New York's Borrowed Military Hospital Ship

"Our nation has heard our plea for help here in New York City."
"There could not be a better example of all of America pulling for New York City than the arrival of the USNS Comfort."
"We needed this boost. We needed this hope, this beacon of hope. [To see the ship entering city waters and] coming here to save the lives of New Yorkers in our hour of need."
"It's a wartime atmosphere and we all have to pull together."
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio

Seth Harrison, The Journal News    Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort sails past the Statue of Liberty, entering New York Harbour on Monday.

Monday saw a large continent of New Yorkers head out to New York Harbour, against all cautions urged by their mayor, local government and health authorities, to witness first-hand a historical event; the arrival of an immense floating hospital to give hope and a large helping hand to a metropolis whose medical community has been put to an arduous test of determination and professional over-capacity struggling to cope with an emergency brought on by the emergence of a pathogen that has visited and devastated many countries of the world, with no evident signs of slowing down.

The gleaming white ship arrived with the intention of giving respite to an over-extended hospital system with insufficient ICU units to handle the breathtakingly onerous and too-deadly zoonotic that first made its appearance in Wuhan, China, resulting from Chinese traditional cuisine using live wild animals for special dinnertable dishes and pharmaceuticals. Animals that host viruses that managed to make the leap from species such as bats, civet cats and pangolins to find homes in human bodies where they replicate unceasingly as unbelievably infectious agents.

The USNS Comfort, sailing up the Hudson River to dock at a midtown Manhattan pier, spells both relief for the New York medical community and hope for the city's eight-and-a-half million population. The thousand-bed hospital is scheduled to begin treating non-coronavirus patients, as well as those requiring surgery and critical care, according to the navy. The novel coronavirus that has devastated the city with respiratory illness will now have the full focus of its medical community, with the USNS Comfort assuming care for all other patients.

Almost half of the country's more than 144,000 coronavirus illness and over a third of 2,500 deaths in the U.S. are accounted for in New York City. In a revolving cycle of incidents of the COVID-19 virus, the epicentre went from China to Italy and Spain, and now the United States. The dubious distinction of being the country with the most cases in the world now falls to the U.S. Construction of a 68-bed field hospital in Central Park has been initiated with plans to commence its use almost immediately.

"If we do things together well -- almost perfectly -- we could get in the range of 100,000 to 200,000 fatalities", stated Dr.Deborah Birx, coordinating the White House coronavirus task force, in a 'best case' scenario that is in and of itself mind-boggling in scope. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had projected that 200,000 to 1.7 million people could die, and between 160 million and 214 million could be infected, according to a report in The New York Times.

Kathy Willens, AP   New Yorkers peer through a fence at Pier 90 as navy hospital ship USNS enter New York Harbour