How Staten Island Failed the COVID Test
By: Alli Dempsey
Tags: NYC, New York City, New York, Coronavirus, Staten Island

Cluster map for Richmond County issued by the governor’s office on Nov. 23

As I sat in my dorm room the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, waiting for my mom to bring me home to Richmond County, I got a call from her. She tells me that a co-worker has come in contact with someone with COVID-19 the day before, and she was looking to get a test right after she picked me up. She ended up being negative and well, but receiving that news was a wake-up call for me.

After spending more than three months at SUNY New Paltz, I never feared catching the virus until I left. The college implemented a “WE not ME” plan, with proper social distancing protocols and safety measures, and the positive rate from on-campus testing never exceeded 1%. The irony of feeling safe in a college setting, which usually consists of crowded dorm buildings, communal bathrooms and showers, and possible party-goers, but living in fear at home speaks volumes about how Staten Island has handled the novel Coronavirus.

On November 23, Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted an updated zone map for the Richmond County cluster after a large uptick in hospitalizations hit the area. The island was split in two, with the northern side in the yellow zone, and the southern shore in the orange zone. Depending on which side of the island you were on, there were certain things you could and could no longer do. Schools shut down while some stayed open. Restaurants were closed while others remained operating. Two completely different ways of life began on Staten Island.

One restaurant in an area of the island that fell into the orange zone refused to abide by these new zoning protocols. Mac’s Public House in Grant City declared itself an “autonomous zone” and continued to operate, despite mass amounts of criticism from residents and legal actions and fines from officials. Anti-lockdown citizens saw the restaurant as sort of a “holy site,” and on December 2 a huge crowd formed outside of it, standing up against the shutdown, what they feel is an attack on small businesses. The pictures from the night consisted of few mask-wearers, the owner getting arrested, and rumors of the Proud Boys making an appearance.

The strife of Mac’s isn’t entirely farfetched. It is clear to see that countless small businesses have been suffering due to the shutdowns, and the government really hasn’t been as much help. Instead of directing their hate towards the public safety protocols, the best bet in this situation would be questioning why they didn’t receive more stimulus to keep themselves open. To react in such a way that is unsafe and unfocused, they are only putting more people, businesses, and even themselves at risk for a longer shutdown.

Many people have connected the Staten Island zone map and the voting map in the 2020 election since the orange zone was made up of the biggest “red” areas. Weeks before the election, there were multiple crowded Trump rallies in those areas, and photographs were published on news media site SiLive that showed the majority of the attendees also without masks.

A simple scroll through the comment section of the site’s Instagram posts about local COVID cases will tell you that there is a concerning number of residents who do not believe masks work, or that the virus is even real. On a November 11 post about yellow zone restrictions, locals are saying things such as “You can’t tell me what I can and cannot do,” “Communism at its finest,” and “It’s all lies.”

The majority of Staten Islanders’ attitudes have always been controversial, and this situation truly made me understand why that is a problem. Since this crisis affects everybody, you truly feel the pain when people aren’t taking it as seriously as you, or just blatantly denying it.

I have a close friend who lost her father to COVID-19 early on in March. He was in his late 40s and was otherwise healthy other than complications due to some post-9/11 asthma issues. Ever since then, I’ve felt especially sensitive to people downplaying the effectiveness of masks and saying that the virus is a hoax. I’ve also had perfectly healthy friends still suffering from the long-lasting after-effects of being infected. It has real impacts, and at this point, we all have someone in our lives that has seen it.

When it comes to Staten Island’s controversial reputation, this crisis made me realize that many of our resident’s selfishness is a problem. I usually hesitate to put the blame onto certain groups, but the rise in COVID cases on the island after a rally for Donald Trump that encouraged people to “come without a mask,” is somewhat telling. Many Trump supporters and people leaning on the Republican side, as I’ve seen in the SiLive Instagram comments, downplay the virus by saying it has a “99.8% survival rate.” This attitude, when added to “the most conservative borough,” only has one outcome: and it is still living through early-pandemic conditions when my upstate college district, the one I was the most concerned about in the beginning, is slowly recovering.

Living on this island, watching as cases continue to rapidly increase, feels hopeless. It seems that there is no end in sight, especially because the SiLive posts about the possible vaccine have an overwhelming comment section filled with islanders refusing to take it. With the standstill between the population and the authorities seeming like it will go on forever, Staten Island will be the region that future epidemiologists look back and laugh at. Although it’s a little bit of a stretch, I’m holding out the hope that this is the absolute peak and all of the madness will die down eventually.