People walk through Times Square, which borders New York City’s Broadway theater district during the coronavirus pandemic. The | Spencer Platt / Getty Images
NEW YORK – The governors of New York and New Jersey and the mayor of New York City met with their teams last weekend and did not like what they were seeing: reports that new Covid-19 outbreaks They were exploding across the country just as they were preparing for a crucial phase of reopening.
After three months of hospitals in the war zone and a body count of nearly 50,000, its once-empty streets were filled with open-air diners and retailers that increased sales through Plexiglas. They had already frozen their economies once to flatten the curve. And with a collective deficit of $ 30 billion to prove it, they didn’t want to have to do it again.
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But as the coronavirus emerged from Los Angeles to Miami, he left them no choice, even as their own case totals continued to decline.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio officials, both publicly and in interviews, explained how and why they made the decisions to reverse the reopens that They had already started in and around the largest city in the United States.
New Jersey’s Murphy was the first to raise the red flag on Monday.
“We are looking at these other states, and again we wish them the best to get this under control, that there is no question about it, but either this virus is dragging you or you are getting ahead of yourself,” Murphy said in an interview. “I don’t think there is a middle ground.”
Health officials in Philadelphia, whose suburbs extend into southern Jersey, did the same the following day.
Within 48 hours, Cuomo and de Blasio announced that New York City residents would not roll out napkins inside their favorite restaurants on July 6 as they expected. Typically, despite agreeing on the same course, political rivals ran to spread the news on the first Wednesday morning. (Cuomo was forced to point out that he had the last word, noting that the pause only applied to New York City.)
For state economies dependent on tourism and heavy property taxes, keeping the interior of bars and restaurants off-limits in the heart of summer is a devastating combination for thousands of unemployed employees, business owners, and state chests who they are already hungry.
The timeline for when they might return is far from safe, especially as hospitals in Arizona, Texas, and Florida see waves of cases involving younger, healthier residents who are much more likely to spread the virus on contact. close with others in restaurants and bars. .
“Storm clouds are on the horizon,” Cuomo told reporters from his 38th-floor office in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday when thunder and lightning struck outside. He, along with Murphy and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont, instituted mandatory quarantines for travelers coming from 16 states experiencing significant spikes in new cases. “Most likely, whatever we do, the people of those 16 states are going to get this far, and that’s how we caught it the first time.”
For most of the past month, leaders in New York and New Jersey could argue that the worst days of the pandemic were over. When they repeated warnings that Covid-19 still posed a threat, they also projected reasonably optimistic deadlines for when popular recreational activities could resume.
Reports of new cases declined steadily, even with significant increases in the region’s evidence capacity. The transmission rate and point positivity in the new tests had dropped below critical thresholds and appeared to remain. Coronavirus-related hospitalizations were located in just a fraction of where they were in mid-April, when dozens of facilities were forced to reject patients after hitting capacity.
Improvements in public health data allowed loosening of directives around social gatherings and economic activity.
Major events, including dozens of protests against police brutality, received an official green light to proceed. Companies that were once considered nonessential, now outfitted with social distance signs and buckets of hand sanitizer, slowly began to open their doors. The subway passengers slid up. Blankets and coolers sprouted inside parks and along beach fronts. Murphy and de Blasio were taking photos of themselves in outdoor restaurants.
But as Covid-19 began to withdraw from public consciousness in and around New York City, new groups began to detonate elsewhere.
California, once considered the model for suppressing the coronavirus within the United States, began experiencing outbreaks in all southern counties. In Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott had banned local officials from enforcing directives for residents to wear masks, reports of new cases rose from 871 on June 7 to 6,584 on June 24, the same day that governors of the three states imposed quarantines for some traveling states. (Abbott reversed the mask course on Thursday.)
On June 27, data from Johns Hopkins University reported that the nation’s seven-day average for new cases had increased by more than 40 percent in just one week. Even when New York and New Jersey appeared on the road to contain the virus, the busy metropolitan area was surrounded by incoming threats.
“If all the outbreaks had been in rural areas due to the meat packing plants, that probably would have given us less alarm,” a senior official in the Blasio administration told POLITICO. “They were multiple states in multiple parts of the country. It is not just south or southeast. It’s Texas, Arizona and the west coast. “
The region’s quarantine order, which initially applied to just eight states, grew to 16.
Those threats complicated the already messy public health case by allowing restaurants and bars to reopen their dining rooms. Sedentary indoor activities are already risky when it comes to coronavirus transmission; Those risks are exacerbated each time a user removes the mask for a bite or a drink.
“That makes it very different from, you’re in a shopping mall, shopping or worshiping,” Murphy told POLITICO.
Another alarming data point was a JPMorgan analysis of credit card data that found that restaurant transactions were “particularly predictive” of future outbreaks when compared to the Johns Hopkins University case tracker.
Meanwhile, at Cuomo’s office, rising case totals in states like Florida, which followed Governor Ron DeSantis’s reopening of restaurants, bars and gyms at limited capacity, triggered a reevaluation of the governor’s timeline. to allow some indoor activities for New York City’s densely populated facilities, according to an official.
Equally alarming, with relaxed confinement restrictions, many New Yorkers and New Jerseyans struggled to distance themselves socially while relieving cabin fever.
Open-air bars along the Jersey shore were filled with partiers, many of whom were not wearing masks, while videos of Manhattan’s East Village, a hub of city nightlife, resembled Bourbon Street around 2019.
Both Cuomo and Murphy cited noncompliance with existing guidelines on cookouts and takeaways as a major factor in why they were halted, even when other indoor facilities such as casinos, museums and libraries were allowed to reopen. Murphy began naming and shaming the places that had allowed “fools” to ignore social distancing protocols. Cuomo, unsurprisingly, took veiled photos of Blasio’s apparent inability to enforce those directives within the city.
Meanwhile, restaurant owners who had been preparing for weeks to welcome diners to their tables kept the bag.
Marilou Halvorsen, president and CEO of the New Jersey Hospitality and Restaurant Association, said she was only warned an hour in advance that Murphy would indefinitely delay resumption of food indoors. Some restaurants had already spent thousands of dollars on food inventory and cleaning supplies before a reopening date that was less than 72 hours away.
In New York City, further delays could jeopardize the fate of small businesses already struggling to navigate the city guide around outdoor seating, particularly with the capacity and traffic patterns that make it difficult to install tables near bicycle and bus lanes.
“They are desperate to open,” said Council Member Helen Rosenthal, a Democrat who represents the Upper West Side. “They are doing everything possible to be responsible.”
The state’s change in its reopening orientation may force some restaurants and small businesses to close, said Council Member Joe Borelli, a Republican who represents Staten Island.
“It is really frustrating that everything we have been told seems to change and amend two weeks later,” he said. “The reopening has been ruined beyond belief.”
In the absence of treatment or a vaccine, along with a coherent national plan, Borelli’s feelings will likely be shared as other states fight to reopen safely, something that is no less painful given what New York and New Jersey already they have lived.
“I guess it’s easy being a quarterback on Monday morning,” Murphy said, when asked if other states should have followed the Northeast playbook. “When you have open borders, as we have among our 50 states, or at least the lower 48, it becomes really complicated when you have a lot of states that are having outbreaks right now.”
