California’s governor and San Francisco’s mayor worked together to act early in confronting the COVID threat. For Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, it was a different story, and 27,000 New Yorkers have died so far.
By March 14, London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, had seen enough. For weeks, she and her health officials had looked at data showing the evolving threat of COVID-19. In response, she’d issued a series of orders limiting the size of public gatherings, each one feeling more arbitrary than the last. She’d been persuaded that her city’s considerable and highly regarded health care system might be insufficient for the looming onslaught of infection and death.
Breed, it turns out, had sent de Blasio a copy of her detailed shelter-in-place order. She thought New York might benefit from it. 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.”
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 athat their research showed that had New York imposed its extreme social distancing measures a week or two earlier, the death toll might have been cut by half or more.
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 U.S. health agencies; at the federal government; at news organizations.In an interview, a senior Cuomo administration official, authorized to speak but not be named, defended the timeliness of New York’s response to the virus.
But a range of health officials and scientists interviewed by ProPublica say creating such timelines misses the central issue: No later than Feb. 28, federal officials warned the country that a deadly pandemic was inevitable. It is from that point forward, they say, that any individual state’s actions should be judged.
Asked about the city’s claims, a Cuomo administration official insisted the state was working “hand in glove” with all local health departments. “Everyone underestimated the threat because the information we had was greatly limited from the start,” Goldstein said. As for expanding hospital capacity, it was not until March 16 that Cuomo designated a task force to engineer greater numbers of beds, demanding a 50% increase in capacity in 24 hours.
“I can’t recall in the last 15 years a discussion with the state about what would need to be done in a pandemic,” Dowling said in an interview. In a statement, Jonah Bruno, a Health Department spokesman, said: “The State of New York continues to take every step necessary to ensure that health care workers, particularly those who are sampling and providing direct care, have the support and supplies needed to address this unprecedented public health emergency.
In those first days of March, Cuomo and his administration were, in the words of one official, “trying to get their sea legs.” Countries around the world had taken a variety of steps to limit the spread of the disease, starting aggressive testing and contact tracing programs, as well as closing schools and businesses, and forcing people to stay in their homes except for emergencies.
The Cuomo administration official said that by then Cuomo’s designated inner circle — his health commissioner, his budget director, his closest aide and an old hand who would return to Cuomo’s side from his position in academia — were conferring every day, dozens of times. New York’s plan anticipated that a flu-like disease would likely sicken large numbers of people and overwhelm the health care system; and since outbreaks could occur simultaneously throughout the country, localities would need to rely on their own resources to respond. It noted that health care workers and first responders would be at high risk of illness, further straining the health system.
Asked about Dowling’s remarks, and whether hospital officials statewide were aware of the plan, Bruno, the Health Department spokesman, said “representatives from all responding services to the multi-service plan meet several times throughout the year to review and update the plan.” The document is emphatic on several points, not least the need for a state stockpile of emergency equipment.
But while the state’s plan makes clear its obligation to be adequately prepared, Cuomo over many weeks sought to portray the federal government as the culprit for the crisis in shortages of protective gear and medical equipment such as ventilators. But some within the department felt there was hope of a breakthrough. The following day, March 6, de Blasio’s most senior aides were to be briefed on the disease model created by Lipsitch at Harvard. Lipsitch had worked with the city Health Department during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, helping figure out such things as if, when and how to close schools. He was a trusted source.
“Everyone underestimated the threat because the information we had was greatly limited from the start,” Goldstein said. As for expanding hospital capacity, it was not until March 16 that Cuomo designated a task force to engineer greater numbers of beds, demanding a 50% increase in capacity in 24 hours.
“I can’t recall in the last 15 years a discussion with the state about what would need to be done in a pandemic,” Dowling said in an interview. In a statement, Jonah Bruno, a Health Department spokesman, said: “The State of New York continues to take every step necessary to ensure that health care workers, particularly those who are sampling and providing direct care, have the support and supplies needed to address this unprecedented public health emergency.
In those first days of March, Cuomo and his administration were, in the words of one official, “trying to get their sea legs.” Countries around the world had taken a variety of steps to limit the spread of the disease, starting aggressive testing and contact tracing programs, as well as closing schools and businesses, and forcing people to stay in their homes except for emergencies.
