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New York Has a 14-Day Quarantine. Many New Yorkers Are Ignoring It. (Published 2020)
Travelers returning from states with high infection rates say they are following the rules, but their social media posts say otherwise.
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New York Has a 14-Day Quarantine. Most New Yorkers Are Ignoring It.
Travelers returning from states with high infection rates say they are following the rules, but their social media posts say otherwise.
Aug. 16, 2020, 3:00 a.m. ET
It had been a normal day in the pediatric unit, apart from the masks and the Covid-19 protocols, when a patient arrived for some testing. She was screened at the front door, answering “no” when asked whether she had traveled outside of New York state within the past two weeks, currently a prerequisite for nonemergency medical treatment. But at the end of the appointment, the patient admitted to having been in Florida six days earlier.
Ms. Pagan, who works with adolescents and young adults, was furious. “The patient lied and exposed staff,” she said. “Me, registrars, techs, everyone.”
The pandemic has been brutal for Ms. Pagan, who was sick with Covid-19 herself and lost her uncle to it earlier this year. “This patient was very triggering for me,” she said. “These people are coming in for routine lab work. It wasn’t anything urgent, and that is why I got really upset. It was something that could have waited.”
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo has mandated that travelers entering New York from other states where positive test results of the coronavirus exceed 10 percent must be quarantined for 14 days. Over 30 states are currently on the quarantine list, along with Puerto Rico. Earlier this month, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced checkpoints at bridges and tunnels throughout the city in an effort to inform travelers about the rules. However, many Americans, antsy to travel again, seem to be making up their own.
“Safely separating upon your arrival home is your civic duty to yourself, your neighbors and your loved ones,” said Avery Cohen, deputy press secretary for the mayor, adding that city officials are knocking on doors, in addition to calling and texting New Yorkers about the new virus guidelines. Mr. de Blasio, speaking earlier this month of the checkpoints, which remain a bit of a mystery in terms of how exactly they will work, said, “We’re not going to let our hard work slip away.”
Where the government may struggle to track travelers, however, social media is capturing their exploits. Many of those thwarting mandatory quarantines are posting about their trips and outings around the city on Facebook and Instagram, which is frustrating and alarming New Yorkers.
Olivia Awe, a figure skating coach and pastry chef, noticed on social media that an acquaintance from college would be returning to New York City after temporarily living with her parents in Florida. The acquaintance had stopped in Virginia, another high-risk state, on her way back, to attend a wedding that didn’t require masks. Ms. Awe spotted Snapchat and Instagram stories detailing the event, she said.
Then the woman was back in New York. “I saw a post on her social media about how she was given the paper stating she needed to quarantine,” said Ms. Awe, 22, who soon thereafter noticed even more posts chronicling the acquaintances’s adventures around the city. The college friend was now bar hopping, eating out at restaurants, and hosting a group of people at her apartment.
Ms. Awe and another friend tried to report the errant young woman, but they could only figure out how to turn in a business, not an individual. “If told how to go about reporting this person I would without hesitation,” she said. “This person is putting so many people at risk and putting our state at risk.”
And it’s not just young people bending quarantine rules. Earlier this summer, a private Facebook chat group of parents whose children attend a well-known art and design school in the city addressed how to move their college-age children to New York City, without committing to the full quarantine first, according to a member of the group, who spoke under condition of anonymity.
Parents in the chat group applauded one post that stated the city couldn’t enforce the quarantine, she said, which left her so spooked that she persuaded her daughter to defer her freshman year.
Logan and Lindsay Davis moved to New York City in July. The couple quarantined for their first two weeks here. “It really wasn’t that bad,” Mr. Davis said. “Everybody should do it.”Credit...Amr Alfiky/The New York Times
New Yorkers who have been strict since March are also noticing some of their friends and neighbors skirt quarantine rules, which makes them second-guess their own standards.
For the first time since the pandemic started, Miri Castor, a graduate science student in Brooklyn, only recently started feeling comfortable taking short walks around her neighborhood. “I have been staying in,” she said. “I have a backyard, where I can go to get a bunch of sunshine.” Even now that her lab is open, she goes there as little as possible, and then heads straight home."
But on social media, she sees her peers acting differently. They are going to parties on the beach and barbecues. A few have taken trips to Florida or the Caribbean and gone to New York City parties soon after they left the airport.
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Unfortunately whilst the MAJORITY of people are doing the right thing, a few will always think that somehow the rules doesn't extend to them, or that the circumstance demand they break the rules! 
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