Posted on 05/18/2020 4:06:55 PM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
California’s governor and San Francisco’s mayor worked together to act early in confronting the COVID threat. For Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio, it was a different story, and 27,000 New Yorkers have died so far.
By March 14, London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco, had seen enough. For weeks, she and her health officials had looked at data showing the evolving threat of COVID-19. In response, she’d issued a series of orders limiting the size of public gatherings, each one feeling more arbitrary than the last. She’d been persuaded that her city’s considerable and highly regarded health care system might be insufficient for the looming onslaught of infection and death.
“We need to shut this shit down,” Breed remembered thinking.
Three days later in New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio was thinking much the same thing. He’d been publicly savaged for days for not closing the city’s school system, and even his own Health Department was in revolt at his inaction. And so, having at last been convinced every hour of delay was a potentially deadly misstep, de Blasio said it was time to consider a shelter-in-place order. Under it, he said, it might be that only emergency workers such as police officers and health care providers would be allowed free movement.
“I think it’s gotten to a place,” de Blasio said at a news conference, “where the decision has to be made very soon.”
In San Francisco, Breed cleaned up her language in a text to California Gov. Gavin Newsom. But she was no less emphatic: The city needed to be closed. Newsom had once been San Francisco’s mayor, and he had appointed Breed to lead the city’s Fire Commission in 2010.
Newsom responded immediately, saying she should coordinate with the counties surrounding San Francisco as they too were moving toward a shutdown. Breed said she spoke to representatives of those counties on March 15 and their public health officials were prepared to make the announcement on their own. On March 16, with just under 40 cases of COVID-19 in San Francisco and no deaths, Breed issued the order banning all but essential movement and interaction.
“I really feel like we didn’t have a lot of good options,” Breed said.
In an interview, California Health and Human Services Secretary Dr. Mark Ghaly said it was critical to allow Northern California counties to rely on their own experts, act with a degree of autonomy and thus perhaps pave the way for the state to expand on what they had done. And three days after San Francisco and its neighboring counties were closed, Newsom, on March 19, imposed the same restrictions on the rest of California.
Breed, it turns out, had sent de Blasio a copy of her detailed shelter-in-place order. She thought New York might benefit from it.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, however, reacted to de Blasio’s idea for closing down New York City with derision. It was dangerous, he said, and served only to scare people. Language mattered, Cuomo said, and “shelter-in-place” sounded like it was a response to a nuclear apocalypse.
Moreover, Cuomo said, he alone had the power to order such a measure.
For years, Cuomo and de Blasio, each of whom has harbored national political ambitions, had engaged in a kind of intrastate cold war, a rivalry that to many often felt childish and counterproductive. When de Blasio finally decided to close the city’s schools, it was Cuomo who rushed to make the public announcement, claiming it as his decision.
“No city in the state can quarantine itself without state approval,” Cuomo said of de Blasio’s call for a shelter-in-place order. “I have no plan whatsoever to quarantine any city.”
Cuomo’s conviction didn’t last. On March 22, he, too, shuttered his state. The action came six days after San Francisco had shut down, five days after de Blasio suggested doing similarly and three days after all of California had been closed by Newsom. By then, New York faced a raging epidemic, with the number of confirmed cases at 15,000 doubling every three or four days.
Health officials well understood the grim mathematics. One New York City official said of those critical days in March: “We had been pretty clear with the state about the implications of every day, every hour, every minute.”
As of May 15, there were nearly 350,000 COVID-19 cases in New York and more than 27,500 deaths, nearly a third of the nation’s total. The corresponding numbers in California: just under 75,000 cases and slightly more than 3,000 deaths. In New York City, the country’s most populous and densest, there had been just under 20,000 deaths; in San Francisco, the country’s second densest and 13th most populous, there had been 35.
*SNIP* This blathering goes on...FOREVER!
And the media (except for fox) is of course silent
I like the chart but it is Mortality Rate, not Morality Rate.
LOL...well, we are talking NY and CA :-)
LOL
Some gyms opened today.
simple answers
Population density New York State - 421/sq mile
Population density California - 251.3/sq mile
Population density of major NY cities
Population density NYC - 27,016/sq mile (pop 8.4 mil)
Population density Buffalo - 6,436/sq mile (pop 0.256 mil)
Population density Rochester - 2,282/sq mile (pop 0.206 mil)
Population density Yonkers - 10,827/sq mile (pop 0.200 mil)
(you can see in those numbers the massive factor alone NYC is)
Population density of major California cities
Population density Los Angeles - 7,544.6/sq mile (pop 4.0 mil)
Population density San Diego - 4,456/sq mile (pop 1.4 mil)
Population density San Jose - 5,823/sq mile (pop 1,033 mil)
Population density San Francisco - 17,246/sq mile (0.900 mil)
The total populations of just the states top cities combined and is not very far apart, but the population density is not close - NY’s population is denser.
