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Comment by throwaway5752 | Hacker News Reader

There is no doubt Cuomo should be the national point person for the response to the crisis based on his performance so far. He is independently working with regional manufacturing to retool to make critical medical PPE and ventilators, and has organized a regional coalition including CT, NJ, and PA. I have not agreed with him all the time, but his crisis management has been exemplary and he will have saved many lives in NY by the time this is done.

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I think that Gov Newsom of CA has been doing a way better job than Cuomo:

- implements stricter measures faster and more decisively, while having a lower case count

- doesn't fight with his mayors or the President

- no false promises or statements that need to be taken back days later

He's done great, too, and if either of them were in charge of coordinating the response it would be preferable.

Newsom referred to California as a "Nation State" repeatedly in his latest address, which is a great way to tell the Federal Government to pound sand. He took Trump's call for each state to fend for itself seriously. I wouldn't say that he's not fighting with the president.

He's been doing a great job though

> He took Trump's call for each state to fend for itself seriously.

Is that really fighting with the President?

Republicans have a fundamentally different philosophy about disaster management that matches their general philosophy about government.

Democrats generally prefer a centralized response, while Republicans want local control. I haven't heard any Republican object to Calfornia acting independently. That's actually doing what Republicans prefer.

I suppose maybe he hasn't gone as far as "fighting with" the President over coronavirus. They've had "fights" in the past on other issues but you're right in that Newsom was very California-focussed recently.

I think Newsom has realized that the federal government was caught with its pants down and will be useless for the rest of this crisis. He needed to step up and he did. Calling California a "Nation State" was a deliberate way of saying "we're on our own and we should be ready for that". It's a dig at the President but maybe not fighting words. It struck me as surprisingly anti-federalist, states-rights positive thing for a Democrat governor to be saying though. If the leader of a southern state was using those words, I'd be relatively upset (we fought a war over this in the 1800s).

The fighting will no doubt resume when this is all over.

But what's the intelligent local way to deal with a pandemic? All I see is ignoring the problem, insisting it's some kind of liberal conspiracy.

Wouldn't it be wild if this triggered secession?

It might. Historically pandemics have remade the global map and socio-economic system. The combination of WW1 + Spanish Flu led to the collapse of the Russian, Austrian, Ottoman, and Chinese empires along with the formation of the UK and a resurgent American, German, and Italian nationalism. Black Death led to the collapse of the feudal system and the rise of bourgeoise capitalism. The Plague of Justinian laid to rest any hopes that the Byzantine empire would recapture the Western Roman Empire and lead to a reunified Rome.

I could see this being the start of a ~10 year period of social unrest, plague, and natural calamities that eventually destroys the nation-state in favor of a loose conglomeration of city-states.

I see the appeal of a "confederacy" in the abstract sense of loosely-associated states that fall under a common banner in times of war or intense need.

California's population density cannot compare to Downstate New York, so there are some advantages to implement social distancing measures in CA than in NY/NYC.

NYC has the highest population density in the US, and yet Cuomo is fighting against stronger measures in NYC proposed by Mayor De Blasio.

It's a difficult decision to be made. On one hand, short term strong measure will guarantee unemployment and bankruptcies and potentially long term economic impact (talk about another the Great Depression). On the other hand, inaction will inevitably cause millions of deaths including young people. It's a chilling effect to see that "the point of no return" date was already past last week for NY. Very very disturbing. I live in NYC metro and has never been so frightened and furious in my life of 40 years, knowing that in a few weeks/months myself, myself, my family or my friends and colleague could potentially die, all due to 2 months of Federal Government's inaction.

I can't remember the last time I logged in.

I live in in Crown Heights, Brooklyn and I don't want belittle the gravity of the situation at all because we have seen seen 3 obituary entries (all elderly) and have a number of other people who we are praying for in precarious situations.

But your comment strikes me as something out dystopian sci-fi. Our volunteer ems reps as of 4 days ago estimated that 80% of the community had been infected and anecdotally it seems now higher than than that. I do not know anyone who has not had flu like symptoms in the past week. Obviously, that means that I along with my entire immediate family have been slowly recovering from sometimes flue like this past week and G-d willing will feel good again in the next day or days.

And I know that other communities in Brooklyn and upstate NY have similar infection saturation. Thus the official infection numbers are off by factors of 10 which means the death and hospitalization rates are significantly overstated. The danger is in the absolute numbers.

I don't know what to make of all this other than that some large communities have peaked and aren't seeing death in streets as it were.

There's every reason to hope and good reasons to believe that the distancing measures now in effect will give NY the time to ramp up the health care system to accommodate those most badly affected.

I hope someone found something useful in this comment.

I think you are missing one important factor in why so many people are trying to block it. The more people who get it, the more some percentage will develop an infection serious enough to cause them to seek hospital care and some large fraction will need respiration. Most people will not get that sick. So it might feel like why are we panicing over this since we just get sick for a week and then we are over it.