The Cuomo administration official said that by then Cuomo’s designated inner circle — his health commissioner, his budget director, his closest aide and an old hand who would return to Cuomo’s side from his position in academia — were conferring every day, dozens of times. New York’s plan anticipated that a flu-like disease would likely sicken large numbers of people and overwhelm the health care system; and since outbreaks could occur simultaneously throughout the country, localities would need to rely on their own resources to respond. It noted that health care workers and first responders would be at high risk of illness, further straining the health system.
Asked about Dowling’s remarks, and whether hospital officials statewide were aware of the plan, Bruno, the Health Department spokesman, said “representatives from all responding services to the multi-service plan meet several times throughout the year to review and update the plan.” The document is emphatic on several points, not least the need for a state stockpile of emergency equipment.
But while the state’s plan makes clear its obligation to be adequately prepared, Cuomo over many weeks sought to portray the federal government as the culprit for the crisis in shortages of protective gear and medical equipment such as ventilators. But some within the department felt there was hope of a breakthrough. The following day, March 6, de Blasio’s most senior aides were to be briefed on the disease model created by Lipsitch at Harvard. Lipsitch had worked with the city Health Department during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, helping figure out such things as if, when and how to close schools. He was a trusted source.
Goldstein, de Blasio’s spokeswoman, said to her knowledge no one at the department had threatened to quit. She could not say if the mayor had seen the March 9 letter. She again maintained the mayor had followed the federal government’s guidance on the threat and how to test for it. She said it is now clear that advice was wrong, and that New York should have been focusing on people arriving in New York from Europe, not China.
Goldstein did not dispute the report, saying that de Blasio relied on a variety of advice, including his Health Department’s. “I was kind of like, ‘Stop talking about it,’” the San Francisco mayor said in a recent interview with ProPublica. “Like, you know, like in my mind, I’m like, stop talking about it. It’s not going to hit. It’s like I knew it was coming, but I was trying to will it not to hit.”
Colfax’s briefings for Breed pretty quickly turned ominous. Colfax began to share distressing figures with her, drawn from data publicly released by the World Health Organization and Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
“All of this here in San Francisco and we don’t have the ability to handle this situation if we do nothing? That was what set off an alarm for me,” Breed recalled. On Sunday, Feb. 23, Colfax said he was heading home from a weekend away in the Sierras. As his partner drove and the California landscape zipped by along I-80, Colfax reviewed data on his cellphone in the passenger seat.
“They are the experts in this world, and so with every decision I’ve made, I had to feel confident in the science and the facts and the data,” she said. “They’re the ones who understand this stuff and know what’s going on and what it can do. And I trusted them.” She issued the order on Feb. 25, the day before de Blasio’s reassuring press conference in New York. De Blasio would not issue New York City’s emergency order for another 16 days, waiting until March 12 when the number of cases reached 95.
“I remember very distinctly looking at the John Hopkins website and just seeing the same damn curve that we saw in Wuhan,” he said in an interview. “The same damn curve [in Italy] and then, you know, very similar curves that were developing in Spain. So I called my staff again on Sunday and said, ‘Look, you know we have been given the gift of time.’ And that’s where I said, ‘You know, we’ve got to think about shutting down restaurants.
“I’m always yelling at him about something to do,” she said of Elliott with a laugh. “They’re very supportive of us. I don’t have this ‘you better not’ kind of tension.” Testing, a Cuomo administration official said, offered the best tool for tackling the basic questions: where the virus was and how fast it was moving.
Canada Latest News, Canada Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
9 Tips for a Well-Set Table for One or Two (And Eventually a Whole Crew)The table linens, salad bowls, serving dishes, and cutlery we're coveting this spring.
Read more »
Novartis CEO says any new coronavirus vaccine will take two years: newspaperAny vaccine to fight the new coronavirus will not be ready for use for at least two years, the chief executive of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, which no longer makes vaccines itself, told a German newspaper.
Read more »
‘We Really Cannot Lose a Day’: Two Female Scientists Racing to Find a COVID-19 VaccineSome 70 potential vaccines are currently in development by scientists and researchers worldwide. Among them is a team being led by two women in the Netherlands, with one juggling motherhood with the demands of a global health crisis.
Read more »
This Two-Strand Twist Tutorial Is Absolutely MesmerizingPutting this look on my to-do list.
Read more »
The Two Countries That Just Declared the Pandemic All but OverWith new cases down to nearly zero, a broad reopening gets underway.
Read more »
Moosejaw, Walmart, Launch Two ‘Inclusivity-Focused’ Outdoor Lines“Inclusivity-focused” has assumed a new meaning for digital outdoor retailer MoosejawMadness.
Read more »