A report published late on Thursday pulls back the curtain on New York City Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio’s much-criticized response to the coronavirus pandemic that aggressively spread throughout his city, ultimately leading to NYC being responsible for seeding the majority of the outbreaks across the United States.
The New York Times report details de Blasio’s resistance to calls to take action to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which originated in China, based on the advice of the head of New York City’s public hospital system, Dr. Mitchell Katz.
Katz said in emails to de Blasio’s aides that there was no evidence that closing events would stop the spread of the coronavirus and expressed concern about hurting the economy. The Times reports:
For Mr. de Blasio, the arguments in Dr. Katz’s March 10 email, obtained by The New York Times, appeared to hold sway over the calls for greater restrictions on daily life from top Health Department officials, who were alarmed by public health surveillance data pointing toward a looming outbreak.
The mayor did not order major closures, including of schools and restaurants, until almost a week after the email — a delay that epidemiologists say allowed the virus to spread. …
The mayor last week shocked the Health Department by taking away its authority to oversee contact tracing, giving the job to Health and Hospitals, the agency overseen by Dr. Katz. It is a monumental task: The city must build and run an army of some 2,500 people to track and trace the close contacts of every infected person.
The mayor’s decision to shift the responsibility to the public hospital system illustrated how Mr. de Blasio’s faith in Dr. Katz’s leadership abilities took precedence over the experience and knowledge of his public health officials, who have clashed with the mayor over a variety of issues.
Epidemiologists, former public health officials and the city comptroller criticized the move, pointing out that the Health Department has for decades expertly performed contact tracing for diseases like tuberculosis and H.I.V., and had been preparing for two weeks to run the expanded tracing operation for Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.
De Blasio’s response reportedly prompted some of his aides to threaten to quit if he did not take action to combat the spread of the coronavirus.
New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer has reportedly requested for documents to be turned over, as an investigation has been launched into de Blasio’s handling of the pandemic.
Numerous former officials and experts interviewed by the Times were stunned by de Blasio’s decision to take the contact tracing program from Health Department and give it to Health and Hospitals, which they noted were two very different entities.
“By the second week of March, the city’s public health warning system — known as the syndromic surveillance system — began strongly signaling the spread of a flulike illness, officials said,” the Times reports. “City Hall wanted to see firm numbers of positive test results before ordering closures.”
While publicly the city’s Health Department was not recommending closing events, “inside the department, staff members were deeply concerned that their warnings were not getting through,” with some even being “ready to walk out in protest” and “threatening to quit,” the Times reports.
The March 10 email from Katz that the Times referenced argued against closing the city, with Katz saying that it was best to keep it open. “Canceling large gatherings gives people the wrong impression of this illness,” Katz wrote. “Many of the events are being canceled anyway, and fewer people are going out. However, it is very different when the government starts telling people to do this.”
Katz also cited Italy, saying he does not believe its “terrible problem” will end up playing out in New York City, and concluded that shutting down events is unnecessary and would potentially stoke fear among those already suffering from mental health issues.
New York City has been the hardest hit city from the coronavirus pandemic in the western world, and New York State, which is under Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo’s leadership, has been by far the hardest hit state in the U.S.
New York Times reporter Alex Burns called the email “smoking gun stuff” that revealed “NYC’s lethal cluelessness in the early days of the pandemic – and a longer-running pattern of dysfunctional health policy decisions under de Blasio.”
this is smoking gun stuff about NYC's lethal cluelessness in the early days of the pandemic – and a longer-running pattern of dysfunctional health policy decisions under de Blasiohttps://t.co/R6Vo8H1qTI pic.twitter.com/zze15pAb7Q
— Alex Burns (@alexburnsNYT) May 15, 2020
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