Vaccination (photo: Adam Schultz/Official White House)
In the earliest months of the COVID-19 pandemic, I wrote a column about Lessons from Two Plagues. Even then, it was apparent that there were sad parallels between it and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. COVID-19 has killed 70,000 people in New York and 6.4 million globally. More than 40 million people worldwide have died of HIV/AIDS and another 38 million are estimated to be living with HIV.
And now, New York is again the epicenter of an emerging epidemic: monkeypox. The U.S. has nearly 17,432 confirmed cases, with 3,124 in New York State.
We are already behind on combatting and containing this public health emergency, echoing our failures with both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. History is repeating itself:
Fear. The early days of both HIV/AIDS and COVID-19 were terrifying. Every sneeze or cough was cause for worry – is this it? Will I die? Monkeypox isn’t fatal but it’s incredibly painful, and it’s eliciting the same fear, anxiety, and confusion. Now, among men who have sex with men – who have borne most of the infections so far – people are sharing horror stories; they are afraid to be in crowded social settings or to have sex.
Stigma. Everybody is vulnerable to HIV/AIDS, COVID-19, and monkeypox. But viral outbreaks hit some communities harder than others, and those communities are often on the margins. HIV/AIDS mainly affected gay men, people of color, and IV-drug users in the early days, and was derisively called the “gay cancer.” COVID-19 prompted a resurgence of racism and xenophobia, especially against Asian Americans (fueled in part by President Trump calling it “the China virus”), and it’s disproportionately affected communities of color. Today, monkeypox is most common among men who have sex with men, with particularly high rates among Black and Hispanic men. Gay men and people of color are again wondering whether anyone cares about them.
Government failures. The government has blood on its hands for both AIDS and COVID-19 deaths; it was slow to act and inept in its handling of those crises, and it seems like little has changed or been learned. Over the last two-and-a-half years, we’ve seen a lack of testing capacity, failures to track exposures, botched vaccine rollouts, an inadequate supply of treatments, and mixed and confusing public messaging.
Here we go again. For monkeypox, we already have a proven and effective vaccine. But vaccination efforts have been deeply flawed. The federal government failed to stockpile enough doses and hundreds of thousands of doses were left in Denmark. Vaccine distribution has suffered from a lack of coordination between federal, state, and local officials. The federal government is now trying a risky strategy of splitting vaccine doses to stretch the limited supply it has. When New York City released its first online appointment system for vaccines, the site crashed within 30 minutes. Getting a vaccine has been compared to The Hunger Games.
And we’re again seeing poor communication leading to confusion and misinformation. Too many people don’t know the facts about how monkeypox is transmitted; they may underestimate or overestimate their risk as a result. Dangerous misinformation and intentional disinformation are spreading like a brushfire, fueled by social media, just as with COVID-19.
Let’s give credit where credit is due. The World Health Organization declared monkeypox a global health emergency, a rare designation that it hadn’t used since the emergence of COVID-19. President Biden declared the outbreak a national public health emergency. Federal action came on the heels of both New York State and New York City executive orders declaring local emergencies. These designations free up some funds and lift some bureaucratic hurdles.
Our lack of preparedness isn’t a surprise. For decades, we as a nation and as a state have disinvested in public health. In 2018, only 2.9% of total U.S. health spending went toward public health and preventive services.
In 1983, Larry Kramer published his landmark call to arms “1,112 and Counting,” referencing the fast-rising number of AIDS cases. We already have 16 times that number of monkeypox cases, and counting. Some experts think we’ve already missed the chance to stop monkeypox. We need to finally learn from our mistakes. And we need to act now before it’s too late.
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David Sandman, Ph.D., is President and CEO of the New York Health Foundation. On Twitter @DavidSandman1 & @NYHFoundation.
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An Upper West Side tree bed (photo: CM Brewer’s office)
Rat vigilantes on the Upper West Side are placing exposed rat poison in the tree beds, endangering children and pets.
Two Upper West Side dogs, Waffles, a one-year-old rescue coon hound mix, and Beti, a six-year-old terrier mix, are the latest victims; upon ingestion, they were rushed to the vet for treatment and have both since made full recoveries.
While Upper West Siders have called on local government for a more aggressive response to rat sightings on streets, under restaurant sheds, and in street tree beds, those that take matters into their own hands and leave exposed poison in tree beds are putting their two- and four-footed neighbors at risk.
Rat poison poses an incredible danger to pets and children and should be containerized to avoid harm. Common rodenticides include warfarin, chlorophacinone, and Pival, which act as anticoagulants, intended to cause death by internal bleeding, according to the New York State Center for Environmental Health. If ingested by a pet, the animal should be taken to a veterinarian immediately to induce vomiting and apply other interventions to restore the animals’ homeostatic balance. (Vitamin K acts as an antidote; it can take up to 30 days for pets to completely rid themselves of the blood thinning toxin.)
There are about 693,000 trees lining the streets of New York City, which provide various environmental, economic, and health benefits. Currently, 22% of the city is covered by the urban canopy, which totals about 7 million trees, and advocates like Forest for All NYC are calling for 30% coverage by 2035, which I support. According to American Forests, New York City needs to add 1.5 million trees to the existing canopy to achieve equity in tree cover across the city.
