The corner of Lafayette and East Fourth Street in New York used to be a busy thoroughfare… But since mid-March, all the usual sounds of Lower Manhattan have been replaced by the low hum of wind and birds. The remarkable change captured in two audio clips — each collected on a Thursday afternoon one year apart, from a microphone perched one story above the sidewalk — offers some measure of what this pandemic sounds like. Sound levels here have fallen by about five decibels, enough to make daytime sound more like a quiet night.
