UNDER COVID, PT. 20: RAINING ON PARADES

Last Friday, we rented a car for the first time in several months and made a 25-minute trip into New Jersey. My mother-in-law's independent assisted living community had been on total lockdown since one of the residents was diagnosed with COVID-19 six weeks ago. None of the other residents have been allowed out of their apartments since; visits from family, too, are forbidden.

Like this, only without the laughs.

We were making the trip to take part in one of those "parades" where you drive around a building, honking your horn, waving signs, yelling I love you!, and generally making the kind of racket usually discouraged at places like this. My sister-in-law and her husband took part, as did our daughter, who drove up from Philadelphia.

You've likely seen videos of these events. It looks very heartwarming and charming, and in a way it is. But what you don't realize until you do it in person is just how sad an experience it really is, particularly in the cold, drizzling rain falling that day. 

Since the middle of March, residents have been denied any in-person contact from the outside world. And all they could get was a jumble of cars with people they couldn't see waving signs they couldn't read and yelling things they couldn't hear.  

At least the workers shot video of the occasion so the residents could see for themselves that a loved one dropped by for 10 minutes. As one codger on his second-story deck put it, "It's good to see you! It's good to see anybody!"

We had no trouble seeing anybody the following day, when springtime finally made its delayed debut. Going for a bike ride along the East River proved to be something of an obstacle course. I'll go further and state under oath that we had never seen so many people on the Greenway, which kind of negated the whole "social distancing" order. 

Too bad it took a fatal virus to give us the simple pleasure of
walking in the middle of the road.

It could have been worse if the city hadn't decided to close 40 miles of streets alongside city parks to give pedestrians more breathing room, as they did on East End Avenue. 

Well, not "breathing room", since everybody's face is covered up. The sight of everybody wearing almost identical masks gave it something of a walking dead vibe, only we're falling apart mentally, not physically.

It provided a nice alternative to the city's usual daily entertainment, The Colgate COVID Hour starring Andrew Cuomo. In addition to giving updates on how the virus is decimating the state of New York, the governor continues to make fun of his little brother, humiliate Mitch McConnell, give the finger to Donald Trump, and pick petty fights with the reporter from the New York Times. Last week's to-do happened Thursday. The exchange went like this:

REPORTER: When are you going to announce your decision regarding the possible re-opening of New York schools?
CUOMO: At the end of the week, like I told you when you asked yesterday.
REPORTER: So tomorrow?
CUOMO: That's the end of the week, unless the Times has a different calendar.


Who needs writers when you've got real repartee like that? Cuomo even has his own sign-off at the end of each broadcast: "OK, time for me to go back to work!" What a pro! 

Bloomberg also proved that billionaires can't afford a laptop with
a decent camera.

Generous host that he is, Cuomo isn't adverse to sharing the screen with others. One day last week, he had two guest stars. The first was Mike Bloomberg, the man who proved once and for all that billionaires can't always buy the presidency.

Cuomo announced that Bloomberg was leading New York state's contact-tracing program, which Trump zombies believe will be the gateway to allowing Bill Gates implanting brain chips in them. If only! In discussing the program, Bloomberg modestly mentioned, in so many words, that he was footing the bill. But in what was possibly a Freudian slip, he kept saying "contract tracing". A businessman's brain is never far from business!

Bill de Blasio and Andrew Cuomo in deep discussion.

The second guest was Bill de Blasio, who has become Jack Benny to Cuomo's Fred Allen. Well, that's not correct. Jack Benny was a brilliant comedian beloved by millions for decades. Bill de Blasio is our idiot mayor.

However, there is a bit of Fred Allen in Cuomo. Acerbic with a capital A, fully in command, never in need of a script, Cuomo can tear anyone to shreds with just a few words, then offer a smile of a champ who's won his 200th fight by TKO. When Cuomo says, "I talked to Mayor de Blasio," what he means is I told him what to do.

And it costs only $2.75 to ride!

And this particular chat focused on Cuomo's plan to shut down the subway from 1:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m. in order to clean and disinfect all the trains. Since ridership has dropped an astounding 90%, the subways have become mobile homes for the homeless, with all that entails. 

Until recently, New York City Transit was run by a very nice British chap named Andy Byford, who previously performed similar duties in his home country before moving to Australia and, later, Toronto.

When Byford took the New York job in 2018, one of his early suggestions was to shut down the subway overnight during the workweek to have all the subway trains cleaned. The idea was immediately met with rebukes from across the city. Close the subway? What're you, crazy? This is a 24 hour town!

Andy Byford demonstrates
what the phrase "last laugh"
means.

Unsurprisingly, Byford soon found himself losing a power struggle with -- you'll never guess -- Gov. Cuomo (who often enjoys reminding us that he controls the MTA). Byford quit his job in February, just weeks before the pandemic upended the city. 

If only he'd stayed on! Byford would have seen his dream come true. But Cuomo would have taken credit for it, as de Blasio whimpered, "Please, Mr. Governor, can I hold your jacket at the announcement?" Pandemics should all be so entertaining.



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