Weather: Bright and pleasant. High in the low 60s.
Alternate-side parking: Suspended through Sunday; resuming Monday.
About 100 children may have a rare illness tied to the virus.
New York State health officials are now investigating about 100 cases of a rare and dangerous inflammatory syndrome that afflicts children and appears to be connected to the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday.
So far, three deaths in the state have been linked to the illness, which is known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome and causes life-threatening inflammation in critical organs, Mr. Cuomo said.
More than half of the state’s syndrome cases — 57 percent — involved children ages 5 to 14.
Also on Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio said that 52 cases of the syndrome, which has symptoms that overlap with those of toxic shock syndrome and Kawasaki disease, had been reported in New York City and that 10 potential cases were being evaluated.
The dead included a 5-year-old boy who died last week in New York City, a 7-year-old boy in Westchester County and an 18-year-old woman on Long Island.
“This is a truly disturbing situation,” Mr. Cuomo said at his daily news briefing. “And I know parents around the state and around the country are very concerned about this, and they should be.”
[Get the latest news and updates on the coronavirus in the New York region.]
As areas prepare to reopen, Cuomo again pushes for federal aid.
With New York making steady progress in its battle against the virus and three upstate regions poised to start a gradual reopening by this weekend, Mr. Cuomo reiterated on Tuesday the importance of federal aid as the state charts its recovery.
The number of people hospitalized in New York continued to decrease, Mr. Cuomo said, one of the key metrics that officials are monitoring in assessing whether the outbreak’s severity is waning.
The number of new daily hospitalizations has fallen close to where it was on March 19, just before Mr. Cuomo issued executive orders shutting down much of the state.
“We’re making real progress, there’s no doubt,” Mr. Cuomo said. “But there’s also no doubt that it’s no time to get cocky, no time to get arrogant.”
[Coronavirus in New York: A map and the case count.]
Lin-Manuel Miranda will help woo tourists back to N.Y.C.
The puzzle of how to revive New York City’s tourist trade is so vexing that city officials are pulling together a group of industry experts — and one of the biggest names on Broadway — to try to solve it.
On Tuesday, the city’s tourism agency, NYC & Company, said it was establishing the Coalition for NYC Hospitality & Tourism Recovery. Among the group’s leaders: Lin-Manuel Miranda, the composer, lyricist and actor who created the musical “Hamilton.”
The coalition’s task is to come up with a plan for wooing people back to the city once it starts to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic, a chapter that appears to be months off. The Broadway League said on Tuesday that its members were canceling shows through Sept 6.
“It is time to consider how we can begin to reopen our doors and safely reconnect with our city and with each other, and with the visitors who will one day again flock to New York,” said Charles Flateman, who is the chairman of NYC & Company and executive vice president of the Shubert Organization, which owns several Broadway theaters.
What we’re reading
The future of sit-down dining at restaurants in the city might rest in open street space. [Gothamist]
New York City may implement a mix of online learning and in-class instruction for the expected September reopening of schools Mr. de Blasio said. [Daily News]
Some mayors and business owners from towns along the Jersey Shore are bracing for what could be a very unusual summer. [Gothamist]
And finally: New Yorkers wax wistful
The Times’s Alan Feuer writes:
Seven weeks have passed since New York City, fleeing the coronavirus, put up a collective closed-for-business sign and locked itself away inside the strange, timeless bubble of the shutdown. The crisis, by any standard, has been costly: More than 19,000 New Yorkers have already lost their lives, and tens, if not hundreds, of thousands more have lost their livelihoods.
But the fabric of the city, too, has suffered harm as our attempts to stop the spread of disease have infected the streets and subways, the great public spaces and the secret little hideaways with a kind of festering emptiness. Social distance, for all its benefits, is a plague to places like New York, laying waste to the churning rhythms, the cherished rituals and the millions of spontaneous interactions where, in normal times, the city lives at the level of its cells.
With New Yorkers in retreat from New York, it seemed appropriate to ask a few what they missed most about their home as it was just months ago. Some missed the big things: the daily tide of bodies swirling around the clock in Grand Central Terminal. Some missed the small things: the two-tone chime of a closing subway door.
“There’s a complicated chemistry the city uses as eight million people go about their lives together,” said Ric Burns, the documentary filmmaker perhaps best known for his PBS series on New York. “It’s an infinitely delicate attraction-repulsion mechanism that help us negotiate our density, and it’s been put on hold.”
“It’s like our language has been taken from us,” Mr. Burns said, “and we’ve been silenced.”
He was one of about a dozen New Yorkers who talked to The New York Times wistfully about what it is they miss most with the city in a diminished state.
It’s Wednesday — what do you miss?
Metropolitan Diary: An egregious epiphany
Dear Diary:
Lapis Lazooli, a poet and truly,
A man with some dubious talents.
Said to me, last July with a glint in his eye:
“What I’ll tell you will throw you off balance.”
I admit I was leery, ennui-ed, somewhat weary;
Just what was he cooking this time?
“I’ve unlocked the enigma, destigma-ed the stigma;
And for orange I found a real rhyme.”
Now, it’s really no news that New Yorkers schmooze,
We’re verbal and vocal, loquacious.
But in Coney Islond, we will not be conned,
“Gimme a break, that’s fallacious.”
He tugged at his beard — it was worse than I feared —
And he whispered, his voice was a hiss:
“Neither Ogden, nor Parker, nor Stephen Sondheim,
Dared to attempt such a perilous rhyme.
Forget about Seuss ’cause he knew he’d be lost;
Not Wordsworth, not Shelley, not Shakespeare, not Frost;
Not Yeats, not a one in this august mélange,
Would ever endeavor a rhyme for or-anj. But I — ”
He then cleared his throat trying hard not to gloat
(I was doing my best not to cringe).
“The word that’s a rhyme, that’s mundane yet sublime:
Orange — its mate is doorhinge!”
Doorhinge?! Doorhinge?!
Now, I am no yokel, I’m Brooklyn, I’m local,
Won’t ever be tricked, teased nor taken.
“Well, I’ll tell ya, Lapis, that’s nothing but crappis,
You’re meshuge, you’re mad, you’re mistaken!”
“No!
You’ve no ear for whimsy, your knowledge is flimsy,
Van Gogh never could sell his art.
Galileo was hounded, Prometheus grounded.
Here’s the moment, my friend, that we part.”
Lapis Lazooli, a poet and truly (Well, actually sort of a hack),
Said, “Silver is next, I’m not vanquished nor vexed,
And orange you glad I’ll be back.”
— Lou Craft
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