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Janae Pierre: From WNYC, this is NYC NOW. I'm Janae Pierre. New York Governor Kathy Hochul had a productive conversation with President Trump Friday at the White House. Hochul initiated the sit down.

Kathy Hochul: I reached out to the President yesterday, said I want to carry on the conversation that we had in the Oval Office a couple weeks ago.

Janae Pierre: Earlier this week, the governor said the two have plenty to talk about, from infrastructure funding to the future of Penn Station and the congestion toll on drivers who enter Manhattan below 60th Street. Trump had previously ordered New York to halt the toll program, but the MTA is fighting that in court.

Where does one go to buy a live, squawking, clucking chicken in New York City? Well, There are about 70 live animal markets in the five boroughs with everything from ducks and chickens to sheep and goats. Governor Hochul closed them for a week to contain the spread of bird flu, but now they're back and their services remain in high demand. WNYC's Ryan Kailath explains.

Ryan Kailath: Imagine your regular bodega, but instead of shelves stacked with Goya beans, it's live chickens, turkeys, quails, even a few rabbits stuffed into cages stretching up to the ceiling.

Jose Fernandez: Ah, 63.20.

Ryan Kailath: Jose Fernandez bought his fourth chicken store, La Granja Live Poultry, here in West Harlem in 1999. He's raised three children selling birds. My question is, to whom? Why do your customers prefer live birds?

Jose Fernandez: The answer is--

Ryan Kailath: This is going to be easier in Spanish.

Jose Fernandez: [Spanish language]

Ryan Kailath: His customers are generally like him, Fernandez says. People with roots in other countries where they raise chickens outside naturally.

Jose Fernandez: [Spanish Language]

Ryan Kailath: People who come here are people who remember what real chicken actually tastes like, he says. Not that stuff you buy at the grocery store. Fernandez sells 4,000 chickens a week to West Africans and Spanish speakers, Arab Muslims and Chinese folk. He's only missing one kind of customer.

Jose Fernandez: I don't have too many customers, white people. I don't know, because the white people don't like cook. Not too much.

Ryan Kailath: Notice he's switched back to English to make sure I get this.

Jose Fernandez: For example, in my house, we cook every day. The white people, they're not going to do it. Maybe one day in the week, they cook. That's it.

Ryan Kailath: New York has the most live bird markets of any state, according to a 2021 study. They receive daily deliveries from backyard flocks, factory farms, and everything in between, and sell about 1 million birds a month. For public health experts, that's 1 million chances to transmit a virus like H5N1, bird flu. Officials have counted 13 outbreaks in the city's live markets this year.

Ann Linder: The same qualities that sort of define them as a live animal market also make them really high risk sites for zoonotic disease transmissions.

Ryan Kailath: Ann Linder at Harvard Law School studies the risk of diseases jumping from food animals to humans. You may remember this happening a few years ago with a different virus, but--

Ann Linder: If we're thinking about H5N1, this is potentially really dangerous virus that sort of first made its appearance in the mid-'90s at a live bird market in Hong Kong.

Ryan Kailath: Linda recognizes how important these markets are in their communities, but--

Ann Linder: If they pose a risk to public health writ large, how do you balance those two interests against each other?

Ryan Kailath: Some New Yorkers are not interested in a balance. Edita Birnkrant is executive director of New Yorkers for Clean, Livable, Safe Streets. It's an animal rights nonprofit that's documented conditions at certain markets.

Edita Birnkrant: There's blood, feces, body parts, overcrowded birds. Many are sick. Many we found with open wounds because the birds are cannibalizing each other. I literally don't think there's anything any market could do to actually be shut down.

Ryan Kailath: Governor Hochul shut all the downstate markets for a week last month as bird flu spiked, but it's spiking again and they're still open. A spokesperson at the State Department of Agriculture says they may order another shutdown if there's persistent evidence bird flu's spreading in the markets.

Jose Fernandez: [Spanish language]

Ryan Kailath: Back at La Granja, the farm in West Harlem, Tanya Cardenas is picking out two chickens. A staffer hands them through a window, and eight minutes later, they come back in plastic, plucked and slaughtered. Why does she buy live birds every week?

Tanya Cardenas: [Spanish language]

Ryan Kailath: She says these chickens are better for her health, too. She wants to see the bird up close to know that it's fresh and not going to make her sick.

Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Ryan Kailath. It's been five years since COVID-19 forced school closures across the nation and the world. After the break, we reflect on what that looked like for New York City schools. Stay close.

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Janae Pierre: Five years ago, on March 15th, then Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to shut down New York City schools to slow the spread of COVID-19. WNYC's education reporter Jessica Gould asked some key city officials, parents, and students about their memories of the historic decision and whether they do anything differently.

Jessica Gould: It's Friday the 13th. In March of 2020.

