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BROOKLYN WEEKLY, MARCH 29, 2020
SING ALONG
“I know that singing
helps the soul and I really
needed help for the soul
right now. I wanted to feel
like I was a part of a community,”
said Elana Gartner
Golden. “Even though
my neighbors didn’t participate,
we saw some of
them and it made some
people smile. We all need
smiles right now. It’s the
only way we’re going to
make it through.”
Berney, who sang on
his rooftop with his family,
heard about six other
households crooning
around him, livening up
the anxious mood.
He said he wasn’t surprised
by the event’s popularity,
given the widespread
isolation and
anxiety the virus has
caused, and said he’s planning
another sing-along
this weekend.
“We’re going to try to
do it again Saturday or
Sunday night,” he said, explaining
that he’s trying
to fi nd a way to connect
participants via an online
live video stream. “I
would expect the numbers
of singers are going to get
larger.”
TESTING
However, when residents
called the hotline
on March 21 — after the
change in protocol —
clinicians told them that
they had never heard of
either testing site and
did not listen to their
symptoms.
The response confused
and frustrated
callers, who simply
wanted to know how to
get tested.
“I was on the phone
for eight hours over two
days,” said Nicole, a
Midwood resident who
said she experienced fever
and coughing, and
feared she could infect
her elderly mother who
suffers from cancer.
Nicole said she called
the hotline to make an
appointment, but after
waiting for 45 minutes
on hold, a pre-screener
told her, “I’m sorry, I
don’t know why you’re
calling this number. We
just give out general information.”
The screener eventually
transferred Nicole
to a doctor, but the
doctor did not listen to
Nicole’s symptoms and
simply told her to go to
the hospital if she “felt
ill,” she said.
“She just repeated
the same mantra, like
she was reading from
a script,” Nicole said.
“They’re explicitly instructed
to get rid of as
many phone calls as possible,”
she speculated.
Because many local
offi cials and even hospital
staff did not know
that the testing sites
had closed, they redirected
confused callers
back to the same hotline
to schedule an appointment.
As of March 24 afternoon,
receptionists
at Coney Island Hospital
were still telling callers
to call the hotline.
Nicole decided to
visit a CityMD instead,
where she was able to
get tested for free with
her insurance. (The test
costs $200 without insurance.)
The CityMD
doctor told Nicole that
her symptoms, her exposure
to a confi rmed coronavirus
patient, and
her close proximity to
her at-risk mother make
her a textbook coronavirus
case, she said.
“The fact that I was
able with such ease to
go somewhere else, that
says to me that their
system is the one failing,”
said Nicole, who
was still awating results
days after she took the
test.
Mark, of Community
Board 13, said that the
state’s ability to turn the
Javits Center in Manhattan
into a testing
complex indicates that
there must be enough
resources for a similar
center in Brooklyn.
“They’re setting
that up, but what about
Brooklyn?” he said.
A chaotic scene emerged as Brooklynites scrambled to recive
coroanvirus tests during a nationwide shortage.
Photo by Todd Maisel
JJ Berney (right) and his family spearheaded the March 20 “Singalone
sing-along.” Courtesy JJ Berney
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