What do you do when your neighbours are dying and management won’t talk about it?
Diana Wiener, 80, a resident of the 146-apartment Five Star Premier Residences launched her own newsletter after being fed up with the high level of secrecy around COVID-19 in her new York retirement village.
As the virus tore through New York City in April last year, everyone was confined to their apartments for an extended lockdown.
Building management would not tell the residents who had contracted COVID-19 or if any residents had died, citing privacy laws.
So, Ms Wiener – who has no journalistic experience – launched a newsletter, The Buzz, in order to tell her neighbours about what was going on in their building, The New York Times reports.
The first issue informed residents that 13 of their neighbours had already died from COVID-19 from March to May, contrary to what the building’s official emails stated. The second listed the names of those who had died or were in hospital.
Ms Wiener now intends on continuing the newsletter to campaign against recent rent increases.
