Suffolk Closeup - Suffolk County A Pandemic Sanctuary "Our Secret Is Out"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Is Suffolk County to become a sanctuary for some New York City people because of the COVID-19 pandemic? There are indications that this is happening.

“It’s Time To Get Out Of Dodge” was the recent headline in The New York Times. “Cooped up and concerned about the post-Covid future, renters and owners are making moves to leave the city,” said the piece. It spoke of “a sense that in today’s era of social distancing, one-person-at-a-time elevator rides to get home and looping routes to avoid passers-by on city streets have fundamentally changed New York City.”

The article, the lead of the Times’ real estate section, continued to a full page which stated: “Although tracking regionwide relocations is difficult, existing data and anecdotal evidence suggest a clear Covid effect.” It spoke of city folks moving to Connecticut, New Jersey and Long Island—with moves to the island between March 15 and April 28—“up 48 percent.”

Suffolk wasn’t singled out but the piece declared: “If people do head for greener pastures, residents and brokers suggest, it may be because the city can seem, at least for the time being, like a shell of its former self. Indeed, they say, activities people once took for granted, like strolling in parks….have become difficult or impossible.”

Of all areas neighboring New York City, Suffolk County is especially green.

The Express News Group newspapers also had a lead piece, in their “Residence” section, speaking of a “mass exodus from New York.” It spoke of how, “Across the East End, what were once seasonal neighborhoods are now bursting with life, evidence of a recent exodus out of New York City by second homeowners and renters desperate to live more comfortably and simultaneously escape the epicenter of the COVID-19 crisis…” 

The continuation, also to a full page, noted that after the September 11 “terrorist attacks …[the influx] from New York to the Hamptons was urgent. Schools rapidly accepted new students. And the region was noticeably busier—until it wasn’t. Little by little, some families did trickle back to the city, while others established new homes for themselves. Whether the same will happen post-COVID-19 is impossible to say…”

This piece quoted East Hampton broker Diane Saatchi saying about the real estate scene now: “I keep feeling like I’m looking for a parking space in New York. If you look really carefully you could see somebody pulling out and be right there and get it. When a house becomes available, you have to be the person right behind it to get it.’

Sag Harbor Mayor Kathleen Mulcahy commented: “Just as we had families move out at 9/11, I think we’re gonna see a lot of people moving out here because they’re finding they can do their work from afar and they have a backyard and a nice life. Our secret is out.”

“At some point, life has to get back to normal,” said Jay Schneiderman, who was raised in Hauppauge and is now the Southampton Town supervisor, “and we’re gonna have a real challenging time economically, but maybe having the influx of capital that these people” will provide “will help our restaurants and retail businesses. It may be a positive thing to the local economy.” 

Suffolk County has since the late 19^th Century been a get-away place for New York City people. Historic centuries-old communities became, in part, also summer communities as the Long Island Rail Road extended eastward. 

Growing up in New York City, my family first came to Suffolk as an escape—from the summer heat in the city in the mid-1950s. Every summer we reserved a tent site at Wildwood State Park in Wading River. My father would come out on weekends. It’s where my brother and I became adept at swimming, in the Long Island Sound, and had our feet adjust to a shoreline of pebbles.

I ended up as a journalist in Suffolk in the early-1960s, and although there was the possibility of getting a TV journalism gig in the city as the years went by, and knowing I could live in the city, I’m glad it’s been Suffolk for more than a half-century. I appreciate what the folks seeking shelter here now want.

I vividly recall attorney Nancy Carley of Westhampton Beach telling me, when early-on I covered cops-and-courts, how she moved here from the city and never regretted it. Girlfriends had become judges and held other important positions in New York City, she related, but living and working in Suffolk had been “sweet and easy.”