Reporter: Good morning. Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of emergency for New York City. Large gatherings are cancelled. Restaurants and mallss-- [crosstlalk]

Jessica Gould: A sense of dread is setting in as the first cases of COVID emerge in New York City, but the school system is still open. Former mayor Bill de Blasio remembers he was intent on keeping it that way.

Bill de Blasio: I felt very strongly that if we close the schools, that would be devastating for kids emotionally in terms of their health and well-being, physical health, mental health, in terms of their learning, but also for parents.

Jessica Gould: The mayor meets with top officials in the bunker-like basement of the Office of Emergency Management in downtown Brooklyn. Former schools chancellor Richard Carranza remembers the big screens showing infection graphs.

Richard Carranza: I'm not talking about spikes in a 24-hour period. I'm talking about spikes in an 8-hour period. Like in the morning we have a briefing and it's certain indicators. Then by the afternoon, we have another briefing and it's completely a different chart and worse.

Jessica Gould: Ursulina Ramirez ran operations for the school system. It was her job to keep the schools going, but attendance is way down and more and more teachers are calling out sick. She starts sending bureaucrats with teaching licenses from the central office out to schools to fill the gaps.

Ursulina Ramirez: It was that moment where I started freaking out as a person who was in charge of operations for the safety of kids in the facilities. I was like, "I don't know if we're going to be able to sustain this."

Jessica Gould: Teachers union president Michael Mulgrew meets de Blasio at the emergency command center.

Michael Mulgrew: Him and I had some real difficult conversations. His concern was that if we close the schools for five weeks, we're never going to open them for the rest of this year. I said, "If that's what we need to do to keep our community safe and our children safe, then that's what we should do." I said, "We're not bargaining with a virus."

Jessica Gould: Mulgrew has a press conference saying the teachers union is going to court to ask a judge to order the closure of schools, but de Blasio is still reluctant to make the move. How would parents maintain their incomes? What about healthcare workers who need childcare? Who would watch the kids?

Bill de Blasio: One thing that seemed to be clear around the world, don't let your health system collapse. Don't let your hospitals collapse. The public schools closed and there was no other option for those families. Those workers would just have to stay home, or at least a lot of them.

Jessica Gould: Pressure is mounting to close as the city records its first known COVID death. Kate Blum was communication director for the city's schools. She says emails from parents were coming in fast and furious.

Kate Blum: Some of them were like, "I can't believe you are endangering me and my family by not having already closed schools." Then on the other side, there was, "Please don't close schools, because I need to be able to go to work."

Jessica Gould: Cities across the country announced they're closing schools, and a dozen members of Congress call on de Blasio to do the same thing. Hundreds of teachers plan a sick out from work.

Bill de Blasio: That's when I said, "Okay, we are just out of ammunition here. We have to make this decision. We have to act on it." It was tortured. When I announced it to the public, I felt pained, and I said it. I felt it was a decision that had to be made, but I really thought we were entering into something that was going to cause a lot of pain.

Jessica Gould: Ramirez recalls crying with her team. She tears up again, talking about it.

Ursulina Ramirez: We're about to close the school system down, and I don't know what that means for our kids.

Jessica Gould: The next day, it's a new world. The Education Department plans to open childcare centers for essential workers and meal distribution sites. Teachers start training for this new experiment in remote learning. There's a desperate scramble to outfit kids with iPads and Wi-Fi. Sirens start blaring a lot. Looking back, officials say there were no good options. Here's teachers union president Mulgrew.

Michael Mulgrew: We had no choice. Yes, no choice. People keep forgetting how fast New York city piled up 20,000 dead.

Jessica Gould: Former operations head Ramirez still says it was necessary to close that March to reduce the spread, but she thinks the consequences have been dire.

Ursulina Ramirez: I think it has really harmed a lot of our kids, not just on the educational side, but on the social, emotional side. Knowing what I know now, I would have had every kid in school starting September.

Jessica Gould: Again, former mayor de Blasio.

Bill de Blasio: You know, kids lost a lot. Remote learning did not work. I mean, again, noble effort, better than nothing. Didn't work. To me, when we look back on all this, anywhere that could keep schools open originally should have, and everywhere should have brought schools back starting in September of '20.

Jessica Gould: As the education reporter and as a mom, I see how many kids have struggled. Test scores went down. Mental health suffered. Teachers who kept working through it all remain exhausted. So many New Yorkers died. We're still figuring out all the impacts. The story goes on. Maybe you can hear it in my voice. I just tested positive for COVID.

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Janae Pierre: That's WNYC's Jessica Gould. To help mark the fifth anniversary of the virus shutting down life in our region, we want to hear from you, what changes, good or bad, came to your life during the COVID shutdowns that have persisted to this day. Send a voice memo with your story to yourvoice@wnyc.org. Thanks for listening to NYC NOW from WNYC. I'm Janae Pierre. Have a great weekend. We'll be back on Monday.

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