It hasn't happened hear but I think it's a darn good idea! :p I'm in isolation with my daughter. Thank God we have each other but it is boring as heck.

I'm in NYC and that's the norm here too. From the streets, balconies, gardens and open windows, there's a brief 7pm serenade in every neighborhood (mostly applause, some pots and pans, honks from the few cars about) to cheer for health workers. I'm quite fond of it and join from my balcony.

Not sure I'd care for the howling. Too animalistic and spooky-sounding for me.

I haven't heard any howling but last night DS and I were walking in our suburban neighborhood in NJ and a long line of fire trucks and police cars drove down the street with lights flashing. We had no idea what was going on. It was a quiet residential street, no hospital or businesses in the area. But now that I think of it, it was 7 pm. So maybe they were doing it in honor of healthcare workers even though there were no workers in this area?

In my town/village, the police & fire department have offered this as a service to young children celebrating birthdays alone with just immediate family, indoors due to the stay-at-home order. I don't know how many birthday parades they've done but I'm glad the village sent out a notice* that they'd be doing this because otherwise I would have been really confused the day a child on our street apparently had a birthday. I say apparently because I saw part of the parade of vehicles from my front window so I was like, ok, must be a kid's birthday. I'm not sure if they did honking and sirens as well as lights but I do remember it was during regular daytime hours so maybe your situation is different.

It's a nice service to offer local kids in any case. Our village has its own police and fire station even though our population is less than 4,000 I think.
We used to "rent" sheriffs and police from other larger towns years ago but then someone got the bright idea that it would be "cheaper" to have our very own dedicated police force. I'm sure you can imagine how that has worked out.

*Our village sends out daily email updates about anything new regarding the governor's stay-at-home order, the number of new covid cases and running death total for our county as well as a breakdown by age of who has died and if he/she had underlying health conditions. Also, our village keeps sending out emails reminding residents to not put any trash or bulk pickup items next to their garbage/recycling bins on trash pickup day during the pandemic because there are enough garbage truck workers out sick as it is and they shouldn't have to further expose themselves by having to physically pick up possibly contaminated items vs. it being a more automated process of the truck picking up and dumping the bins. (Really irks me that people are not abiding by this. It's the least we can do. And people who don't have email are getting phone or snail mail notices so I don't think ignorance is 100% to blame for the lack of cooperation.)

I love the birthday parades!!

Oh thanks, adawn. It very possibly could have been a birthday parade. That makes more sense.