Now not all city folks seeking sanctuary will settle in Suffolk. As the New York Post’s “Page Six” last week quoted a Corcoran realtor, Dana Koch, out of Palm Beach, Florida, saying: “People who were down for spring break have decided to stay here. Over the last 30 days there are a lot of New York license plates showing up here. We’ve had an influx of people trying to find the right situation.” And “Page Six” added: “We’re told one couple forwent traveling to their Hamptons house and instead booked a Palm Beach rental for an entire year.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Kings Park Teen Sean Moran Uses Drone To Tell His Story

Writing Our Pandemic History

For generations to come history lessons will be taught about this exact moment in time when the entire planet paused. Like people all over the world – we step with great trepidation into a new frontier – into a world we have never been before.   

Kings Park Teen Tells His DRONE Story

Maureen Rossi

Sean MoranSean Moran is presently a junior at St. Anthony’s High School.  The 17-year-old used his drone to fly over and film his beloved town of Kings Park during the pandemic which still has us sheltering at home.

There are no words in the film – this young aspiring artist knew they were not necessary.  They would have been superfluous.

However, as his short film culminates, he simply writes: Our Hearts Go Out to All Those Affected by Covid-19.  Ended with:  We will Get Through This Together

I echo Moran’s sentiments as better words could have not been chosen.

Images of empty streets, schools and sports fields tell Moran’s pandemic story.  Haunting music – a ballad from The Nutcracker accompanies the images. 

There are fabulous vistas of the Nissequogue River State Park and the beautiful river it is named after. 

The short film flies over Moran’s parish church, St. Josephs.   Up up up the drone captures a breathtaking close-up of the cross that adorns the Catholic Church that has punctuated the Kings Park landscape for over a hundred years.  The close-up shots that linger well over the highest points of the church, over the cross are serene regardless of one’s religion or lack thereof.

Why did Moran use a drone to document his pandemic experience? 

“When I started flying the drone when the pandemic began, I saw the angles I could get with the drone I realized how beautiful it was”, he shared.

The link to his film is included below.  He says the entire project took about a week of flying and editing.  Film is a new passion for the St. Anthony’s junior.

Moran has been playing tennis since he was a small child; it is a great passion for him.  The teen is a member of St. Anthony’s Varsity team.  He has played on a Varsity level since the seventh grade.   

Why did he choose a ballad from The Nutcracker for his film? “I love the soundtrack –the Nutcracker is powerful, and I listen to a lot; it’s very dramatic,” he explained.

When asked about the words at the end of his film - We Will Get Through This Together – he said they come from his faith. 

“Faith will get us all through this,” he said firmly.  “Everyone is working so hard I see so many kind deeds, this pandemic brought out the good in so many people.” 

What are Moran’s thoughts for future? “Well I have a few different paths I’m thinking of either medical or business, you know stock market – finance,” he explained. But he added he is deeply torn between the two.

Like every other soul on Planet Earth - everything has changed in this Suffolk County teenager’s life.  He is missing his friends at school and his beloved tennis team as well as his teachers.

When asked about a favorite part of the film he mentioned the images of the cross atop St. Josephs. 

“I think the deeper meaning with the cross was that a deeper faith is needed at this time,” he lamented.  The teen says people need to pray more to God.   “God will get us through this – that symbolization of the cross was powerful that’s why I slowed it down a little bit when I went by,” he ended.

Moran has plans on going way to college after he graduates St. Anthony’s.   His hobbies also include Ham Radio Operation and ping pong.  

Sean’s Drone Video

Talk to me – Let us Write Our Pandemic History   Maureen Rossi – Maureen.l.rossi@gmail.com

Protesters Rally In Commack Again

Protesters rallied in Commack Thursday sending a message of support for Donald Trump and carrying signs stating that it is time to reopen New York . The rally, the second one held at this location on Veterans Highway in Commack, was  organized by a group called Setauket Patriots.

Support for the rally participants could be heard as some drivers beeped horns and gave a thumbs up as they passed.  

Not everyone was happy to have the rally in Commack. Some Commack residents were frustrated that people from outside the community would select Commack as the rally site. They expressed concern that protestors would not maintain distancing protocols or wear face covering.

Protesters came from across Long Island. Many of the participants wore face covering although distancing did not seem to be happening.

