers from Italy until mid-March. I think we, as doctors, were really naive and trusting in our governmental institutions. We thought they would have things under control, and we were wrong. In the first week of March, we realized we were low on PPE (personal protective equipment) and created a locked space so it could only be dispensed by a set number of people at the beginning of shifts. By March 16, so many staff had been exposed or diagnosed with Covid that we decided that everyone in the Emergency Department had to wear an N95 mask at all times. At first, we got pushback. Administrators said the masks would scare patients and weren’t necessary. But in the end, they allowed it. A lot of people also bought their own plastic reusable N100 masks that have changeable filters. These were actually scary looking, but they helped preserve precious PPE. Everyone in the hospital came together to repurpose, rebuild, rearrange. We got huge HEPA filters and turned half of the department into a negative pressure space. This means that air which might have viral particles in it got constantly sucked out of the space while clean air was pulled in. We moved care of trauma patients to other areas because our entire resuscitation space was filled with critically ill Covid patients. We moved triage to the waiting room. I’m in charge of the residents in the department and I felt like I couldn’t keep them safe. They’re doctors but still in training and I didn’t want them to be taken advantage of. I started spending every day in the hospital, even when I didn’t have shifts, just trying to make sure that they had PPE, to help find oxygen tanks and supplies, and to troubleshoot all the little problems. We almost ran out of ventilators twice. Once a non-Covid patient needed to be intubated, and I couldn’t find a vent. I used one meant for transport that is kept in the radiology area, while we scoured the hospital for another. Other hospitals loaned us ventilators, which arrived just in time. Around this same time, Governor Cuomo said on television that there was no shortage of ventilators, that the state had them, but no hospital had asked for them. I thought he was lying at first—how could that be? Then I learned that the hospital system had not requested ventilators from the state. Until that point, I thought that we just needed to hold out for help to
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come from the city, state, or country. That is when I began to feel that we were completely on our own. After this, around March 21, I started taking some video for the New York Times that eventually went viral. One day I recorded the line outside of the hospital to get to the testing site outside of the Emergency Department. It wrapped out into the street, snaking back and forth, and then around the front of the building. I was shocked. That was around 6:45 a.m. and the testing site didn’t open until 8:00 a.m. After the video aired, everything changed in the hospital and the surrounding community. We started to get help and support. Our morale improved. We felt we were working toward a common goal and that we would do our best for our patients, despite setbacks and shortages. Patients with mild symptoms stopped coming to the hospital. The community brought us food, sent us notes and cards. People came from around the country to work with us. I remember sitting in this orange chair in my apartment with a surgical mask on, away from the rest of the family, and my husband pulling my daughter out of my lap to get her away from me. By that time, so many asymptomatic patients had come to the Emergency Department for something unrelated and tested Covid positive, that I knew I might be contagious and have no idea. My nine-year-old son doesn’t like getting hugged anyway, but my daughter, who was two-and-a-half, always wanted to cuddle. We tried so hard to keep her away from me, but she didn’t understand. It was so unbelievably scary. We had even talked about me staying at a hotel, but I don’t think I could have. I needed to be near my family, and mask-wearing was our compromise. And then, at the end of March, I did get Covid. I quarantined completely from the world for ten days, scared that my family would get sick, and constantly checked my oxygen level. After I was better, I was so relieved. I had lived, my family was well, and I could be with them without such overwhelming fear. One day, maybe in late March, I was walking down the street on the Upper East Side. Cherry trees were all blooming with their beautiful pink blossoms. I was the only person on the street. Nobody else was out. The sun was coming up, the sky was pinkish yellow, birds were chirping. It was a beautiful spring day and I just got so angry at the spring. I remember thinking, How are the earth and the spring just continuing on when so many people are dying all around me? It is true that most people who get Covid will be fine. And while I do think that Covid is worse for people who have health problems, I’ve seen enough young, healthy people die or get permanently sick from Covid to know that it’s a fallacy to fall back on your own health as protective. It’s really a roll of the dice.”
/ 019
/ Timeline COVID-19 in New York City – From the first reports to the reopening
January 2020 News of a mysterious new pneumonia in China starts to spread. Wuhan and other major Chinese cities are put on lockdown.
March 16 NYC closes public schools.
