12 THENEWYORKER,APRIL20, 2020
BRONXTRAFFIC
SHOWINGTHEWAY
E
very morning at eight, Maria Lopez
sets up a folding table at the en-
trance of Lincoln Hospital, in the South
Bronx. People who visit her table are
often scared or angry or both. She wears
old sneakers and jeans, with a mask
and gloves. Recently, the hospital gave
her a pair of goggles. “We get spit at,”
Lopez said the other day. “We also get
cursed at, people flip over the table, you
name it.”
Lincoln has the busiest emergency
department in the city, and Lopez’s
job is to be a traffic controller. Her re-
sponsibilities include anything outside
of direct medical care. Each person
who comes to the hospital must stop
at her table. If people come with
coughs, Lopez directs them to a room
where they can get tested. Next of kin
show up, and Lopez escorts them to
where they can identify their loved
ones’ remains. Women in labor arrive
with their families, and Lopez breaks
the news that, because of the corona-
virus, the mother-to-be must enter
alone. Being separated from their rel-
atives is what makes people angriest.
“The families mingle outside just to
be nearby,” Lopez said. “One lady came
in yesterday and was crying. Her hus-
band hadn’t been feeling good, so he’d
been taken in the ambulance. She didn’t
know anything about his condition.
And I told her she could go to Infor-
mation and see how he’s doing. He
passed away in the morning, and no-
body had notified her. There’s so many
bodies, too many people.”
In normal times, Lopez works as a
violence-intervention counsellor and
as a youth mentor at the hospital. She
lives in Harlem and has four daugh-
ters. “When I’m not working, I’m my
daughter’s manager,” she said. “My ten-
year-old! She’s a rapper. She advocates
against bullying.” Even before the pan-
demic, Lopez’s work was exhausting.
A year and a half ago, she suffered a
stroke, even though she is only thirty-
eight. When the coronavirus deluge
arrived, she volunteered to help how-
ever she could. “In the nighttime now,
I twist and turn,” she said. “I some-
times cry. I have to play Candy Crush
on my phone until I fall asleep.”
At Lincoln, which treats the poor-
est area of the city, patients are far more
likely to be black or Latino. The corona-
virus has hit communities like Lin-
coln’s disproportionately hard. New
York City’s early data show that black
and Latino residents are dying at twice
the rate of white New Yorkers.
“There are a lot of trust issues here,”
Lopez said. “People don’t know who
to believe now. People speak more
Spanish and more African languages
than English here, which makes it
harder. People are at high risk, with
diabetes, heart conditions, asthma, high
blood pressure—the chronic stuff. In-
surance, especially, is a problem. Ev-
erybody that helps the community,
their offices are closed. Yesterday, we
had a couple of people saying they don’t
have milk for their babies. And peo-
ple need food stamps. A lot of people
are old, so they don’t know how to work
such brazen self-regard is humiliating
to millions of American citizens, if not
to their leader. Trump gives himself “a
ten” for his performance and berates any
reporter who dares to challenge that
premise. “You should say, ‘Congratula-
tions! Great job!’” he told one, “instead
of being so horrid in the way you ask
the question!”
A nation facing a common threat
normally pulls together, but Trump’s
reflex is always to divide; he has invoked
a multiplying litany of enemies. He di-
rects his fire at the Obama Administra-
tion, at the World Health Organization,
and at governors from Albany to Sac-
ramento, with their constant pleas for
ventilators, test kits, and face masks. The
Democrats are to blame for everything.
Early in the year, as the pandemic grew,
they “diverted” the attention of the fed-
eral government, because “every day was
all about impeachment,” as Trump’s un-
failing loyalist Mitch McConnell, the
Senate Majority Leader, put it.
At a time of medical peril and eco-
nomic devastation, the President heads
to the White House briefing room and
frames the terms of his reëlection cam-
paign. It is a campaign of cynicism and
authoritarian impulses. To begin with,
he has made it clear that he does not ap-
prove of efforts to make voting easier in
November. Why should he? He takes a
dim view of early voting, voting by mail,
and same-day registration. Such reforms,
he complains, would produce “levels of
voting that, if you ever agreed to it, you’d
never have a Republican elected in this
country again.”
Trump has not had the sort of bounce
in the polls usually seen by Presidents
during a crisis, but this hardly insures
an end to his reign. Senator Bernie San-
ders, who did so much to transform the
debate over health care, the environ-
ment, and education policy, in both the
2016 and 2020 campaigns, has dropped
out of the race, and the presumptive
Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, has
been either absent or woefully inarticu-
late in recent weeks. The former Vice-
President cannot run on the idea of per-
sonal decency alone. He needs to provide
a vivid, comprehensive plan of renewal
equal to the moment. He needs to em-
phasize hard truths, one being that the
laws of science, of the physical world,
must be recognized. This pandemic is,
in a sense, a rehearsal for what awaits us
if we continue to ignore the demands
of climate change. Biden would signal
a seriousness of intent and offer a con-
vincing alternative if he were to name
very soon not only a Vice-Presidential
running mate but a set of advisers and
Cabinet officers who have shown them-
selves capable of policy rigor, executive
competence, and compassion for the
very communities that are suffering most
from neglect and mistreatment.
Meanwhile, at the epicenter of the
coronavirus outbreak, a painful reckon-
ing begins. New York has long prided it-
self on being a sort of cultural and polit-
ical city-state, able to hold its own against
any vagaries emanating from the White
House. This is plainly not the case. We
are in this together: that is the phrase,
the balm, of the moment. But it is more
than a cliché. It should be the spirit and
the foundation of our national politics,
starting with the election in November.
—David Remnick
