Good morning. Today is Monday. We will look at racial disparities in monkeypox vaccines, which disproportionately give those with better access to the health care system. But first we’ll look back to 1972 and the “Dog Day Afternoon” theft in Brooklyn.
Ralph Aiello says he stumbled across the “Dog Day Afternoon” robbery over the phone, not because he knew that was what he stumbled upon. All he knew was that the branch manager of the bank on P Avenue in Brooklyn’s Gravesend didn’t sound right.
It was August 22, 1972 – 50 years ago today. Aiello is a Chase Manhattan Bank official involved in overseeing a group of tellers who can be moved from a nearly empty branch to one with a customer favorite. He wanted a teller, Kathy Amore, to go to another branch and call Robert Barrett, the manager on P Avenue.
“When I called Bob,” Aiello, now 77, said last week, “it was, ‘Oh, Ralph, nice to hear from you. No personality. “
“I said, ‘Bob, I need to get Kathy Amore to M Avenue,’” Aiello recalls. “He said, ‘Oh, Ralph, what a lovely young lady.’ Again, no personality to Bob. ‘I’m happy to have her working in my branch.’ Now, he has never said that about anyone. “
“I asked him, ‘Bob, do you have a problem at the branch? ‘ Aiello said. Barrett replied, “Yes, very much, Ralph, and have a good day.”
Aiello said he immediately called Chase’s corporate security office, and someone there called the police.
This theft is a crime driven by the passions of John Wojtowicz, who wants the money to pay for a sex reassignment surgery for Ernest Aron, whom he calls his wife. Aron ended up becoming Elizabeth D. Eden, thanks in part to the proceeds of her story rights to “Dog Day Afternoon,” which became one of the defining New York films of the 1970s – grim fall and despair.
Aiello said he went to Avenue P with photos of the employees the robbers had taken hostage. Last week, he said he waited all night when police took Wojtowicz and an accomplice to Kennedy International Airport in a limousine with one of the bankers.
Wojtowicz asked for a plane to take them out of the country. He apparently piled into the limo without realizing that the driver was an FBI agent who, after parking near the runway at JFK, shot his accomplice. The 14-hour siege ended with authorities arresting Wojtowicz.
“Dog Day Afternoon” was welcomed by almost everyone except Wojtowicz, who called it “essentially trash” shortly after its release in 1975.
His complaints were offset by his praise of Sidney Lumet’s directing and Al Pacino’s performance as Sonny Wortzik, the character based on him. Wojtowicz wrote about Pacino for almost two hours. “Sometimes he makes me laugh, cry, sweat and get upset, all in one movie.”
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What does the data show?
The big takeaway here is that black New Yorkers don’t have access to nearly as many doses of the vaccine they need. Blacks make up 31% of the population at risk, but they have only received 12% of the vaccine doses that have been given so far.
No other racial group is truly underrated in that way.
The monkeypox vaccine is primarily given on a first-come, first-served basis. Did that contribute to the problem?
Right. The first day of the vaccination effort was like a textbook case of what not to do: The city announced that, in the middle of a weekday, the vaccine would be available at a clinic starting at 30. minutes later. It was immediately defeated and started turning away from everyone after an hour and a half. The people who can get there are overwhelmingly white and have the kinds of white-collar jobs that require them to take breaks in the middle of the day to line up for pictures.
That provides a taste of what the next few weeks will look like. Vaccination appointments are made every few days through an online registration system that is constantly experiencing problems, and the availability of new positions has been announced on Twitter. That makes it more likely that appointments will go to people who spend time online – who tend to be higher-paying jobs with flexible schedules.
That leads to scenes that look like a regular scene at a vaccination site in Harlem. The people queuing to get the dose there were mostly white and overwhelmingly from outside the immediate vicinity.
In recent weeks, the city has begun prioritizing high-risk patients and giving doses of the vaccine directly to public health organizations.
Recently, the federal government said the vaccine could be used in a way that reduces the amount of vaccine in each dose. Why is New York gradually changing to new methods?
The new vaccination method is controversial. One activist called it “a cheap accounting trick”.
The federal government has sought to make the most of the relatively small number of vaccines available. That’s where this new method comes in. The injections are usually given by injecting a full dose into the fat layer beneath the skin. Federal health officials now want providers to inject more than a fifth between classes.
The Biden administration, which has been criticized for not responding more positively to the outbreak, has been so committed to this new protocol that The White House said last week it would send 1.8 million doses of the vaccine to cities and states that have agreed to it.
New York City won’t get any of them, because it doesn’t inoculate its people this way.
Ashwin Vasan, New York City health commissioner, told us the city needs time to talk to community groups and train health care providers on how to do it.
Is the monkeypox virus spreading as quickly as it did a few weeks ago?
No. From late May to late July, the city saw between 60 and 70 new cases of monkeypox per day. We’ve been seeing an average of 54 new cases per day recently.
The big question marks are how many cases go unreported, where they are, and how that will affect the outbreak later on.
The city is trying to overcome those potential problems. Officials last week said they would provide $5 million in grants to community groups in low-income neighborhoods to promote vaccination.
METROPOLITAN . Diary
How to say it
Dear Diary:
It was around the mid-1980s, and I was at a rather contrived specialty deli in Midtown. As I waited in the line of prepared food, I noticed a well-dressed man behind me.
When it was my turn, I said I wanted a pound of “porseeny” ravioli.
As the person at the counter prepared my food, the well-dressed man patted my hand.
“Sorry,” he said, “but in Italian it’s pronounced ‘por-chee-pillow.’
I thanked him for correcting me, took my package, and was about to turn away when I heard him order four pieces of tortillas “jal-o-peno”.
I turned around and tapped his hand lightly.
“Sorry,” I said, “but in Spanish it’s pronounced ‘hal-eh-pen-yo.'”
– Jerry Wolbert
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
So glad we can get together here. See you tomorrow. – JB
PS This is for today Small crosswords and Spell Bee. You can find all our quizzes here.
Melissa Guerrero and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at [email protected].
