By Rose C.

Question: How do you social distance yourself in a city of over 8 million people?

Answer: You don’t.

Erica Johnson, an English Professor at Pace University in New York city, spoke to me over the phone this past Thursday about the struggles of trying to survive life in the most crowded city in the country during coronavirus.

“It is impossible…I live in a building with eight apartments. And my guess is there’s 21 people living here, and we all share the same entryway and the same staircase and our sidewalks on our block out front are not even six feet wide at certain points.”

The city’s density problem has made it the nation’s leader in coronavirus cases. Just last Thursday, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo announced in a press briefing that over 20% of New Yorkers have contracted the virus. That’s in contrast to just 3.6% infection rate statewide. 

Erica Johnson’s family has seen an infection rate well above the city’s average. 

Just as schools, businesses, and stores across the country were shutting down in early March, Erica’s college-aged son Max (and later her husband Patrick, who works at MetLife) got sick with what their doctor said was probably Covid-19. 

“As far as I understand, the only people who get tested or people who are actually in the hospital and they’re trying to decide whether or not to intubate,” said Erica, “so if  testing will determine your course of treatment, you get a test. But for people with milder cases, they don’t, and it was really terrifying to see each of them starting on this illness and knowing it could go any number of ways.”

Staying completely isolated from one another in a two-bedroom apartment with only one bathroom was near impossible. Erica says it’s highly likely that she contracted the virus asymptomatically from her husband or son, if not from the streets of New York City themselves.

“I am horrified by what was going on in New York City in  early March. I was on packed subway trains. We were not wearing masks. We were not wearing gloves.”

Echoing the chorus of many New York residents, Erica says she is happy with the responsibility that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has shown in these times of crisis. 

“I think Andrew Cuomo has been really terrific. He’ll talk about compassion and grief and pain, and, you know, like the human side of it.”

That said, the Johnson family is not taking any risks. 

Erica’s husband Patrick is their designated shopper because he has already had coronavirus and may have antibodies to fight it. He has to be particular about which grocery stores to visit, though-not the larger supermarkets, because they are usually packed, but small bodegas and shops. 

“We just have so much density. My neighborhood typically is spread out all over the city in the sense that probably the majority of the people in my neighborhood work in Manhattan. And now we’re here all the time. We’re really dense. We didn’t even know we were this dense until we all got stuck here.”

Max and Patrick have since recovered from the illness. 

“We got really lucky,” admits Erica. 

But Coronavirus is still such a mysterious virus and she has no idea what the future will bring. “I specialize in fiction. And I specialize in world building and art and I cannot imagine what the world is going to look like in 18 months.”