Give this New Yorker woman credit, she knows how to exploit one public crisis to address another:

Jane Duncan was taking her usual walk a few blocks from Washington Square Park on Feb. 4 when a known local vagrant suddenly jumped in front of her and pulled a knife out of his pocket, she said.

'As he was pulling the knife, I started coughing all over the place,' the 52-year-old said.

'I was like "I have COVID. I'm on my way to the ER." A s I was doing that, he had the knife out and he got scared of me and ran away.'

The Covid fear is so real that even "known local vagrants" can be sufficiently frightened enough to flee from it like:

The craziest part of this story really is less that this woman was able to use COVID hysteria to save her own life and more that this dangerous guy is apparently super well-known among West Village denizens and yet, apparently, nobody is doing anything about him — even the police:

When Duncan saw the man sleeping on a bench a few days later, she called the cops again — in part out of fear for her teenage son, she said.

Six police officers responded — but refused to search him for a weapon, she claimed.

'They were like "Wake up, buddy. Wake up, Matthew,'" she said.

This, folks, is modern New York City: Where women have to cough to protect themselves while police officers do nothing about violent, dangerous, mentally ill homeless people.

It's a sharp and brutal decline from the city's heyday in the late 1990s through the early 2000s, when proactive policing saved New York from the brink of horrific destruction. Now police can only say "Hey buddy."

(And then if that person is trans they get fired!)

Of course, a large part of the problem is that police themselves are often hamstrung by hard-left city administration — with the unsurprising result that they're fleeing the force in droves:

Leaving city residents to look out for themselves:

Despite the success of her COVID-crime-fighting technique, Duncan said she's thinking about getting pepper spray to protect herself.

Good luck in the new Wild West, ma'am.

P.S. Now check out our latest video 👇