'An Empty Chair Forever': Changed Lives Mark Holidays In 2020

Megan VerHelst
Updated ·6 min read

ACROSS AMERICA — Vivian Zayas can’t help but scroll through photos of last Thanksgiving, when her mother stood at the stove to make a big pot of rice and beans before taking a seat at the edge of the table.

That was before anyone had heard of the coronavirus, and before it claimed the life of the retired seamstress.

Ana Martinez died on April 1 at age 78 while recovering at a nursing home from a knee replacement.

As Americans spent Thursday marking the Thanksgiving holiday amid an unrelenting pandemic, Martinez's family is among those left with “an empty chair at the table forever," her daughter told The Associated Press.

They had their traditional meal of turkey, yams, green beans and rice and beans — but Zayas removed a seat from the table at her home in Deer Park, New York, and put her mother’s walker in its place.

“It’s a painful Thanksgiving. You don’t even know, should you celebrate?” Zayas said. “It’s a lonely time.”

READ MORE: Empty Seats, Delivered Feasts Define Thanksgiving Amid Pandemic

The Latest

During a year that's battered the U.S. economy and businesses, retailers across the country were hopeful the day after Thanksgiving would bring a boost in sales as many struggle to avoid bankruptcy.

While Black Friday typically is the biggest shopping day of the year, 2020 has not been a normal year. And despite the hope, many shoppers opted out of in-store madness this Black Friday.

In New York, Macy’s Herald Square in New York featured big deals, but there was just a trickle of shoppers an hour after the store opened, according to The Associated Press. The scene looked similarly empty at the nearby Manhattan Mall. At the Garden State Plaza mall in Paramus, New Jersey, parking spots were easy to find shortly after the mall opened at 7 a.m.

Things were quiet at a Walmart in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. The nation’s largest retailer had offered its best deals online this month to deter any crowds from showing up on Black Friday.

Despite the lack of people in stores, retail experts are still optimistic. Shoppers are looking for reasons to celebrate this year, but many are turning online. In fact, a trade group expects sales for November and December to increase between 3.6 percent and 5.2 percent over 2019.

“After all they’ve been through, we think there’s going to be a psychological factor that they owe it to themselves and their families to have a better-than-normal holiday,” National Retail Federation Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz told AP. “There are risks to the economy if the virus continues to spread, but as long as consumers remain confident and upbeat, they will spend for the holiday season.”

The United States on Thursday reported more than 127,000 new cases of coronavirus. Over the past week, the country has averaged more than 167,000 new daily cases of the virus.

Also, a record number of people — more than 90,000 — are currently hospitalized because of the virus, according to data from the COVID Tracking Project.

Meanwhile, the Washington state county that 10 months ago reported the first U.S. case of coronavirus is now reporting its highest coronavirus case numbers of the pandemic.

Snohomish County, just north of Seattle, has recorded an average of about 230 cases per day over the past week, about three times higher than a month ago. Dr. Chris Spitters, the Snohomish County health officer, told The New York Times that hospitalizations in the region have risen about 400 percent in just six weeks.

As states continue to add new restrictions amid the surge in cases, the U.S. Supreme Court late Wednesday sided with churches and synagogues in New York, ruling 5-4 that the state could not enforce certain restrictions on houses of worship.

The decision contradicts the court’s previous rulings on similar cases that deferred to local officials on pandemic-related restrictions, according to the Post.

In its ruling, the court decided that limiting attendance at houses of worship in orange and red zones was too restrictive.

Avi Schick, an attorney for Agudath Israel of America, wrote in an email to the Associated Press: "This is an historic victory. This landmark decision will ensure that religious practices and religious institutions will be protected from government edicts that do not treat religion with the respect demanded by the Constitution."

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo called the decision “irrelevant” because the Brooklyn zone the court ruled on is no longer considered a cluster. The ruling is not a final legal decision and has now passed to an appeals court, the governor said at a news conference Thursday.

“I think this was really just an opportunity for the court to express its philosophy and politics. It doesn’t have any practical effect,” Cuomo said. “I would agree with those people who say it’s a different court, and they wanted to make a statement that it’s a different court.”

In the sports world, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson on Thursday became the highest-profile player to test positive for the coronavirus. Jackson, the NFL's reigning Most Valuable Player, is one of several players and staffers on the team to contract the virus this week.

Drugmaker AstraZeneca, meanwhile, announced this week that it had made a mistake in calculating vaccine dosages, only giving some trial participants a partial dose of the vaccine.
Some are now questioning whether claims that the vaccine is 90 percent effective will hold up under additional testing, the New York Times reports.

Still, an AstraZeneca executive said the error was made by a contractor and quickly corrected with a plan to continue testing the vaccine in different doses.

The U.S. government plans to send 6.4 million doses of pharmaceutical giant Pfizer's coronavirus vaccine to cities across the United States within 24 hours of regulatory clearance.

The expectation, according to a Washington Post report, is that shots will be administered to front-line health care workers. The first round of vaccines would cover about one-third of the nation's 20 million health care workers.

Family members wave goodbye to nursing home resident Barbara Farrior, 85, at the end of their visit at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)
Family members wave goodbye to nursing home resident Barbara Farrior, 85, at the end of their visit at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in New York. (AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez)

Thursday's Numbers

At least 1,388 new coronavirus deaths and 127,563 new cases were reported in the United States on Thursday, according to a Washington Post database. Over the past seven days, the United States has averaged more than 167,274 cases each day.

As of Friday, 45 states and Puerto Rico remained above the positive testing rate recommended by the World Health Organization to safely reopen. To safely reopen, the WHO recommends states remain at 5 percent or lower for at least 14 days.

More than 12.89 million people in the United States had tested positive for the coronavirus as of Friday morning, and more than 263,500 have died, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University.

Stay up to date on the latest coronavirus news via The New York Times or Washington Post.

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This article originally appeared on the Across America Patch