It's because of what happened in Italy, too many people for the hospitals all at once. People over 45 don't get treated, they let them die, as the doctors say in their terrible reports. Washington state is facing the edge of this right now. They delayed all elective surgeries at the hospitals. The hospitals in the Seattle area are started to be at the breaking point. They started building temp hospitals in Soccer fields. Yesterday it was one, now it's many. It was in the that one famous senior citizen's home (25% dead, 50% in hospital, 25% waiting). Now it's in 10 of them here.

This is real and serious.

Given how uncertain these times are, I’m not surprised that anyone who has had a mild cold and up since Jan is now pretty sure it was actually coronavirus. But if it was secretly that widespread, why are 90% people tested coming back negative? In short: listen to the public health experts, not the volunteer EMS.

The public health experts in Trump administration (CDC Director Robert R. Redfield, DHH Secretary Alex Azar has been a bunch of clowns) had not been forthcoming from late Jan up until National Emergency declared last week, either due to gag order or ignoring the fact that travel ban would not save America from this viral outbreak. Even NIH Infectious Disease Dr. Anthony Fauci has had an gag order at one point when Pence was in charge of the Coronavirus Task Force a few weeks back. Yes now it's getting better. But We lost a few weeks of time. In a pandemic, every second earlier save lives!

On the other hand, I follow Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding, Harvard/Johns Hopkins trained Epidemiologist on Twitter[1]. He was the first to blow the whistle in America and say COVID-19 is a "thermal-nuclear" level bad on a later deleted tweet[2], when Wuhan was in hell because the healthcare systems there were crashing in late Jan/early Feb. And now we know, COVID-19 is likely going to cause more death and worse economic tolls than the past nuclear war in WWII.

[1]: https://twitter.com/DrEricDing

[2]: https://disrn.com/news/harvard-epidemiologist-says-coronavir...

90% of people being tested coming back negative either completely upends or misses my narrative depending on the details on the population being tested. there's just not enough there in your hand waiving to address.

dismiss if you will but I was here where within a week everyone went from completely healthy to having the flu.

i don't believe I'm the first to suggest that test based results are completely bogus.

To add some clarification here, I think he is referring to infection rates in the Hassidic community (Crown Heights has a large Hasidic population) in Brooklyn and in upstate New York Hasdic enclaves.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/18/nyregion/Coronavirus-broo...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/17/nyregion/coronavirus-hasi...

Reddit comments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/nyc/comments/fkhgv0/defying_rules_l...

I find this somewhat encouraging.

If the Hasidem aren't dropping dead...well, draw your own conclusions. Yes, I am well aware that they might start dropping dead in the next few weeks.

Inslee is Washington also seems to be doing a good job in similar ways to those too.

This should've been done much sooner, certainly before St. Patrick's Day. He rejected an earlier proposal by De Blasio. It was obvious that this was coming and also clear that NYC would've been hit very hard. No state government has done well.

Couldn't De Blasio have done the same for NYC? (an actual question, I assumed he would have the power). Because pushing the hard decision up the chain seems like a win win for De Blasio, can't be blamed either way.

Sorry what? His state has the highest infection rate and he just NOW did a 100% workforce reduction. He hasn't even issued "a shelter in place" order. BARS WERE OPEN MONDAY. Thousands of deaths will be on his hands. I think he should be criminally prosecuted.

NY needs to be locked down NOW.

I think there's a social engineering aspect of this where it's believed by governments that drastic measures wouldn't be accepted by the public overnight. They think something like a shelter could only go smoothly after a period of ramping up to it with a period of persistent messaging and getting people used to less drastic measures first. Think of how many (more) people would be ignoring this and writing it off as a hoax if they were told out of nowhere that they had to stay home.

We're getting a picture (Burr) that the federal government knew these measures were coming a while back. My guess is that if governors and mayors of large cities had been read in back then they'd have started prepping local measures earlier.

I agree that western governments seem to believe this, but I don't believe it's true. All you have to do is start enforcing the order, and people will start to get the message.

I don't know if it's true or not, but believing it and ramping up to drastic measures isn't negligence and certainly doesn't warrant criminal prosecution, as the commenter suggested.

I think an abrupt enforced order for people to stay home would be a disaster. Aside from all the people who distrust authority for the sake of distrusting authority, and all the resistance and denial it would breed, what happens when law enforcement starts getting sick and infecting all the people they have to forcibly keep home or detain?

For good and for ill, it is Constitutionally problematic to "lock down" an entire state, as it is essentially placing millions of people under arrest, which in the general case is a stupefyingly terrible power for any government to wield.

On the other hand, the state can totally shut down businesses. In circumstances like this, it is not suspect in the least.

I will further note that for Cuomo to be criminally prosecuted, he would need to commit some crime. Now, this happens sometimes in NY government (quite often, really) but it usually involves corruption; I am not aware of any particular law he has violated in acquitting his duties in this matter. Anger may indeed be quite justified, but when politicians are prosecuted for their policies after the fact, this is usually more effective at turning a place into a banana republic than it is at improving the quality of the policies.

Turns out, we do have a law against what he is doing:

Manslaughter: the crime of killing a human being without malice aforethought, or otherwise in circumstances not amounting to murder.

> For good and for ill, it is Constitutionally problematic to "lock down" an entire state, as it is essentially placing millions of people under arrest, which in the general case is a stupefyingly terrible power for any government to wield.

