One Door Down : Profiles from a New York City Apartment Building During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Leeat and Uwvie

At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Leeat and Uwvie both hoped and believed that it would pass by quickly. In this clip, Leeat discusses her reaction to the onset of COVID, and how it altered their plans for early 2020. 

 
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The couple moved into the apartment building in July 2021. Uwvie did most of the heavy lifting, as Leeat was eight months pregnant with the pair’s son, Oliver. After going through IVF treatments, involving constant trips to the clinic and Uwvie administering shots daily, Leeat became pregnant on the day that Joe Biden was elected President of the United States. She remembers leaving the clinic alone, walking to Astoria Park, and listening to the world around her erupt into celebration. “I remember the day we kicked Donald Trump out.”

The pandemic led many healthcare institutions to limit the number of people in their waiting rooms, not allowing guests to join patients no matter the situation, and preventing many from spending the final moments of their loved one’s lives at their bedside. In Leeat and Uwvie’s case, Uwvie was not allowed to join the mother of his child as she went through the extensive appointment regimen inherent in modern day pregnancy. This did not bother him on a personal level; being a first-time father, he had never been able to register how impactful it might have been to be able to join Leeat as she watched her son grow from a “peanut” and into a human. 

In this clip, Leeat discusses what it was like going through the first six months of her prenatal appointments by herself, and the regret she feels that Uwvie was not able to join her due to the hospital’s restrictive guest policy. 

 
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Parents often go without sleep when they initially bring their baby home, and for months or years to follow. As a new father and an essential worker, Uwvie didn’t get the amount of sleep he should have; he is a night person, and so this is something that he has experienced for a long time, keeping himself preoccupied with things such as movies or video games. One day during the pandemic, he stumbled upon a term that he felt represented exactly that which he, and many others, were experiencing: revenge bedtime procrastination. As he described it with a laugh, you get RBP because you hate your life, so you stay up doing fun things. On top of tending to Oliver when he needed to, Uwvie would play video games that were specifically single player, as he plays terribly when online with other players.  

One conclusion he has come to, through practicing RBP and general consideration alike, is that the a la carte lifestyle inherent in modern day television and film watching has depressingly decreased the affinity that people develop with series or movies. His specific pandemic binge was Curb Your Enthusiasm, and, thinking about how many times he’s watched it, he feels that there is something to be gained from reengagement; learning new things about the storylines, noticing new character details, concluding with new takeaways.  

The couple worked throughout the pandemic, Leeat at a school in Manhattan, and Uwvie as a designated service provider for disabled individuals. Not having a car, their commute into the city required public transportation. Both reconfigured their routes so as to be safer, away from more heavily congested areas and subway lines. 

In this clip, Uwvie discusses his job, how he continued working during the pandemic, and how he enjoyed the thirty-one-block walk that he added to his commute. 

  
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Leeat also identifies with Uwvie’s appreciation for solitary walks through New York, feeling something newly calming about the city; the only people around being the people who lived here. Having rerouted her walk, at five months pregnant, with an additional 30 minutes and an open-air ferry ride, she says the ghost town atmosphere made life feel like science fiction, but also notes that reality and science fiction have become skewed, reality now seeming more fictitious. 

Both Leeat and Uwvie worked with clients and students that required constant care and attention, and so in an attempt to not transmit the virus to anyone else, and because nothing was open, went to work and came home; nothing else. Their self-care outlets had been eliminated, while the work stressors that led to their inception persisted. They noticed this while talking with friends who had been receiving unemployment. They were distressed to know that they were putting themselves at risk by continuing to work, only receiving the social status of “essential worker,” in return. Uwvie sees money as a necessary evil, one that would make life feel more secure. Like many who work in education and healthcare, Leeat and Uwvie displayed incredible dedication to the people that depended on them by returning to work, despite the clear risks it involved. 

In this clip, Uwvie reflects on the staffing crisis that his line of work is experiencing in the face of the pandemic. He also talks about his ideas about the possibility of receiving money from the government to help them get by, and how it would have been being able to stay home with Oliver, to get to know him, had he been born a year earlier when these payments were being disbursed.   

 
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Many New Yorkers faced difficulties securing a vaccine appointment once they became available. 

In this clip, Leeat discusses her stressful decision to get vaccinated, despite a lack of concrete understanding of how the vaccine might have affected her pregnancy, and the way in which her, and many other New Yorker’s struggle to get the shot came to an end because of the efforts of a fellow city-dweller that had had enough, and took action into his own hands. 

 
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With Spring approaching, warmer weather with it, Uwvie is excited to take Oliver on walks in his harness facing outward; being able to see the world as if he was the one walking through it. Leeat muses about the idea of moving to a different country, not being happy with the way the government has handled the pandemic. She feels that if financially burdened, you are on your own, and does not want Oliver to be caught up in the rat race. Having become a naturalized United States citizen during the pandemic, and the nature of such a move being so immense, she is unsure of whether or not this will happen, but is confident that her and Uwvie will be able to raise their son and instill in him their values, helping him to “find his joy, what makes him happy.”



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