Yes to a hospital in the West Village

You can never have enough hats, gloves, and shoes [1], and presumably, never enough hospitals either. In especially when you live in or are talking about the core of a major metropolitan area, New York City. which the West Village and environs without question are.

Unfortunately, with the recent closure of St. Vincents, the Village no longer has a hospital. That is troubling for several reasons that go beyond the impact on the immediate neighborhood.

St. Vincents was the closest trauma center and ER to the World Trade Center, and on 9/11, was the destination of choice for those injured by a national security disaster. There is no question that New York City remains a terrorist target [2], with the new World Trade Center presumably high on the list of targets. It's irresponsible, from a simple security perspective, to eviscerate medical assets in close proximity to what we know is a target.

Then, St. Vincents itself was Ground Zero of a different disaster, the Aids epidemic. Aids is a complex disease that is still killing people, with infection rates among MSM - 'men who have sex with men' in the clinical jargon - spiking [3]. The closing of St. Vincents has, at a stroke, disestablished a center of Aids treatment of national significance.

Budgets obviously are tight. But for this precise hospital to be closed is a textbook case of penny-wise, pound-foolish.