I tracked the situation in NY closely because we have family in the region (from NYC to Boston). While I was screaming at our local school district in Los Angeles to shut down the schools, in NY (city and state) they did the unthinkable.

Here are some of the notes I took. Look at the dates. Look at what they are saying. Look at who's saying it. then think about the consequences of what they told millions of people to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMkBW9ewPz8

    30JAN20
    Dr. Oxiris Barbot, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health
      • The local risk is LOW
      • Our preparedness is HIGH
      • Go about your lives
      • No indication to be using masks
      • We have measures
      • We have screening
      • No indication that going through the subway is a risk factor
      • No indications to be using masks
      • False sense of security
      • The risk is low

https://youtu.be/xXh7jUxfdak?t=2226

    09MAR20
    De Blazio
    Dr. Oxiris Barbot, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health

I'll repeat that. The woman speaking in the video above is the DOCTOR Oxiris Barbot, Commissioner of the New York City Department of Health. She is the "Head Doctor" for the entire city of NY.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEhLOp7UGNM

    02MAR20
    Andrew Cuomo, NY Governor
    Bill De Blasio, NYC Mayor
    Ken Raske, President of Greater New York Hospital Association
    
    First case in NY
      • Just like the normal flu
      • We should relax
      • We don't think it's going to be as bad as it is in other places
      • We have been ahead of this from day one
      • Go about your lives
      • Go about your business
      • There has to be prolonged exposure
      • Just wash your hands
      • There is no need to do anything special anything in the community,
        we want New Yorkers to go about their daily lives, ride the subway,
        ride the bus, go see your neighbors
      • We have the equipment
      • It's not like we are dealing with something we haven't dealt with before
      • We have the ability to address this
      • We have the capacity to keep this contained
      • Like the normal flu

Not sure why she still has a job, not to mention the others featured in these and other idiotic press conferences and media declarations. In NY in particular, government officials effectively told everyone to go out there and get infected. Keep in mind that if you overlay the infection and death timeline from Italy onto the NY timeline it is truly incomprehensible that these officials would tell people to go out, gather and move about a city as New York.

If you look at the graphs for the entire US the rate of change of infection and death in NY is massively larger than anywhere else and it is, in my opinion, very directly linked to these and other statements made by officials.

I have lots more links, covering the entire January-March timeline. Both media and politicians jumped on the "nothing to see here" bandwagon in a big way after Trump shutdown travel from China (January 31). New York City, in particular, has a very high density and high usage of mass transportation. They should have reacted very quickly to mitigate transmission. Instead they encouraged everyone to get out there as normal and effectively killed thousands of people as a result. Again, not sure why this woman still has a job.