Posted on 05/18/2020 4:06:55 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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.
“We need to shut this shit down,” Breed remembered thinking.
Three days later in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio was thinking much the same thing. He’d been publicly savaged for days for not closing the city’s school system, and even his own Health Department was in revolt at his inaction. And so, having at last been convinced every hour of delay was a potentially deadly misstep, de Blasio said it was time to consider a shelter-in-place order. Under it, he said, it might be that only emergency workers such as police officers and health care providers would be allowed free movement.
“I think it’s gotten to a place,” de Blasio said at a news conference, “where the decision has to be made very soon.”
In San Francisco, Breed cleaned up her language in a text to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. But she was no less emphatic: The city needed to be closed. Newsom had once been San Francisco’s mayor, and he had appointed Breed to lead the city’s Fire Commission in 2010.
Newsom responded immediately, saying she should coordinate with the counties surrounding San Francisco as they too were moving toward a shutdown. Breed said she spoke to representatives of those counties on March 15 and their public health officials were prepared to make the announcement on their own. On March 16, with just under 40 cases of COVID-19 in San Francisco and no deaths, Breed issued the order banning all but essential movement and interaction.
“I really feel like we didn’t have a lot of good options,” Breed said.
In an interview, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said it was critical to allow Northern California counties to rely on their own experts, act with a degree of autonomy and thus perhaps pave the way for the state to expand on what they had done. And three days after San Francisco and its neighboring counties were closed, Newsom, on March 19, imposed the same restrictions on the rest of California.
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.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, however, reacted to de Blasio’s idea for closing down New York City with derision. It was dangerous, he said, and served only to scare people. Language mattered, Cuomo said, and “shelter-in-place” sounded like it was a response to a nuclear apocalypse.
Moreover, Cuomo said, he alone had the power to order such a measure.
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.
*SNIP* This blathering goes on...FOREVER!
"As for his own state’s actions, Cuomo today appears to see little reason for regret or apology.
At one media briefing in April, as New Yorkers died by the hundreds daily, Cuomo made a bold claim.
'Today, we can say that we have lost many of our brothers and sisters, but we haven’t lost anyone because they didn’t get the right and best health care that they could,' he said. “The way I sleep at night is I believe that we didn’t lose anyone that we could have saved, and that is the only solace when I look at these numbers and I look at this pain that has been created that has to be true.'
Cuomo just last week seemed to double down on the sentiment.
'I don’t think New Yorkers feel or Americans feel that government failed them here,' he said in an interview. 'I think they feel good about what government has done. ... Their health care system did respond. This was not Italy, with all due respect. ... There were not people in hallways who didn’t get health care treatment.'
'Government didn’t cause or allow anyone to die.'"
Came in from Europe and De Blastio/Cuomo acerbated it.
Compare NYC with HK.
HK did it right NYC, as always did it wrong
Didn't the SF mayor encourage people to party up Chinese New Year in China town because Orange Man racist?
Sending the infected elderly back into assisted living homes was a particularly brilliant move. Good thing it was a liberal democrat that did it. Anybody else woulda been lynched in the media.
In other news the Queen Mother is safe!
Thought that was p-lousy that said that....could be mistaken
Cuomo didn’t allow them to die, his crap for care hospital system run by his magnificence and his direct intervention in assisted living KILLED them. He plays proud, but he is a murdering psychopath.
Lots of them in goobermint these days. They need to be hammered into the ground like a tent peg.
“best health care?” Hell, he even admitted during his daily briefings that putting people on ventilators was like a death sentence for most. But did he call for a better treatment? No, he called for MORE ventilators.
He didn’t just sent the infected patients back.
Up until a couple of weeks ago, he allowed infected staff back, too.
I found this gem from February 3rd:
Plus NYC inherently a cauldron for beewing up a big hotspot. Plus a decent chance that the NY strain via Italy was more virulent than the West Coast strain more directly from China. (That of course is cause for further speculation in its own right.)
Both guvs forced covid patients into nursing homes whoch presumably goosed numners in both states. Cuomo of course made HCQ hard to prescribe, don’t know about Newsom on that count.
There is two major problems in New York State and New York City. The two problems are named New York, Governor, Andrew Cuomo & NTC, Mayor, Bill De blasio!!! Both of these low life Democrat Party, human scum and vermin, Hate America, characters should be sitting in prison, for in reality, sorry to say they both are murderers of NY innocents by the dozens.
And to boot they both are destroying the city of NY, The great White Way, The Broadway Theater Strip, the fine mid town Manhattan restaurants, China town eateries, Little Italy chow places, etc. They have killed the brilliant NYC Subway System...filling it with the “Homeless, sick & criminal souls, so that no decent citizen or tourist, will ride the subway. So...say goodbye to Queens, the Bronx, Staten Island & Brooklyn...too!!!
The good news today is that a major poll is showing Biden/Obama is losing in NY State to POTUS, Donald J. Trump!!! The famous NY Liberals are abandoning NY by the thousands heading to Florida & Texas or they are staying and voting for Trumpie!!! Goodness....California might even do the same act!!! Hope so!!! Go Trumpie!!!
London Breed? Is that the gay porn star name equivalent of "Buck Naked?"
He is right. Going by the numbers, New York State is worse than Italy. Much much worse.
Deaths per million of the population
New York State 1464
Italy 529
Did Newsome force nursing homes to take active COVID patients?
The delusion is strong in that one.
Like demonic grade.
A dream come true.
If Trump takes CA and NY no amount of vote fraud will be able to stop him.
Keep praying.....
i think what it proves is that the same disease can have very different health outcomes, depending on what individual doctors and patients do, and what public health policy authorities do (or don’t do) in various jurisdictions.
in short to quote a famous author, “Fear is the mind killer.”
more to the point, fear is a killer. period.
worst case, one size fits all, gov’t run edicts and “solutions”, can often end up killing more people than they help. NY and NYC are a prime examples of that, imho.
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