The protesters were not a homogenous group and although opening up New York was the primary message other messages included opposition to Bill Gates and vaccines, anti-Governor Cuomo and government overreach.

Suffolk Closeup - Back To Work And Covid-19 Testing

“It is certainly true that we need to get back to work. It’s a shame that we don’t have the testing that would inform us how to get back to work the safest way possible,” said Dr. Paul A. Offit, co-inventor of the vaccine for rotavirus. Like COVID-19, rotavirus is highly contagious and can be fatal. It causes severe diarrhea. Until the vaccine arrived in the mid-2000’s, hundreds of thousands of children worldwide died from it each year. In developing countries, it still takes a toll.

Dr. Offit was on the Sunday TODAY show and host Willie Geist was questioning him about the specter of “packed New York parks” and shopping malls re-opening around the U.S. 

Dr. Offit of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia said that without widespread testing for COVID-19—to know who has it and who doesn’t—the nation is going to “learn the lesson the hard way.”

Test, trace and isolate

That—short of breakthroughs in a vaccine and treatment and only then, said Dr. Offit, will we be “truly safe to get back to pre-coronavirus lives”—is the smart way forward.

Consider the article in The Atlantic last week headlined: “What’s Behind South Korea’s COVID-19 Exceptionalism?” The sub-head: “Seven weeks ago, South Korea and the U.S. had the same number of virus deaths. Today, South Korea has fewer than 300, and the U.S. has more than 70,000.” It noted that “by the end of February, South Korea had the most COVID-19 patients of any country outside China. New confirmed cases were doubling every few days….More than a dozen countries imposed travel restrictions to protect their citizens from the Korean outbreak, including the U.S., which had, at the time, recorded an official COVID-19 death toll low enough to count on one hand. But just as South Korea appeared to be descending into catastrophe, the country stopped the virus in its tracks.”

The major cause of the spread in South Korea, said the article by Derek Thompson, was a religious event involving 1,000 “worshippers in a large windowless room.” The result was “a trail of pathogens that would lead to thousands of infections, triggering one of the largest coronavirus outbreaks in the world.”

South Korea learned the identity of those at event and embarked on testing. “Individuals with the most serious cases were sent to hospitals, while those with milder cases checked into isolation units….The government used a combination of interviews and cellphone surveillance to track down the recent contacts of new patients and ordered those contacts to self-isolate as well.”

“Within a month, the Korean outbreak was effectively contained. In the first two weeks of March, new daily cases fell from 800 to fewer than 100.” The day the article came out, “the nation of 51 million reported zero new domestic infections for the third straight day.”

Since The Atlantic piece, however, an infected person not wearing a mask went into several clubs in Seoul in one night and infected 40 club-goers. Seoul’s mayor immediately responded by ordering the closure of all clubs and bars in the city.

The call for testing, tracing an isolating has been sounded eloquently and forcefully by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo—and he has set into motion a massive program to do it.

“Testing, tracing and then isolating…that is going to be the key going forward,” said the governor at one of his daily briefings on the pandemic where the most hard-hit areas have been in New York City and Nassau and Suffolk Counties. 

“You test the person,” said Mr. Cuomo. “If the person winds up positive, you then trace that person’s contacts….This entire operation has never been done before. So it’s intimidating. You’ve never heard the words testing, tracing, isolate before. No one has….We want to operate on a tri-state basis….The virus doesn’t stop at jurisdictional boundaries. Well, I’m at the Town of Brookhaven. I stop here. No, the virus doesn’t say that. The virus just spreads….This is going to be a massive undertaking. Good news is that [former] Mayor Michael Bloomberg has volunteered to help us develop and implement the tracing program.”

There will be an “army of tracers”—thousands of tracers.

It’s not just South Korea that has successfully beaten back COVID-19 with the test, trace and isolate formula. Among other countries with similar programs has been Iceland. “With testing, Iceland claims major success against COVID-19” was the headline of a recent Associated Press account. 

