CHICAGO — This is the United Center, typically home to the Chicago Bulls basketball team and the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team, as well as concerts.
And now, the city is preparing to turn it into a staging area for first responders, as well as a place where perhaps they can stockpile some of the things that they need, whether they be ventilators or masks and gowns and the whole like.
It's similar to what's happening in New York.
The Javits Center there, which is known as the city's big convention center, is being prepared as a hospital to deal with anyone that's an overflow from the hospitals in New York that do not have the coronavirus, but still need a hospital stay.
In Chicago, also at McCormick Place, they're preparing to turn that convention center into a hospital if necessary.
The mayor of Chicago speaking very strongly about the problem in the city of people not adhering to the requirements of social distancing and gathering together.
She shut down the lakefront and has also shut down city parks. City parks across the city now with caution tape, cutting them off from folks visiting.
The mayor says, if they don't take these steps right now, they are going to be in a situation like New York is right now, which is teetering on the collapse of its hospital system.
They don't want to get there. And so that's why they are taking these what some would see as somewhat draconian measures to try and keep people safe.
It is the world we are in now.
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