Upstate, Downstate: One State

By Jeanne Albanese

One half of my heart remains rooted within the five boroughs of New York city.

My parents live on Staten Island. There’s one quarter.

My brother lives in Manhattan, the American epicenter of COVID-19. Another quarter.

And the math won’t work, but let’s throw in a couple fractions worth for Brooklyn, where my mother grew up and my grandparents lived in an apartment for many years during my childhood; Queens, same for my father and my grandparents on his side; and the Bronx, where we would often visit Yankee Stadium and a close family friend for dinners.

The other half, while I won’t call it orange because I don’t really love SU (sorry, not sorry; that’s an essay for another day) is all CNY.

I went to college here, got my first real job, met my husband and bonus, his entire awesome family lives here. I love the scenery, the proximity to the Adirondacks, our small school district, many wonderful friends, many great people here doing nice things and just well, all of it. Hell, even the snow sometimes.

So it pains me, rips that heart right in two when I read and heard in the last week about some people in Central New York and Upstate New York being so selfish at a time when we all need to come together, when unity is the only path to victory in the war against COVID-19. While I have found new comfort in my love-hate relationship with social media, the posts, comments and articles I have seen in which some people and elected officials who live Upstate were railing against Governor Andrew Cuomo’s plan to share medical equipment, ventilators and perhaps even hospital beds both sicken and sadden me. #UpstateLivesMatter was trending on Twitter, started by, of all people, a congresswoman. (Since deleted, I think. What a role model!)

I’ve seen vulgar comments, awful posts and — shocking — misinformation.

Love thy neighbor, right? Oh, but not if we are scared.

Do unto others, right? Oh, but not if it might possibly impact me.

Help others as you would want to be helped — just don’t send any sick people anywhere near MY city.

Every day Cuomo talks about how we all can do better and be better, and how we are NY Tough and will get through this and how New Yorkers have such big hearts.

And yet….I am ashamed of upstate New York.

I’ve seen so much NIMBY this past week it’s not only infuriating, as a native New Yorker/transplanted Central New Yorker, it’s disheartening.

Love him or hate him, I don’t care, but I don’t think the Governor is going to send the National Guard to “seize” anything, nor will he rip a ventilator away from a patient in need. He announced his plan, and skeptics seized on the bit they wanted and things blew up.

He wanted to know who had what and where, and then asked for 20 percent of that total to be in the pool to be redistributed if it wasn’t in use and if hospital officials didn’t anticipate it would be in use soon. If necessary. As a last resort.

Every day he reports how our hospital system is working together like never before. Isn’t that a god thing?

Yesterday he said thousands of ventilators have already been shifted among downstate hospitals, that they are using 9,000 converted bipap machines as ventilators and splitting ventilators among two patients. All before he has touched a single upstate ventilator. New York has gone farther, he said, than any state or country in creating ventilators out of other medical equipment.

Yet headlines say he has committed Upstate New York to a death sentence. That he only cares about the city.

Almost a week later, according to Tuesday’s press conference, he hasn’t even signed the Executive Order that would allow the ventilators to come from upstate.

That’s because in addition to maxing out other medical equipment, other places and states stepped up.

Hundreds of people are dying in the city and across the state everyday, and as the governor, he said he takes responsibility for every single one. That he is doing everything humanly possible, yet people are dying.

I believe him, because at a time like this, we need to have trust that our elected officials are looking out for us, and Cuomo has earned my trust. This isn’t about votes. This is about saving lives. I was luke-warm on Cuomo before all this, but his determined leadership and level of compassion that he delivers on a daily basis has me hooked. This virus does not discriminate — there are no red victims and no blue victims— we are all in this together.

If only.

I trust this man. I feel better knowing that I believe he is doing everything humanly possible within his control to take care of New York. All of New York — And from what he says, other states who will need help after N.Y. is through the worst of it.

He says it’s smart to help put out the fire in your neighbor’s yard before it gets to you, so stomp the fire out downstate before it travels upstate.

He cites the example of the state of Oregon sending NY 140 ventilators. He promises to return the favor ten fold. Smart, because it hasn’t hit too hard there yet. But above all, it’s kind.

It’s sad that the state of Oregon is more charitable than people who call themselves New Yorkers. And yesterday, both California and the state of Washington released ventilators to be used for New York. (Previously, he reported a large supply coming from China and more from the federal government.)

Wow. How embarrassing for the ugly New Yorkers.

I understand that it’s scary. I understand that while he says we will get them back, there are many what if’s attached to that. I wish he had been more clear when he first announced this, but maybe it was refined over the next few days due to the upstate reaction.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t do the right thing and have some trust.

I think about my brother. What if he, God forbid, got sick, and an NYC hospital was short on stuff and couldn’t care for him? And there were ventilators sitting upstate because we were too scared and selfish to share?

Now turn those tables. What if we were the state’s epicenter? And you had a relative here who needed something but the other part of the state didn’t want to share? How would you feel then?

Cuomo said in his Sunday news conference that if a hospital in Buffalo needed a ventilator, and a hospital on the farthest point on Long Island had one, he would drive it himself from Montauk to Buffalo. He said Monday that every patient who has needed a ventilator in any part of the state has gotten one. What he’s trying to avoid is having a New Yorker die because we had no equipment to save that person.

I believe him.

He doesn’t want anyone — whether they live in Illion or Islip, Boonville or Bay Shore, Carthage or Cold Spring Harbor — to die on his watch.

Shit, neither do I.

This is about humanity, not votes. Human lives, not politics.

I don’t write to stir up controversy or pick fights so it took me a few days to tackle this topic. I write what’s in my heart because it helps me cope and with the hope that it might help lift someone else’s heart.

Right now my New York heart is broken.