Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Covid-19: My New York Experience
I can’t help but feel that there are two different experiences in the country with the coronavirus. There is the east coast experience and there is the rest of the country. When one looks at the state by state numbers, the two states of New York and New Jersey make up about a third of all the cases in the country and over 40% of the deaths. And the New York State numbers are incredibly skewed to New York City. I think it’s pretty much acknowledged that New York City and the surrounding suburbs have been the epicenter of the contagion. It does not surprise me then that we are reacting to the lockdown differently.
Here is my experience as a New Yorker, albeit one from Staten Island, which is subtly different than one from Manhattan. But Manhattan has actually been spared, relatively speaking. It’s the outer boroughs of the city that has absorbed the brunt of the pandemic.
More
This is a subject that has come up first in the comments with the 
In strange times, what was once commonplace now seems bizarre. I was walking the dogs earlier this week and a couple of kids on bikes in a nearby park stuck with me. I watched as the boy and girl – probably around 11- or 12-years-old rode their bikes through the grass and down a slope steep enough that in winter makes for a black-diamond sledding hill. Neither child wore helmets nor shoes. The girl’s long, golden hair carried by the breeze was the last I saw as the pair peddled furiously out of view. I looked around. No parents. No nanny. No park overseer waiting to scold them for enjoying a sunny afternoon with such reckless abandon. I smiled at the thought that even in this time of modified police state, there were these two kids unaware of the cynical, fearful world beyond the park. Then it made me sad. I wasn’t mournful in a sense of lost nostalgia, but I realized these kids were an endangered species. And if the government had its way, they would be extinct.