January 11 China reports its first death in Covid-19.
March 14 First Covid-19 death in New York.
January 21 First US case confirmed. January 30 WHO declares a global health emergency. January 31 President Trump bans travel from China for people who are not US citizens or permanent residents. March 1 First confirmed Covid-19 case in New York. March 7 New York’s Governor Cuomo declares a state of emergency. March 8 NYC issues guidelines to reduce the number of people on buses, subways, and trains.
March 15 CDC recommends no gatherings of more than 50 people nationally.
March 13 President Trump declares a national emergency. Mayor De Blasio declares a state of emergency in New York City. March 13 Events with more than 500 people banned in New York. Broadway shuts down. Major sports events canceled. March 12 President Trump stops travel from Europe. March 11 Covid-19 is declared a pandemic by the WHO. March 10 Westchester County, a suburb north of Manhattan, has 108 cases and a containment zone is created. Schools and houses of worship are closed. Confirmed cases in NYC are up to 36.
March 17 NYC cafés, bars, and restaurants close except for takeout and delivery. Nightclubs, movie theaters, and concert venues close. March 17 Debt collection by New York State is suspended. March 20 President Trump declares a major disaster in New York State. It’s the first time ever for a health crisis and the designation gives access to FEMA funds. March 22 The New York State ON PAUSE policy goes into effect. All nonessential workers must stay home and nonessential gatherings of any size, for any reason, are banned. Individuals in public must practice social distancing of at least six feet. March 27 President Trump signs the CARES Act, a $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill. March 28 New York State approves a 90-day moratorium on evictions.
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April 30 NYC subways start closing at night for cleaning.
May 1 Schools are closed for the remainder of the semester.
April 16 New York State’s stay-at-home order and school closures extended to May 15.
May 7 The New York State ON PAUSE order is extended to June 6, but counties that meet qualifications can open by May 15. NYC is not among those.
April 15 Governor Cuomo orders people to wear face coverings in public places. April 10 New York State has more recorded Covid-19 cases than any country outside the US. April 8 The highest number of coronavirus deaths in one day, 799 people, recorded in New York State. April 6 Governor Cuomo extends New York’s stay-at-home order and school closures to April 29. March 31 NYC surpasses 1,000 Covid-19 deaths. March 30 Naval hospital ship USNS Comfort arrives at Pier 90 on Manhattan’s West Side.
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May 15 Governor Cuomo allows drive-in theaters, landscaping, and low-risk recreational activities to reopen. May 23 Gatherings of up to ten people are allowed with social distancing. May 27 US Covid-19 deaths pass 100,000. May 28 The first protests held in NYC in response to George Floyd being killed by police in Minneapolis three days earlier. May 31 Black Lives Matter protests against violence and racism continue. The vast majority are peaceful but at night there is some looting, vandalism, and violence.
June 8 NYC begins reopening exactly 100 days after the first case of Covid-19 was confirmed. Elective surgeries can resume. Retail stores can offer curbside and in-store pickup. Construction, wholesale, agriculture, and manufacturing are allowed to resume. It will be another two weeks before retail stores and outdoor dining are allowed to open at reduced capacity. June 3 The first day without any Covid-19 deaths reported for the first time since mid-March. June 1 To curb looting in connection to the protests, NYC instates a curfew from 11 p.m. The following five days the curfew starts at 8 p.m.
Stay at home. Don’t see anyone. Only leave the house if you really have to.
In the spring of 2020, the new coronavirus shut down New York City. Governor Cuomo declared that New York was “on pause” and the city’s deserted avenues, bridges, and train stations became a global symbol of the ravages of the pandemic and our attempts to escape it. Through epic photos, thematic essays, and in-depth interviews with New Yorkers who stayed during the months when everything changed, ON PAUSE chronicles a unique time in the city that never sleeps.
Charlie Bennet Charlie Bennet is a Swedish-born still-life and lifestyle photographer based in New York City. Charlie has published five books prior to ON PAUSE and has exhibited both in the United States and Europe.
ISBN 978-057888400-4
9 780578
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Helena Gustavsson Helena Gustavsson is a foreign correspondent for Swedish media. As a journalist, she covers a wide array of topics, from politics and social issues to culture and the arts. Helena lives in Brooklyn, New York.