'Why couldn’t it be called the Canarsie virus?’: Corona, Queens, residents lament pandemic name

As the Coronavirus causes chaos around the world, some businesses in Corona Queens remain open. March 24, 2020.
As the Coronavirus causes chaos around the world, some businesses in Corona Queens remain open. March 24, 2020.

Just a mile away from Queens’ Elmhurst Hospital, an epicenter of the death and suffering caused by coronavirus, lies the neighborhood long called Corona.
On a recent sunny workday, residents milled about Corona Plaza, running errands or sitting near the 7 train subway stop to catch some rays.
Many residents say their neighborhood’s name will now be forever stained.
“Why couldn’t it be called the Canarsie virus?” lamented Saul Cuello, 39, as he stood in a line to get into Walgreens for some now hard-to-come-by essentials, trying to stay six feet away from everyone else. “The word Corona means so much to me.”
“It’s crazy,” he said, standing in front of eyeglasses store called Corona Vision, one of the countless neighborhood businesses shuttered due to the virus. “I came out here and it’s like a ghost town.”
“People are doing their part,” he added. “You see like one out of every two people wearing masks.”
As the Coronavirus causes chaos around the world, some businesses in Corona Queens remain open. March 24, 2020.
As the Coronavirus causes chaos around the world, some businesses in Corona Queens remain open. March 24, 2020.
Not far away, on 103rd Street, the Corona Candy Store was open, advertising Corona beer on one of its windows. A few shoppers in surgical masks picked through oranges outside the Corona Farm supermarket.
The dreaded virus got its name because its tiny virons look like crowns when examined under a microscope.
Although the origins of the Queens neighborhood’s name are debated, it may have gotten it in the 1870s when developers establishing the area were part of Crown Building Company, a firm with a crown emblem.
The neighborhood is famous for being home to Louis Armstrong, saxophonist Cannonball Adderley and a young Martin Scorsese. It still boasts the Lemon Ice King of Corona— a beloved old school Italian ice joint that draws summertime throngs.
“Everything is changing daily now, so we’ll see what happens," said Michael Zampino, who has owned the 75-year-old shaved ice hot spot for the last two decades.
This is usually the time of year when business starts to ramp up and Zampino wasn’t sure yet if the virus would cause a deep freeze in customers.
"Hopefully we can level out the curve and start going the other way,” he said of the city’s rising infections.

Zampino said that customers are still trickling in— taking their pick of 50 flavors for a little taste of what life was like not too long ago.
Lifelong Corona resident Saul Cuello, 39, talks about the possible consequences of a global pandemic sharing a name with his neighborhood.
Lifelong Corona resident Saul Cuello, 39, talks about the possible consequences of a global pandemic sharing a name with his neighborhood. 
Rosario Justino, 57, owner of Corona Live Poultry Market, said customers had joked earlier on in the pandemic that the coincidence in nomenclature could act as an amulet of sorts— warding off the evil respiratory illness. 
“Some people said Corona is the name of the virus, so nothing is going to happen in the town, to be funny," Justino said. "But now it’s not funny anymore.”
Justino himself was certainly taking things seriously— closing up shop for at least the next two weeks.
“I think the health is much more important than to be open,” he said.
He will only be coming in to feed the chickens.

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