It's completely true! Bill de Blasio, Mayor of NYC, DID tell people that "if you're not sick, you should should be going about your life." And did encourage people to continue to eat out in restaurants. Those statements were made the same time Newsom shut down California. And I'm sorry California did more than a "little" better than NY when you compare all numbers and population sizes.
While the total population of NY state is 19.1 million people. Approximately only 3% of the cases and deaths happened in upstate NY -which has a geography of population similar to CA. I know, as I lived in L.A. for a few years, traveling back & forth to San Diego, Ventura County, & San Francisco.
Meanwhile 97% of the cases and deaths in the beginning happened in the people in NYC & L.I. due to the
dense concentration of the population in about a 70 mile radius. In the beginning, back in March & April, NYS, as well as the U.S., didn't have knowledge of what can stop COVID from spreading.
In the beginning, this is a typical day at rush hour in NYC:
Inside a subway train or bus for an average of 15 min to an hour. Where it says "alamy" think of the COVID virus floating around instead.
NOW: we know that being densely packed next to someone for more than 15 minutes and in an indoor environment with the ventilation system pushing COVID around meant NYC never stood a chance.
It caused the virus to spread like a wildfire through dry grass.
Since the whole state was given the same info and state-wide mandates, if the density of environment wasn't such a strong factor, the rest of the state would have had the same percentage in numbers of cases and deaths. The only times the state split and did something different is when we reopened in different Phases.
We also didn't know until Mid April that the CDC, WHO and Dr Fauci recommended wearing face masks, which would have saved so many people, in close proximity, who can't maintain social distancing.
On April 15th, the NY Mask Mandate went into effect. It was the first mask mandate in the U.S. We had just past the apex and were on the way down. However, like 40 other states, we could have gone up again, BUT WE DIDN'T AND HAVEN'T:
As for DeBlasio making that statement. I remember that time accurately. This whole event is seared into my memory as only someone with PTSD has. It was at the beginning, when we only had a few confirmed cases. The CDC demanded to do ALL the testing throughout all the U.S. Even when NYS said it wanted to set up it's own testing program, the CDC demanded that it be the ONLY and OFFICIAL testing program. So, NY as well as all other states had to send their tests to the CDC. They said they were on top of things, and that there would be Contact Tracing, so we would know where all the cases are. So NYS and NYC thought the virus was contained here. I remember succinctly, as I was going to a Celine Dion concert on Mar 5, (Day 5) and we were all hoping it wouldn't be canceled. I even posted here about going and pics of a full audience.
But, then the CDC could only send back 8-10 tests back - and after a 5 day lag
for each batch. Meanwhile we were getting more suspected cases, that the state & city told to quarantine.
It wasn't until about Day 8, that the CDC finally ADMITTED that
they only did 8 tests THE WHOLE DAY, not per state, not per batch, the WHOLE DAY, and that they do not have the manpower or budget or a Pandemic Response Team to help them, that NYC realized we were in dire trouble. Thank God, NYS had started it's own testing program. But, the CDC debacle put us way behind getting control of the pandemic here. Within
3 weeks we had 20,000 cases here in
NYC,
not the rest of the state. And our hospital system, within that 45 mile radius, of about 62 hospitals were overwhelmed with more cases than they could imagine.
We also didn't have the medical procedures NYS back in March and April that we have now: The procedure of proning, that has saved so many patients from ever being put on a ventilator. The use of the 4 drugs: Remdesivir, Dexamethasone (steroids,) Convalescent Plasma, and Cytokine Inhibitors. There are other procedures not listed. One of them is NOT hydroxychloroquine.
I'm tired of other states telling us they had it bad. Or how they handled it so much better. This is the actual numbers on Mar 23. Three weeks after we got our first case. Every. other. state. on this list had between 600-1800 cases spread out over your WHOLE state. (I'm not counting NJ. as they got infected from traveling back & forth between NY & NJ.) WE had over 20,000 in 3 weeks in a 45 mile radius. You had 18,000 LESS.
ENOUGH of you criticizing us. We had approximately 216,468 cases in NYC alone, and brought our numbers down to about 5-10 deaths per day throughout the state. NYC had zero deaths this weekend. And someone tried to take that away from us yesterday.
The only time that a state has been similar is AZ, last week, where they got 20,000 new cases in 3 DAYS. TX too. And FL, yesterday, which had a one day total number of cases is greater than NYS' one day total ever. And YES. I pray for those people, going though what we did. It's actually worse.
There is a lot of schadenfreude waiting to happen by many posters here. As much as you SAY you hope NY doesn't spike, you will darn well relish when it happens. It's all over some of your posts. Veiled, but it's there.
If you think WE NYer's aren't afraid of a spike happening, that just shows how clueless you are to how we know how tenuous we have it. AND WHILE we have it, we ARE going to celebrate it. Because we've lost too many NYers who don't have tomorrow.
That actually makes the poster and the fact that it was made and for sale even worse IMO.
(Although, I'm sure that's not a uniquely NY thing.)