NY major city average population density - 11,640.27/sq mile
Cal major city average population density - 8,767/sq mile
New York state has about 67% greater population density than California, and its biggest cities have on average about 33% greater population density. Also nearly half of New York state’s population lives in its most densely populated city, New York City, with about another 4 million in nearby outlying New York state communities.
Meanwhile, California’s population, though lager than New York is less dense and more widely distributed, with a greater rural population - 5.187 million to New York’s 1.366 million. Even if you compare New York suburbs to California suburbs, New York’s are more densely populated and less spread out than California’s.
Population density and big cities instead of suburban and rural populations for a greater % of the population is one big factor in the different Wuhan Virus experience between the two states.
“As for his own state’s actions, Cuomo today appears to see little reason for regret or apology.”
This dunderhead is too stupid to regret and too arrogant to apologize. Because of his idiotic decisions thousands died needlessly. But do NY voters even comprehend this?
Actually the “Queen Mother” has been dead for years 2002, King George VIth’s widow, former queen and mother of Queen ElizabethII. I think we heard about her so much in the news that people assumed that’s what England calls the Queen, also both named Elizabeth so makes it even more confusing
Western NY has a much lower population density and we were just mildly inconvenienced. Don't get me wrong - I am ready for this lock-down to end, but we need to be prudent and open carefully with social distancing to prevent a second wave.
The virus involved with both of our coasts was genetically different, it had mutated into two different viruses, thus the potential difference in mortality. Further mutations are taking place with at least 10 different versions circulating around the country. Some more virulent than others...
Is this a back-door trial balloon for Breed as VP? Of course she has no foreign policy experience, but neither does self-promoting Stacey Abrams, so I guess stranger things have happened.
I used the term in reference to the Cuomo’s mother.
“Meanwhile, California’s population, though lager than New York is less dense and more widely distributed...”
I’ve only been to LA once, and NYC numerous times.
The first thing that comes to my mind is LA’s multi-lane highways jammed with vehicles.
The second thing that comes to my mind is NYC’s crowded trains, subways, buses and sidewalks.
There may also be two different versions of the virus as well - the Chinese strain in California and the European strain in NYC. Although the Chinese version sure killed a lot of folks in China, so the variation may not be a huge factor.
“There may also be two different versions of the virus as well - the Chinese strain in California and the European strain in NYC. Although the Chinese version sure killed a lot of folks in China, so the variation may not be a huge factor.”
All strains of the virus lead back to the first strain in Wuhan China. There is no “European” strain that did originate in Wuhan. So far the different strains are more similar than different with only minor mutations that do not change how the virus is operating.
The references to a “European” strain only means that after some European areas were infected from Wuhan, there were some minor mutations over time as it circulated in Europe, and before some infected folks in Europe came to the U.S. The only difference is not so much the virus, but what route, via flights from Asia or flights from Europe some particular infected person arrived. They are so NOT different, the virus, it is wrong to refer to any one strain in a way suggesting it is materially different than the original from Wuhan.
I grew up in southern California and later worked for about forty years in and around New York City.
My first experience with the subways was that I immediately understood the snide reference to them as “cattle cars”.
I had been in Japan a bit but never took the trains when I was there briefly each time. Had I taken their commuter trains I would have later thought the New York City subways were “roomy” by comparison. In Japan they actually have helpers who squeez the last passengers into the train car so the doors can close.
The streets and avenues in New York City are every bit as clogged with traffic in the daytime on weekdays as the worst clogged California freeway at rush hour; and don’t even ask about getting by car into and out of Manhattan for work - I think you’d prefer the crowded California freeways. If you own a car while living in Manhattan, when you can afford the luxury, it is something you do not use for getting to work. You’d rather deal with the “cattle cars” than the streets.
If I miss one thing most from southern California it is the mountains, real mountains, not the hills they call mountains here close to New York City. Our area in southern California has mountains very close for many miles along the north and on the east. The highest peak, San Gorgonio is about 11,500 feet, with many other peaks in the range no less than about 1,000 shorter than San Gorgonio. For most of our area, all along the north the general elevation of the mountains is in the 4,000ft range. Growing up with them as your visual backyard every day is not something you forget, or want to.
Too bad I hate the dominant politics of California, or I might be back there. But my family there knows that will not happen, anymore than a new Ronald Reagan getting elected there.
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