I don't understand why this meme keeps getting repeated, when the power to quarantine has been rather conclusively litigated in the courts.

The power to quarantine individuals and groups of infected people has been well-litigated. But it is a very new thing indeed to tell 7 or 8 million people at a time, around 99% of whom are still expected to be uninfected, that they are now threats, and are under some form of house arrest. This is unprecedented and has never been litigated.

New York's quarantine law, in particular, allows you to challenge the quarantine order in court after 3 days. It is then on the state to demonstrate clear and convincing evidence that you — specifically you — pose a clear threat to the safety of others, and that your confinement is the least restrictive means to contain this threat.

The expectation is not that 99% are uninfected.

Do you expect that when the Shelter In Place orders were issued around the Bay Area earlier that there were 70,000 active cases in the Bay Area? That would be a far higher estimate than I've heard and I would love sources which project it in detail.

> The power to quarantine individuals and groups of infected people has been well-litigated.

So has the power to issue emergency curfews when justified by a compelling state interest, which is what a shelter-in-place order is.

Under a declared emergency, the constitution turns more into "guidelines". Almost no right in the constitution is unlimited.

Speech and movement can be restricted with good cause, and this virus certainly counts. States right now very much have the legal power to say "no gatherings of any sort, no leaving your house without good cause, etc".

> Under a declared emergency, the constitution turns more into "guidelines".

That's certainly the way it's treated nowadays. That doesn't make such treatment right.

> For good and for ill, it is Constitutionally problematic to "lock down" an entire state

Not particularly, curfew and similar restrictions are common emergency measures, and their is no Constitutional difference for greater scale except that it reduces the possibility of it being covert discrimination. And, even if it was, Cuomo had one of the most pressing needs to do it of any state, and was slower than some others. Now, I'm not arguing he was negligent, but he's not a head-and-shoulders above everyone else standout the way he's been portrayed upthread, either.

> On the other hand, the state can totally shut down businesses

Cuomo was slow at that, too.

> I will further note that for Cuomo to be criminally prosecuted, he would need to commit some crime

Untrue. People are criminally prosecuted (and even convicted) without committing crimes all the time. He'd have to be accused of a crime, though.

NY and NYC have a different relationship and needs and a lot falls on the mayor. This played out in Seattle and San Fransisco, too.

> His state has the highest infection rate

NY doesn't have the highest infection rate, just the highest raw count.

This likely just reflects the fact that NY is doing a lot more testing than any other state.

Alabama has had roughly 80% of their tests come back positive, and they've only done a little more than a hundred.

https://www.politico.com/interactives/2020/coronavirus-testi...

I think Cuomo understands that it's not actually possible to lock down NYC. There aren't enough cops, courtrooms, or jail cells to enforce anything. That is why he's focusing on fining businesses for staying open, and is not sending cops up to make sure everyone stays 6 feet apart. One thing is possible, the other is just an authoritarian pipe dream.

"Shelter in place" is a meaningless term when you can leave the shelter to go for a walk, go out and buy groceries, go to work as one of the many essential services, etc. Cuomo said as much. This isn't a natural disaster that destroyed infrastructure; all that needs to be done is keep the rate of hospitalizations under the number of available hospital beds.

It helps to be advised by one of the best people in healthcare too, Dr. Howard Zucker.

A big leadership quality is the ability to identify expertise and listen to it.

Cuomo said 24hours ago he would not implement a total shutdown. He changed his mind hours later following California's lead.

Being a fast follower is good, but not exemplary

And he’s still not implementing a total shutdown. He’s implementing 100% work from home unless for essential businesses. He’s also been on track to do this since earlier this week as he’s been slowly ratcheting up that number from 50% to the full 100% today.

This isn’t a competition between Governors as each of their municipalities are different and have unique circumstances.

Cuomo is two weeks too late due to plugging his ears and ignoring his public health advisors.

As far as I can tell he's been way too slow and this is still not a lock down, so I'm unsure why I see so much praise for him.

I suspect it's because he did a cutesy interview.

I think the strongest leadership we have seen from any of the governors has been Mike Dewine of ohio. He acted quickly and with out regards to politics or the economy. I was especially impressed by his postpoent of the primaries. If Ohio keeps the curve below the ICU capacity it's going to be thanks to him and Amy Acton.

Yeah, he seems to be on top of things, other than being dismissive at first, then drastic change course when meeting with criticism

I don't mind that someone was dismissive weeks ago. I know I was. Now, I have been inside for 5 days. I saw that it was turning serious.

It didn't hit me emotionally until the pasta and toilet paper was out of stock in the stores but I would easily have taken precautions way earlier if I had any power when it hit me "rationally" in late January. The response is just way too late. Exercises should have been done. The army hospital tent should already be in place, food delivery to homes should already be in place etc.

There are people who will be in their deathbed due to COVID-19 and still be dismissive to it.

Changing opinions when facts change is not a given for everyone :/

You're talking about low-info by-standers and comparing them to someone who should be governing an important state in the richest nation in the world.

There is no comparison here. He is doing a subpar job given his responsibilities.

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