If only the rest of the country could handle COVID as well as New York: That’s the lament of progressive commentators as COVID cases increase in the Sun Belt and the South.
Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin greeted New York City the other day after she reported no deaths for the first time during the pandemic. This is what the competent government can achieve, she said.
Obama’s former assistant Valerie Jarrett tweeted: “Short-term sacrifice saves lives!”
Neera Tanden, director of the Center for American Progress group of progressive experts, compared the response in Democratic states to that of Republican states: “It turns out that we were lucky that this virus hit blue states first. They had the idea to take steps to stop the spread of the virus in their states. “
All of this is perverse given that New York is only now emerging from one of the worst COVID debacles on the planet.
However, there is a widespread feeling that New York has been blessed with its exemplary leadership. Governor Cuomo, incredibly, has very high approval ratings.
If you are going to present yourself to New York as a model, every official in the country has a new roadmap to handle the virus: See that a significant percentage of residents of your largest city get infected, just prevent your hospital system from being seen. Overwhelmed, implement a policy that increases infections and deaths in nursing homes, suffers more than 30,000 deaths and a higher per capita death rate than any country in the world, and then, after all that, be hailed as a hero.
If it worked for Cuomo, why not all the other governors in the nation?
To be fair, New York had many factors working against it. It was first affected, while the virus and how to treat it were still not well understood, and New York City is an international travel hub with densely populated neighborhoods and a well-traveled public transportation system. Of course he was hit.
The outbreaks in other parts of the country are nothing like what happened in New York, at least not yet. What states like Florida, Arizona, Texas and California are trying to do is avoid New York’s fate, even when given a lecture on the superiority of the Empire State’s approach.
The positivity rate, the percentage of tests showing positive results, has increased in all these places, and in Arizona it has exceeded 20 percent. During the worst outbreak in New York, the seven-day moving average for the positivity rate reached an astronomical 50 percent.
Deaths are also increasing in all of these states, but the scale so far is completely different from what New York experienced. In New York, some 32,500 people have died. In Florida, a state of comparable population, some 4,300 people have died. In Texas and California, both largest states, about 3,300 and 7,000 people died.
In per capita terms, New York has had 1,668 deaths per million. In contrast, Arizona has had 308, Florida 199, California 179, and Texas 114.
Just in terms of absolute numbers, New York should be a watchword, not something to emulate.
He’s in a better situation now, but only after the virus has burned through much of the city. A state survey found that more than 20 percent of New York City residents have antibodies to the virus. In clinics in some affected neighborhoods, about 60 percent of people have tested positive for antibodies. This is not an experience that someone wants to duplicate.
The fact is that the virus is not interested in scoring partisan points or establishing the superiority of the Red State government over the Blue State. It is highly infectious and is now hitting places that were lost before in the pandemic as they have started to reopen.
We should wish them all the best, and fervently hope that they do not suffer the same calamity that happened in New York.
Twitter: @RichLowry
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