It's Friday. We'll look at a jump in coronavirus cases that has people lining up outside testing centers and worrying about infections, even if they are vaccinated. We'll also meet the former New York City police officer whom Eric Adams, the incoming mayor, chose for one of the most challenging jobs in the new administration, commissioner of the Department of Correction. |
 | | Desiree Rios for The New York Times |
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One way to summarize the corner that the coronavirus has backed New York into is to write paragraphs that begin "once again." As in: |
Once again, coronavirus cases are spiking in New York City. The daily average of new cases had climbed to 3,700 on Thursday, a number not seen since early April. |
Once again, New York State is reporting more new infections than any other state — nearly 13,000 new cases on Thursday. There had not been that many since January, when the holiday spike from 2020 finally waned. |
Another way to get across the same idea is simply to say 2021 is feeling like a rerun of this time last year. |
This year — which began with the promise of vaccines — is ending with another holiday season sullied by uncertainty and fear. Offices are canceling holiday parties. Broadway performances are being called off at the last minute because of breakthrough infections among members of casts and crews. Restaurants have had to shut down because workers tested positive. Colleges that resumed in-person classes in the fall are holding finals online. Some corporations are asking employees to work from home. |
It's a frustrating time for New Yorkers who believed the virus was finally on the run. Feeling confident after getting their shots, they had relaxed a bit and had gone back to the old, familiar places — the subway; restaurants, where they felt comfortable eating inside; friends' apartments for parties. Now shoppers are snapping up at-home testing kits that were piled high on store shelves just weeks ago. |
The city's test positivity rate tripled in just three days, jumping to 7.8 percent on Sunday compared with 3.9 percent the previous Thursday, raising alarm bells among city officials. "Um, we've never seen this before in #NYC," Dr. Jay Varma, an epidemiologist who helped guide New York City's pandemic response as a City Hall adviser, wrote on Twitter. |
The larger picture has only compounded New Yorkers' anxiety. This week the United States crossed two troubling thresholds — 50 million total known cases and 800,000 total deaths — and experts say the Omicron variant is likely to push up the trajectory even more. "No part of the country will be safe from Omicron," warned Shweta Bansal, a disease ecologist at Georgetown University. |
Mayor Bill de Blasio announced six steps to address the surge, including expanding the hours and capacity of testing sites; distributing 1 million free KN95 masks and 500,000 home tests through community organizations; stepping up enforcement of mask and vaccine mandates at businesses and encouraging more New Yorkers to get boosters. Only 1.5 million New Yorkers, or about 22 percent of adults, have gotten either a booster or an additional dose, according to city statistics. Some 82 percent of adult New Yorkers are fully vaccinated. |
So how worried should New Yorkers be? |
"It depends on who you are," Dr. Céline Gounder, infectious disease specialist and epidemiologist at New York University and Bellevue Hospital, said when I asked her that question. "If you are vaccinated, especially if you are also boosted, I think you should feel reassured you're well protected against severe disease, hospitalization and death. I've heard, just in the last couple of days, of dozens of people I know who have had breakthrough infections, presumably Omicron, even despite being triple vaccinated, but their cases are very mild. They're much more like the common cold, so to me that's a big win. If we have successfully turned Covid into the common cold through vaccination, that's a success." |
She paused for a moment before saying that if you are not vaccinated, "you do need to worry." In about a month, she said, "hospitals are going to be pretty full." |
Enjoy a mostly sunny day as temps reach the upper 50s. It will be a cloudy night with a chance of rain and temps in the 40s. |
In effect until Dec. 24 (Christmas Eve). |
For a challenging assignment, Adams looks to Las Vegas |
 | | Dave Sanders for The New York Times |
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Molina, a former New York City police officer who has been the chief of the Department of Public Safety in Las Vegas since last December, is taking on one of the most challenging assignments in the new administration: Taming the dysfunction at Rikers Island, the city jail complex that descended into chaos in late summer amid the continuing pandemic and a staffing emergency. |
In his previous tour with the department, Molina focused on tracking the city's attempt to comply with a settlement it agreed to in the face of a lawsuit and a federal civil rights investigation related to the use of force and other conditions at Rikers. He left the Correction Department to become an official in the Taxi and Limousine Commission's enforcement division; after 10 months, he took the No. 2 job in the Westchester Department of Correction. He helped the county end federal monitoring of its treatment of incarcerated people. |
- A trove of artifacts is going back to Italy. More than 160 objects in galleries and homes, including a 2,500-year-old wine cup and roughly 100 artifacts at Fordham University in the Bronx, were tied to a Rome-based antiquities dealer. The Manhattan district attorney's office accused him of a three-decade smuggling spree.
- What we're watching: Katie Glueck, Metro's chief political correspondent, and Jeff Mays, a Metro politics reporter, will discuss Mayor de Blasio's tenure and the incoming administration under Eric Adams on "The New York Times Close Up With Sam Roberts." The show airs on Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 1:30 p.m. and Sunday at 12:30 p.m. [CUNY TV]
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In tribute to a New York City institution, this week's Metropolitan Diaries offers readers' tales of encounters with Stephen Sondheim. |
I was a freshman at Marist College in fall 1983 when I returned to my dorm room to find a message scrawled on the little whiteboard hanging on my door: "Stephen Sondheim called. Call him back at … " |
Figuring it was one of my theater-loving friends from home making a joke, I called back from the pay phone at the end of the floor, only to discover that it was in fact Stephen Sondheim's office number. |
His assistant answered and asked when it would be convenient for him to call me back. I was so stunned that I didn't ask why he was calling or how he had gotten the pay phone number. (It turned out he had tried my home in the Bronx first, and my mother had given him the pay phone number. "Did a Stephen Sondheim get ahold of you?" she asked when I called later.) |
I explained to Mr. Sondheim's assistant that I was in college and could only be reached at a communal pay phone but that I could be at it any time the next evening. |
When the next night came, the phone rang at the designated time. I answered on the first ring. It wasn't Mr. Sondheim. The caller was Gerald Chapman, his creative partner in the Young Playwrights Festival, a contest for teenagers that the two had recently started. |
Mr. Chapman was calling to tell me that a one-act play I had written in high school had been selected as a semifinalist. (I had forgotten that I submitted it.) |
So, I never got to speak with the theater legend, but in my mind, I can still see the message on that erasable board: "Stephen Sondheim called. Call him back at … " |
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. |
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