After a [predicted] spike in covid cases in NYC starting Sept. 25-27 and by some accounts putting us back to March 13th numbers over the past weekend, city government appears to be testing an approach of allowing or restricting hot spot area according to zip code.
On one hand, families I work with in East Harlem understandably want to be able to continue hanging in parks with other uptown folks even if the city new-case-count rises when the new cases are clustered in seemingly-far-off places like Sheepshead Bay and Far Rockaway. People need childcare, they want their kids to get to socialize, outside and masked-up feels safe while case numbers in our neighborhoods are holding steady.
On the other hand, what’s the deal with zip codes? How is it decided where their boundaries are? Knowing how covid’s impact disproportionately hit neighborhoods and the history of neighborhood design (and designed neglect) that’s one factor contributing to this…I mean…treating people differently based on zip code is usually clearly using zip as a proxy for class and/or race. And some neighborhoods are heterogeneous and where’s the data that lets me account for how commuter flows impact my students’ and staff’s risk? Here? Here? I can’t even get consistent case counts across websites (the official city page and ex 1 from the Manhattan borough president’s newsletter and 2 and 3) and people definitely aren’t being given resources to let them stop commuting across zip codes…whether for work or childcare or health care. Using zip codes is convenient and tidy, but is it useful? Actually safe? Going to do more good than the harm it does in exacerbating existing inequality? Does it matter when I can’t get reliable numbers anyway and know the numbers are from a context where there are delays in getting tests/results and some of us (*cough*me*cough* can’t get tests because we’ve no symptoms, even if we’re worried we’ve been exposed)?
I…don’t have enough information to say more than that I feel uneasy *and* I don’t have a better plan. Yet.
Our current operating plan for ALC-NYC has local [a Bronx/Manhattan and a Brooklyn/Queens] pods meeting [masked, outdoors, part-time] based on daily trends for the city as a whole, based on reports from the official city website. I intentionally kept the language in that part of the plan referencing “local” data — though I used NYC #’s — because my July self drafting the plan anticipated research developments would prompt us to flex and either expand to consider Jersey and upstate numbers or focus in on the neighborhoods where we spend most of our time. As it looks like our revisions, if we move ahead with them in line with the city’s precedent, will have us move to focus on where we are rather than the whole city…intermingled and interconnected as we are.
We also have two groups in pods who want their off-line days to line up so they can all be online for the same days (3 days) and have more, fuller classes. And a smaller group with zero interest in online things, concentrated uptown and willing to take on more risk if that means having childcare during work hours. While we have 2 facilitators in Brooklyn, 1 in a hotspot zip code, and me writing from quarantine (day 10). We’ll see what the week brings…
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