Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio’s inept handling made New York a Covid-19 epicentre
Why is the emphasis always placed on the "total" number of US deaths when the major percentage of them are concentrated in New York and New Jersey.
You also refer to "hotspots" in the country, but don't identify them which, again, gives the impression that it's widespread which is always the lead in to blame POTUS.
The "reality" is that the major impact of COVID-19 is concentrated in a few small sections of the US and, more specif, areas that are Blue Democrat led and governed.
Even worse is the number of deaths in health care facilities which again make up a major percentage of deaths.
It appears this is premeditated strategic planning to make it look like POTUS is responsible and is not doing a good job.
Why not get back to news rather than playing politics?
For years Cuomo and de Blasio, each of whom has harbored national political ambitions, had engaged in a kind of intrastate cold war, a rivalry that to many often felt childish and counterproductive. When de Blasio finally decided to close the city’s schools, it was Cuomo who rushed to make the public announcement, claiming it as his decision.
“No city in the state can quarantine itself without state approval,” Cuomo said of de Blasio’s call for a shelter-in-place order. “I have no plan whatsoever to quarantine any city.”
Cuomo’s conviction didn’t last. On March 22, he, too, shuttered his state. The action came six days after San Francisco had shut down, five days after de Blasio suggested doing similarly and three days after all of California had been closed by Newsom. By then, New York faced a raging epidemic, with the number of confirmed cases at 15,000 doubling every three or four days.
Health officials well understood the grim mathematics. One New York City official said of those critical days in March: “We had been pretty clear with the state about the implications of every day, every hour, every minute.”
As of May 15, there were nearly 350,000 Covid-19 cases in New York and more than 27,500 deaths, nearly a third of the nation’s total. The corresponding numbers in California: just under 75,000 cases and slightly more than 3,000 deaths. In New York City, the country’s most populous and densest, there had been just under 20,000 deaths; in San Francisco, the country’s second densest and 13th most populous, there had been 35.
The differing outcomes will be studied for years, as more is learned about the virus, its unique qualities, its varying strains, its specific impact on certain populations, and the role of factors like poverty, pre-existing health problems and public transportation in its spread and lethality.
California, if twice as populous as New York, does not have nearly as many people living on top of one another; despite San Francisco’s density, it does not have millions of people packed into subways and buses the way New York City does. New York City is home to far more African Americans, a population hit hard by the virus.
But the timing of New York’s shutdown undeniably played a role in the dire human toll the virus has exacted. In April, two prominent experts said in a New York Times opinion article that their research showed that had New York imposed its extreme physical distancing measures a week or two earlier, the death toll might have been cut by half or more.
It’s an assessment shared by Dr Tom Frieden, the former head of New York City’s Health Department. “Days earlier & so many deaths could have been prevented,” Frieden tweeted in April.
Asked if Cuomo questioned the accuracy or integrity of the findings on how many deaths might have been prevented with an earlier imposition of the statewide shut down, a spokesman wrote: “Our job is to make policy decisions based on the facts and data we have at the time and that’s exactly what we did. We needed the public’s buy-in, which is what happened, and how we ultimately flattened the curve.”
In recent days, Cuomo has said he wished he had been quicker to see the threat, “blow the bugle” and take action, only to all but instantly shift tone and cast blame everywhere: at international and US health agencies; at the federal government; at news organisations.
“Governors don’t do global pandemics,” Cuomo said.
