New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo must immediately unite around a plan as close as possible to that announced by the Mayor yesterday (Oct. 4), to try to slow the frightening increase in COVID in our city.
Are we going to end up saying, “A plague on both their houses”? How many COVID deaths will be due to delayed action if these guys can’t work together?
We are risk communication consultants who have worked on pandemic planning and outbreak response with governments and international agencies since 2003 – including the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the NYS Department of Health.
We long ago learned from our public health clients that it is crucial for local governments to respond quickly to emerging outbreaks with “targeted and layered” precautions to manage the spread of the pathogen. By that standard New York City and State were disastrously belated in their response to COVID’s spread in March – and much of the rest of the country was disastrously premature in locking down places where the spread was still minimal and targeted and layered precautions might have been sufficient.
Now is New York’s second chance to get it right.
We are not fans of Mayor de Blasio, but since he is doing what we consider the right thing – responding hard and fast to signs of a COVID resurgence in our city – we will swallow our animus and support him – hard and fast.
One main reason for our animus is also the reason we strongly support the Mayor’s plan to impose drastic measures in 20 (so far) hot spot and “warm spot” neighborhoods: We were stunned, furious, and bewildered in early March when he failed to ban large gatherings, close schools, and impose other rigorous social-distancing measures at a time when COVID cases seemed to be doubling at least every six days. You all know what the NYC spring curve looked like – that terrifying steep mountain.
At the time, we were not picturing the sort of lockdown that Wuhan introduced to the world, just really strong “targeted, layered” social distancing measures as described in CDC pandemic influenza plans. Deploying those measures promptly might or might not have slowed the soon-to-be Alpine rise in the NYC curve; a full lockdown might or might not have been necessary in New York City and some other parts of the state where the virus was already spreading widely.
We will never know. The Mayor and the Governor both dawdled, at least partly because they couldn’t get along with each other. One adjective that describes leaders who prioritize their personal feuds over their people’s welfare: Trumpian.
Back in March, the Mayor fatally resisted his health department’s urgent push for strong immediate measures. This time, the Mayor and the city’s health department seem firmly united. But the Governor’s okay is needed, and is still in doubt.
From our work over the years with many of these people, we can attest that the Mayor is getting extraordinarily good public health advice in this desperate situation, in which the goal is not to win, but to lose less.
Like early March – but with vastly more resources and understanding of what we’re up against – right now is the time for NYC to try to slow the terrifying rise in COVID, before the whole city climbs a mountainous epidemic curve yet again, watches the death toll mount and the hospitals become overwhelmed yet again, and must lock down yet again.
If the Mayor and the Governor cannot negotiate their way to taking appropriate measures today in the neighborhoods where those measures are needed, there will be no need to wish them a plague on both their houses. They will again face such a plague. And so will the rest of us.
Copyright © 2020 by Jody Lanard and Peter M. Sandman