According to a volunteer survey of every street tree bed in City Council District 6 conducted by my office in the second quarter of 2022, about 255 street tree beds showed signs of rat burrows, 4.9% of the 5,248 tree beds surveyed.
As New York City works to expand and protect the urban canopy, city leadership must establish clear guidelines for who is responsible for managing the tree beds, a critical piece of climate infrastructure.
Property owners are responsible for keeping the sidewalk adjacent to their property free of trash and debris; the city’s Department of Transportation (DOT) is charged with keeping sidewalks safe and accessible for all and ticketing offenders. The Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) maintains tree beds it plants with trees for two years after planting, after which property owners become responsible for maintaining the bed. The Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) has a small budget for rat mitigation in tree beds, but mitigation in all tree beds is not in their purview.
So when there is a hazard or pest in a tree bed, who is responsible for addressing it?
The street tree bed ownership challenge is a bureaucratic quagmire. There’s no clear administrative body that handles the rat burrows in tree beds. That’s why I’ve written to the commissioners of DOHMH (responsible for rat mitigation overall), DOT, and DPR asking for clarity. It’s the first step toward attacking the rat problem holistically. In the meantime the vigilantes going after rats on the Upper West Side should stop taking matters into their own hands.
When rat bait is placed out illegally by individuals who are not licensed to apply pesticides, it should be reported to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Police at 718-482-4885.
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City Council Member Gale Brewer represents parts of Manhattan. On Twitter @galeabrewer.
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Voters in the West Village (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's office)
In this week’s late August primary, the second primary this summer in New York, voter turnout barely cracked ten percent in New York City. The first primary of the summer, in June, saw turnout drop by nearly half from four years ago. At the same time, nationally, concern about the future of democracy in the United States is at fever pitch. In 2021, for the first time, the US was added to an annual list of “backsliding” democracies - compiled by the International IDEA think tank. If our democracy is in peril, why aren’t New Yorkers voting like their rights depended on it?
In fact, within the seeming disconnect is a key part of the solution: building our democracy back up from the roots. From the block, to the neighborhood, to the city, and beyond.
GoVoteNYC, a collaborative of more than a dozen foundations and donors committed to nonpartisan activity to strengthen democracy in New York City, is an eager contributor to this work. GoVoteNYC supports nonprofit partners that are deploying both creative new ideas and proven approaches to reach voters, many of whom have not voted in the past or are typically overlooked in the democratic process.
In 2021, GoVoteNYC provided $1 million in grants to nonprofit partners across New York City. These grantees, trusted messengers in their communities, engaged, informed, and mobilized their neighbors and communities to get out the vote.
According to an analysis conducted for GoVoteNYC by Hester Street, an urban design and community development nonprofit, these activities conducted in eight languages reached over two million New Yorkers across all boroughs. Thanks in part to these efforts, turnout in the 2021 mayoral primary saw the highest voter turnout in any mayoral primary in the last several decades, but turnout slumped in the 2021 general election.
What did we learn from this work in 2021? Put simply, investments in three areas paid off: the three V’s for voter engagement: validators, volunteers and visibility.
First, validators. The Hispanic Federation created a coalition of community-based organizations that met bi-weekly to discuss election information, coordinate activities, and promote their election events. Three hundred thousand Latino voters were reached with support from coalition members. Of note, sixty one percent of people contacted by the Hispanic Federation had not voted in the last three primaries.
Second, volunteers. MinKwon Center, which organizes low-income Korean and Asian immigrant communities, mobilized a network of 527 volunteers to support their GoVoteNYC-funded outreach. The result was a sixty percent increase in Asian-American primary voters in 2021 from 2013 in the eight council districts targeted by MinKwon and the APA VOICE Coalition.
Third, visibility. F.Y. Eye, a nonprofit media agency, created a Voting PSA Clearinghouse, a free, accessible, open-source library that aggregated content like flyers, explainers, posters and social media posts around voting in the primary and general elections. In 2021, the focus was explaining Ranked Choice Voting. GoVoteNYC grantees garnered 79 million impressions with their voter education ads. This year, as New Yorkers faced new districts, two summer primaries and 86,500 of us had our voting sites changed, the need for nonpartisan accurate voter education remains significant. In 2023 we will see another set of boundary changes, this time for the City Council.
The key is consistently deploying these tools in combination. As a result of our grantees’ work in 2021, and a new set of grants for 2022, we are hopeful, and we invite other civic, philanthropic and corporate leaders to join us. While our national system creaks and groans, our democracy is being reinforced and rebuilt by community groups working together in every neighborhood in New York City. If New Yorkers cannot cultivate and sustain healthy democratic participation locally, how can we expect or entertain anything different nationally?
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Martha King is a Senior Program Officer at the Charles H. Revson Foundation. Patricia A. Swann is the Program Director, Thriving Communities at the New York Community Trust. Neill Coleman is the Executive Director of Trinity Church Wall Street Philanthropies. Together they serve as the co-chairs of GoVoteNYC. On Twitter @Revson_Fdn & @NYCommTrust & @neillcoleman of @TrinityWallSt.
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