NYC During COVID-19: A Conversation with Joshua Souane

As many of you know, Josh and Mari have been part of our family for the past 10+ years. We love them deeply and their perspective this year is quite unique. Josh finished his Masters in Public Health at St. John's University and has lived in New York City for the past 3 years. Mari has been a nurse in Atlanta for the past few years and currently works in a hospital caring for COVID patients.

Josh is home for Halle and Aaron's wedding so I thought it would be good to get his perspective on living in NYC the past few months through the COVID pandemic (I'm looking forward to sharing thoughts from Mari soon as well).

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On January 7, 2020, Chinese health authorities confirmed that a cluster of pneumonia cases in the Wuhan, Hubei Province was associated with a novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV. As of January 30, 2020, a total of 9976 cases had been reported in at least 21 countries, including the first confirmed case of 2019-nCoV infection in the United States, reported on January 20, 2020.[1]

On March 1, 2020, a woman returning from Iran becomes New York's first reported case. Statewide cases in New York doubled from 11 to 22 on March 5th and then doubled to 45 on March 6th.

On March 11, 2020 the Novel Coronavirus Disease, COVID-19, was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. On March 13, 2020 a national emergency concerning the COVID-19 outbreak was declared in the United States.

By March 18th, there were over 3000 cases in New York and the Governor reduced non-essential workforces to 50% capacity. On March 20, 2020 there were 8300 cases in New York and all non-essential businesses were closed. Amazingly, by March 31st, 30 days since the first reported case in NYC, there were already over 1000 deaths.

One month later, there were 18,548 deaths in New York and over 300,000 cases of coronavirus.

As of October 3rd, Johns Hopkins reports that New York has had over 460,000 cases and 33,000 deaths.

What was it like in NYC back in February and March?

In February, things starting getting bad in China, all of the Chinese immigrants I know started wearing mask. I remember everyone making fun of them, including Chinese Americans, and claiming that they were overacting. Through school, work, and my international students bible study group, I have come to know many Chinese immigrants and exchange students over the years, and I remember them telling me to start stock piling mask and buying supplies because they could tell that the virus was coming to the US.

WeChat is a Chinese app that contains everything. It has integrations like amazon, news streams, uber, uber eats as well as ways to chat and share pictures or stories. Everyone on WeChat in the US saw what was coming. Those in China were talking about running out of food and mask so the Chinese in New York started stocking up – mask, food, hand sanitizers, etc. New Yorkers thought they were crazy and over-reacting. I think we should have listened!

All of the Chinese students in the international students bible study group stopped coming. They knew that China was hiding numbers of reported cases and were worried because no one was taking it serous.

Didn't you just start a new job when this all started?

Yes, on March 2nd, I had just started a new position with Unite Us. We are an organization that strives to connect healthcare, government and community organizations to improve the health of those in their area.

That first week of orientation was definitely interesting. There was a buzz starting to develop but everyone was trying to keep it "business as usual". I vividly remember that Friday after I started. I was heading home and went to catch one of the subs from Manhattan to Queens. There are 5 lines that go

to Queens and that evening, something happened and 4 of the 5 lines were down. As a result, the 1 line that worked was so over-crowded that people started having panic attacks due to the sheer number of people crammed in one space (nothing to do with COVID). I remember taking this picture because it was so crazy. I still have not been on a sub since then.

By Wednesday of my second week, we were all working from home.

What was that like? Working from home?

As you know, I don't have a large house or apartment. I shared an apartment with 3 other people. We each had a room and shared a living room and kitchen. It's not like I had another room to use as an office so I ended up working on my bed, and it was honestly very difficult. Those first few weeks, everyone's productivity plummeted.

By then, there was starting to be a run on food, hand sanitizers and toilet paper. It was really hard. I historically shop at a Chinese grocery store but they ended up closing because they were scared of what was happening.

From that time on until late April, I only left our apartment about once every 2 weeks for a quick run to get food. I would have to walk about 10 minutes to an American grocery store and had to wait in line for 30 minutes to an hour to get in. Even then, there were limited supplies so it was tough.

So what was life like during the peak of the shut down?

It was hard. You are basically locked in a room for weeks at a time. Many people were struggling with anxiety, depression and struggled to get food. It was hard to get any exercise in a small apartment and you just didn't go outside for fresh air.

The Chinese Americans and Asian Americans were trying to separate themselves from Chinese Immigrants but eventually, everyone started lumping them all together and there was a lot of blaming and racism occurring. People were attacked, racial slurs were common and Asian people were scared.

In April, many of the Chinese students that I knew started returning home. Things were better in China than they were in the U.S. and all of their school work was virtual anyway.

On a positive note, I do remember that every night at 7 PM, people would open their windows and start clapping for the doctors, nurses and healthcare workers across the city. It was pretty cool.

You had just finished your Masters in Public Health. Looking back at this period of time, what stands out to you the most from a public health perspective?

Having a national strategy to address these things is vitally important. America has the most cutting edge technology, surgeries, medication and research but without a national strategy, it is meaningless. America had an opportunity to jump on things quickly but was missing the strategy.

You also see an acceleration of technology - telemedicine in healthcare, online education, mobile work environment. This can be both good and bad but overall, I think this is a good thing.

What personal lessons did you learn through all of this?

People cannot live on islands, we need each other.

Times like this reminds us what's most important. It's a time to reflect on what's most important - faith, family and friends are really important.

[1] N Engl J Med 2020; 382:929-936; DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa2001191