DAILY NEWSNYDailyNews.com Sunday, March 29, 2020 35
BRAMHALL’S WORLD
I
hear birds in the morning now, ex-
cept when sirens drown them out.
And, in my own isolation, I keep
coming back to how isolated New
Yorkers are, here at the center of the
world. That all of us, other than Bronx-
ites, live on islands.
Brooklynites, for that matter, have no
direct exit from New York. We can get to
Manhattan or Queens or Staten Island
from here, but not out of the city.
Saturday, Trump talked wildly about
quarantining the tristate area, before re-
versing himself hours later after New
York Gov. Andrew Cuomo warned that
would amount to a “federal declaration
of war.” Before that, National Guards-
men in Florida had been dispatched to
the airports by Gov. Ron DeSantis — who
hasn’t got around to closing the beaches
that were packed during Spring Break —
to collect information from each passen-
ger on every flight arriving from New
York to share with local authorities.
Rhode Island is stopping cars with N.Y.
plates at the border and registering New
Yorkers at airports, train stations and bus
stops so Guardsmen can check on them
in their homes in the state.
Cuomo had told National Guardmembers here on Friday that “this is
going to be a long day and it’s going to be
ahard day, and it’s going to be an ugly
day, and it’s going to be a sad day. This is a
rescue mission that you’re on (and)
we’re not going to be able to save every-
one. And what’s even more cruel is this
enemy doesn’t attack the strongest of us.
It attacks the weakest of us. It attacks our
most vulnerable.”
He concluded: “We go out there today
and we kick coronavirus’ ass.”
Governors are figuring things out as
they go while our buck-passing Presi-
dent tries to divide the country into
“high risk, medium risk or low risk”
areas as part of his wing-and-a-prayer
plan to have Americans “resume their
normal economic, social and religious
lives” in time for Easter and, of course,
his reelection hopes.
Ihave a sinking feeling that Donald
Trump, who was talking about the “Chi-nese Flu” a week ago, may be talking
about the “New York Flu” by the time we
reach its anticipated apex here in about
three weeks.
And the idea of internal borders,
something America has never really
seen, looms like a dragon on the legend
covering these uncharted waters.
Ican’t imagine Cuomo ever doing
that, and Trump doesn’t have that power
according to the rules as we’ve
known them, so I stopped and
called a New Yorker well
versed in executive power
who I’d hoped would tell me
this was a ridiculous concern,
that of course Trump’s not go-
ing to build a wall around his
old home and make Cuomo
pay for it.
But that’s not quite what the
person said. Theoretically,
they noted, NYC, the epicenter of the
American outbreak, would be one of the
easiest cities in the U.S. to cut off because
it’s geographically isolated, geologically
isolated. The water controls the flow of
the people.
Manhattan’s first links to the main-
land were the old Hudson and Manhat-tan tubes in 1908, followed by Penn Sta-
tion in 1910, the Holland Tunnel in 1927
and the George Washington Bridge in
1 931. The direct line to America is rela-
tively new, and easily reversed.
Today, there are just six ways to drive
across the Hudson from the city: Three
bridges in Staten Island, plus the G.W.
and the Lincoln and Hudson tunnels.
So, the person went on, thinking out
loud:
You’d close the airports, easy.
Close the trains, easy. That
leaves vehicular traffic. There’s
no way it’s foolproof, but you’d
station checkpoints at the places
that go west. People would try to
go north and make their way
around; good luck with that.
These things happen incre-
mentally, they creep up, the per-
son concluded. You’re taking
temperatures at the airport. Then the air-
ports are closed. Once the airports are
closed, the rest of the dominoes can fall.
Acertain former resident can always
get to Trump Tower and back by heli-
copter if he needs to.
For the rest of us, who the hell knows?
[email protected]Escape from New York II?
Could we
be shut
off from
rest of the
country?
HARRY
SIEGEL