Meb Keflezighi emigrated to the United States from Eritrea, which had been ripped apart by civil war. Edna Kiplagat comes from Kenya, where the annual per capita income is $820. Nobody has to tell them that the short-notice cancellation of a five-borough footrace is not a human tragedy, not when corpses are still being discovered in Staten Island.

“We understand,” Kiplagat said Friday after the mayor and race organizers had called off the New York City Marathon for the first time.