The big problem for the U.S., as the recent lead front-page headline in The New York Times declared: “Testing Scarce As States Weigh Reopening.” Thus in so much of the U.S., as reopenings happen, areas are flying blind, leading to what Dr. Offit projects will be learning “the lesson the hard way.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

Suffolk Closeup - Covid-19 A Turning Point For Humanity

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

Karl Grossman 

Voices from around the world—including that of a Suffolk County professor deeply involved in work at the United Nations—see the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point.

Scott Carlin of Hampton Bays is a representative to the UN Economic and Social Council. He was a planner of a UN conference last year for nongovernmental organizations to discuss and find solutions to challenges including climate change and building sustainable communities. 

Dr. Carlin taught at Southampton College for a dozen years and then, when Long Island University closed its Southampton campus in 2005, moved to LIU Post to teach including courses on the environment and sustainability.

“COVID-19 creates a new context for speaking and acting with conscience,” he says. He speaks of how in this crisis “mutual aid initiatives will flourish as people create new pathways for sharing resources and inspiring others…. Selfless actions will shine.” 

Indeed, the heroes in health care, the doctors, nurses, aides and others treating the ill, police, EMTs, and other first-responders on the frontlines, and the many other heroes in this calamity—risking and many losing their own lives, are people involved in selfless actions.

Professor Carlin sees the pandemic and response to it as “one human family and one Earth community” having “seized this moment to dramatically expand” commitments to, among other goals, biodiversity, clean water, education, economic and ecological democracy…human rights, interdependence of all life, non-violence, public health—“or, more simply, a world committed to sharing, caring and solidarity.”  

Indian author Arundhati Roy is writing about the pandemic being a “portal”—a “gateway”—to a new world. “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew,” says Ms. Roy. “This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” 

She says: “We can choose,” she says, “to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our…dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through…ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.” 

We can hope somehow the pandemic might lead to a better world. More importantly, after all the deaths, the profound misery, we could and must work for a better world.

This pandemic has made clear the oneness of the peoples of the world. “Seen from space, the Earth has no borders. The spread of the coronavirus is showing us that what we share is much more powerful than what keeps us apart,” wrote former astronaut Scott Kelly in an op-ed piece in The New York Times. “All people are inescapably interconnected, and the more we can come together to solve our problems, the better off we will all be. One of the side effects of seeing Earth from the perspective of space is feeling more compassion for others.” 

“I’ve seen humans work together to prevail over some of the toughest challenges imaginable,” said Mr. Kelly, who spent a year on the International Space Station, “and I know we can prevail over this one if we all do our part and work together as a team. Oh, and wash your hands—often,” he concluded.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres is appealing to warring parties on Earth to pull back from hostilities, put aside mistrust and animosity, silence the guns. “It is time,” says Mr. Guterres, “to put armed conflict on lockdown and focus together on the true fight of our lives.” 

“The virus drastically demonstrates both the mutual global dependencies and the irresponsibility of military conflict,” says Susanne Grabenhorst, leader of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. War has “massively weakened” health systems “and made millions of people particularly vulnerable to the current pandemic.” 

“There will be change,” says social critic, linguist, historian and MIT Professor emeritus Noam Chomsky. “The question is: what kind of change?” Dr. Chomsky was interviewed in a TV program produced by the Media Innovation Center where I teach, SUNY/College at Old Westbury. He is interviewed by Julie Goldsmith, a fine journalism student. The half-hour video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lciwaaFQqCk&feature=youtu.be 

Dr. Chomsky asks whether the pandemic will provide an opening for “more repression?” In the program he alleges a drive afoot of figures “working to institute the kind of change they want.” They’re “carefully constructing” a push “headed by the White House encompassing the most reactionary states in the world”—among countries he singles out are Hungary, Italy and India—to use the pandemic to foster authoritarian rule. “Will there be counter-pressure?” he asks. People need to understand that it is not enough to just show up on Election Day, says Dr. Chomsky. They must be “all the time working, pressing, making changes—that’s the way things are done—and it has to be done on an international scale.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.