Restrictions are beginning to ease across New York City as the rate of COVID-19 infections continues to wane and more New Yorkers are getting access to the long-awaited vaccine.
Yet one wonders if we’re rushing into this. Shouldn’t we try to walk instead of run toward reopening?
On March 17, embattled Governor Andrew Cuomo unveiled a host of plans to reopen indoor gyms and remove nightly curfews for restaurants, bars and movie theaters.
The next day, at a press conference that wasn’t open to questions and answers from the press, the governor gleefully announced the return of some fans to Citi Field and Yankee Stadium when the Mets and Yankees start the new season in April. That follows the reintroduction of some fans at indoor arenas like Madison Square Garden and Barclays Center.
Part of Cuomo’s undeniable success at curbing infection and mortality, in general, in NYC over the past year came from his mantra to “follow the data.” Apparently these reopening decisions are doing just that, as dramatic drops have occurred in NYC infection and mortality rates.
On Feb. 25 NYC had a seven-day average of 4,043 cases per day. As of March 20, this has dipped to 2,700, which is simply remarkable.
But is the data reliable or indeed ready this time round? Some medical experts speak of a kind of see-saw effect: as the lens has focused on vaccinations, testing has gone down, and leading public health experts have stated that the daily number of cases could be almost three times as many as those reported.
And that’s not even bringing to the table the multiple, unpredictable and as-yet insufficiently analyzed COVID-19 virus mutation proliferations. The first New York City case of the P.1 variant, which originated in Brazil and is contributing to the COVID-19 crisis there, was detected Saturday in a 90-year-old Brooklyn man who became infected but has no prior travel history.
On the vaccine front, more than 7 million New Yorkers have already received at least one dose. But the vaccine still is not yet available to every New Yorker, and won’t be until at least the end of next month, under President Biden’s mandate that all states make the shot available by May 1, the latest.
Why extend all of these openings simultaneously, at this moment, when not everyone can get the shot,, and variants of COVID-19 threaten to send infections back out of control again?
Why not wait just a few weeks longer to get this right and avoid a third wave?
We’d love to get an answer from the governor on this — if only he’d take the reporters’ questions.
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