Refried confusion is making itself clear
Wonder which way do I go to get on out of here
The previous 2 or 3 lines presented several theories that have been put forward to explain why New York City has a COVID-19 death rate that is 50 times greater than the COVID-19 death rate in San Francisco.
Most experts believe that the difference in death rates in the two cities resulted from the fact that San Francisco (and its neighboring jurisdictions) ordered residents to “shelter in place” before New York City.
Residents of the San Francisco Bay area were directed to stay the f*ck at home on March 16. The governor of California followed that up with a statewide order on March 19.
The next day, the New York governor issued a similar stay-at-home order that had an effective date of March 22.
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| New York City nurses |
From Vox.com:
The difference of a few weeks or days on public action and orders telling people to stay home may not seem like a huge deal. But it really is significant with the coronavirus, because the number of cases and deaths, especially early on in an outbreak, can double every few days if protective measures aren’t in place. . . .
[O]nce a community confirmed a coronavirus case, and especially after it saw a death, there was a good chance it already had a much more widespread outbreak — since most cases are mild (though still potentially very unpleasant) and even the worst cases can take days or weeks to show major symptoms.
“Your chance of the first case being the one that comes to your attention is very, very, very, very small,” George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the UCSF, said. “By the time you have the first death, you have to figure that there’s been three full weeks of transmission, and there are at least several hundred cases in the population.”
So once a city, state, or country is reporting a few Covid-19 cases and especially deaths, it’s typically safe to assume there is a much bigger outbreak going on — just one that’s not fully visible, at least yet, to the public. . . .
It’s in this context that a six- or three-day lag in issuing a stay-at-home order could really matter.
“I’m loath to criticize, and hindsight is 20/20,” Rutherford said. “But you’ve got to start early. You’ve got to do it before deaths start to accumulate.”
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New York City may be a COVID-19 horror show, but no one seems to be holding New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, responsible.
The late Ronald Reagan was sometimes called the “Teflon President” because criticism and blame never seemed to stick to him. Maybe we should start calling Cuomo the “Teflon Governor.”
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| The Teflon Governor |
High on the list of things that nobody could have predicted just a few weeks ago is the emergence of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo as a buzzy daytime TV draw. . . .
“The Andrew Cuomo Show,” as it were, is a strangely compelling mix that is part ‘West Wing’ revival, part therapy session and most important, a credible source of important information about the contagion that has abruptly upended every aspect of life in the U.S. and around the world.
But both Cuomo and New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, have some ‘splaining to do for the pickle the city has found itself in.
* * * * *
De Blasio has taken his share of heat for not taking the coronavirus seriously enough – especially compared to San Francisco mayor London Breed.
On February 25, Breed declared a local state of emergency. On March 2, she warned local residents to prepare for possible school closures and other disruptions.
That same day, de Blasio poo-poohed coronavirus, tweeting that he was “encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives [and] get out on the town despite Coronavirus,” and recommending that they go out and see the movie The Traitor.
But Cuomo was just as overconfident, telling the press on March 2 that “We have been ahead of this since day one.”
“Excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers [but] we think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York,” Cuomo continued. “So, when you’re saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”
Not exactly.
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New York City may have been under a stay-at-home order several days earlier if de Blasio had his way. The day after the San Francisco stay-at-home order was issued, he warned New Yorkers to be prepared for a similar order.
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| De Blasio and Cuomo |
But Cuomo pulled rank on de Blasio.
“That is not going to happen, shelter in place, for New York City,” Cuomo told the New York Times. “For any city or county to take an emergency action, the state has to approve it. And I wouldn’t approve shelter in place.”
Cuomo said that such a drastic policy would create unnecessary fear and panic.
“Quarantine in place, you can’t leave your home,” Cuomo said. “The fear, the panic is a bigger problem than the virus.”
Not exactly.
* * * * *
Cuomo and de Blasio have been engaged in an ongoing political food fight for several years.
From CNN:
In 2015, the two differed over topless women in Times Square, with the governor looking to swiftly squash the practice, while the mayor aimed to take a more deliberative approach by creating a task force on the issue.
Squabbling over Times Square toplessness is one thing. Allowing the rivalry to get in the way of a prompt response to a life-threatening pandemic is quite another.
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| Topless Times Square entertainers |
More from CNN:
The seriousness of the situation was clear when some local leaders rebuked the mayor and the governor for continuing their fight amid the pandemic.
“I don't have the time,” tweeted Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. “I don't have patience for petty back-and-forths in the middle of a deadly pandemic.”
Adams then directed a message to both men: “Cut the crap.”
* * * * *
A few days after kneecapping de Blasio, Cuomo did an about-face and issued a statewide stay-at-home order. But experts believe that his foot-dragging was costly.
No less an authority than Dr. Thomas R. Frieden – the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and former commissioner of the New York City Health Department – said that if the state and city had adopted widespread social-distancing measures a week or two earlier, including closing schools, stores and restaurants, then the estimated death toll from the outbreak might have been reduced by 50 to 80 percent.
* * * * *
Cuomo and de Blasio continued to bicker as COVID-19 raged.
From Vox.com:
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said [on April 11] that the city’s public schools would remain shut for the rest of the academic year, a decision that was widely expected given the scale of the coronavirus crisis in New York City. . . .
But this is New York, so before anything happens, the mayor and the governor must squabble about it first. Barely hours after de Blasio said the nation’s largest school system would rely on remote learning through June, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo described the mayor’s decision as an “opinion.”
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| De Blasio lands a left! |
The city would normally have the jurisdiction to close its schools. But Cuomo issued an executive order on March 18 which required state approval for any local ordinances. Cuomo also issued an order that said schools would be closed statewide until April 29, at which point the closures would be reevaluated.
A spokesperson for Cuomo’s office said the governor is continuing to look at the question of schools with the facts and information available, but that he is looking at the issue with the entire state — and with what the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut choose to do — in mind.
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| Cuomo lands a right! |
Freddi Goldstein, de Blasio’s press secretary, pushed back after Cuomo’s press conference. “The Governor’s reaction to us keeping schools closed is reminiscent of how he reacted when the Mayor called for a shelter in place. We were right then and we’re right now,” Goldstein wrote on Twitter.
* * * * *
There’s one other possible explanation for the New York City coronavirus sh*t show: bad luck in the form of a “superspreader.”
From LiveScience.com:
In addition, a man in New Rochelle just north of the city happened to be what is called a superspreader. For whatever reason, whether immunological, social or biological, a superspreader can infect many more people than expected for a particular pathogen.
In fact, the virus was passed from this New Rochelle man to more than 100 others, said George Rutherford, professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF).
"New York had multiple, multiple, multiple introductions from Europe and also had the misfortune to have a superspreader at the beginning," said Rutherford.
If the New Rochelle super spreader had been a resident of Palo Alto or Berkeley, San Francisco might have been the city with the highest COVID-19 death rate in the country.
* * * * *
Luck certainly plays a HUGE role in our lives – both for good and for ill.
But we don’t like to admit that. We prefer to view events with 20/20 hindsight and blame someone else when something bad happens to us.
It don’t make no never mind to me if you want to say Andrew Cuomo screwed the pooch on this one, or whether he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. But if you hold him responsible in part for the fix New York City finds itself in, it’s only fair that you also hold President Trump responsible.
And vice versa, of course.
(I just lost a lot of you, didn’t, I? But you can’t have it both ways – although most of the people in this country have tried to do so.)
Click here to read the very thorough New York Times account of New York City’s response to the pandemic.
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New Orleans native Dr. John – who was born Malcolm John Rebennack, Jr. – died of a heart attack a little less than a year ago.
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