by Andrew Cuomo
It is incomprehensible that people still support Trump’s disproven theories. The states that most closely followed Trump’s “guidance” were doing the worst. In Florida, Governor DeSantis was seeing an explosion of cases, and his hospital system was overwhelmed just two months after he demanded his apology. More than forty states were seeing the virus increase, and the federal health officials—Dr. Fauci, Dr. Birx, and the CDC director, Robert Redfield—warned that the situation would get worse. Trump wouldn’t wear a mask or suggest the public should until mid-July.
There are important lessons to learn. When one looks back at how COVID arrived in the United States, it is a frightening and almost inconceivable series of failures and incompetence. It was a spectacular government catastrophe on one of its most vital activities: maintaining national security and public health. In retrospect, the failings are clear.
Where was this country’s public health system charged with monitoring possible global diseases?
The federal Centers for Disease Control has the mission “to protect America from health, safety and security threats, both foreign and in the U.S.” It failed.
The mission of the National Institutes of Health is to “seek fundamental knowledge about the nature and behavior of living systems and the application of that knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability.” It failed.
The Department of Homeland Security’s mission is “to safeguard the American people, our homeland, and our values with honor and integrity.” It failed.
Our federal government, on all levels, has still not answered the basic question: “How did this happen?” To divert attention and responsibility from himself and the White House, the president blamed the World Health Organization. He has also added the conspiratorial element that the WHO was “too close” to China and implied that they were reluctant to criticize China and therefore didn’t alert the nation to the coronavirus pandemic. The president often implies a conspiratorial element to fan Americans’ fear and isolationism.
In truth, the WHO, which was created by the United Nations and is partially funded by the United States (at least until Trump announced we were withdrawing in 2021), is charged with monitoring and mitigating worldwide diseases as they spread. The WHO might very well have been slow in realizing the way the virus spread. But to this day, we don’t know what information the WHO gave our federal government and when. We don’t have access to the federal communications with the WHO. We don’t know from where Peter Navarro received the information that caused him to write the now infamous January 30 memo saying that one to two million Americans could die. We do know that the WHO publicly declared a global health emergency on January 30, 2020. While late January was sooner than the United States took action, it was still not soon enough.
The federal government didn’t know the virus was in New York until it had been here for months. The consequences of that blunder cannot be underestimated. Rarely has a government failure had such immediate, significant, and quantifiable ramifications. You can count the consequences in number of lives lost and billions spent. You can count it in the number of unemployed Americans and bankruptcy claims. For New York State it was particularly devastating.
And now, the recent projection models show that due to the increased infection rate in the country, tens of thousands more Americans will die. As of this writing, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation model, the model the president follows, predicts that sixty-seven thousand more Americans will die because the nation did not adopt a mask mandate. This goes beyond government incompetence to government malfeasance and gross negligence. If a corporate CEO acted in the same manner as President Trump, he would be sued for breach of fiduciary duty by the families of the people who perished unnecessarily. In other words, he’d be fired.
The American people are smart, and they are paying attention. Even if there isn’t legal accountability, there will be political accountability on Election Day.
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THERE IS ONE important point that I want to make for the history books. People ask me all the time, “How did New York reverse the numbers?” or “How did New York turn it around?” The answer is clear and inarguable.
First, the results were solely produced by the people of the state of New York. This was an extraordinary example of social action. It was the actualization of the lofty concepts we talk about; it was democracy in action. It was a diverse group of people forging community. It was individual responsibility and a collective conscience.
The elusive concept of “the people” came to the forefront. It was the sum total of 19.5 million people’s individual actions. The closedown procedures, social distancing practices, and individual precautions were all personal decisions that served the common good. The people had accurate information from a trusted source and acted quickly, responsibly, and collectively. My role was merely that of a public servant, an instrument of the collective. God bless the people of New York.
The second group are the “essential workers”: the term that came to the forefront during this crisis. This battle was not won by the generals. Indeed, the federal generals pointed us in the wrong direction. We never received adequate federal reinforcements, and while we waged the war on the front lines, we were not even provided enough supplies. Nor was this battle won by those our society has deemed “leaders.” There was no financial design or corporate solution; bankers, lawyers, developers, did not save the day.
The heroes who made this happen were the working families of New York. When we were in our moment of need, we called on the blue-collar New Yorkers to show up for everyone. We needed them to come to work and risk their health so that so many of us could stay safely at home. These are the people who have received the fewest rewards from society but from whom we now asked the most. These are the people who would have been most justified in refusing our call. They were not the rich and the well-off. They were not the highly paid. They have not been given anything more than they deserved. They had no obligation to risk their health and the health of their families. But they did it simply because “it was the right thing to do.” But for some that is enough. For some that is everything.
These heroes are the people who live in places like Queens, where I grew up. These are the people working hard to better themselves and their families. These are parents concerned first and foremost with protecting their families, but who still showed up every day as nurses, National Guard members, train operators, bus drivers, hospital workers, police officers, grocery store employees, food delivery drivers. They are Puerto Ricans, Haitians, African Americans, Dominicans, Asians, Guatemalans. These are the immigrants who love America, who make America, and who will fight for it. These are the heroes of this battle. When COVID began, I felt it was unfair to call on them to carry such a heavy burden. I feared I would put them in harm’s way. But we didn’t have an option if society was to function. We needed food, hospitals, and electricity to stay alive.
All through this difficult endeavor there was never a moment when these people refused to show up or leveraged more benefits for themselves. At the beginning of a battle no one knows who will actually survive. Courage is determined by the willingness to enter the field. No one knew that when we started, the infection rate among our essential workers would be no higher than the general community infection rate. They have my undying admiration and the gratitude of every true New Yorker.
And in addition to the heroes here in New York, more than thirty thousand Americans signed up to come help us fight this battle.
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THE GOVERNMENT IS only as good as the people and as strong as a unified, mobilized society. The government is a societal reflection of our collective capacity. Throughout this crisis, I called for unity and optimism, and the people gave me that. In return, we gave them a government that was as good as they are. I sai
d from day one that I couldn’t do anything but what the people can do for themselves. I could give them facts, and I could be empowered by them, but I’m only their instrument. They are the ones who decided to listen to their better angels. They are the ones who decided to come together and support one another. They are the ones who decided to wear masks. They are the ones who decided to close down. They are the ones who agreed to socially distance. They are the ones who agreed to the phased reopening.
I tried to appeal to their best, and they manifested their best.
The virus was a perverse litmus test of what society can do. How do you vanquish the invisible enemy? You do it when you all stand up and decide you’re going to work together as a team. This state has more tensions than most. If you’d asked the people of New York before the pandemic arrived, they’d likely tell you that ours is a fragmented, divided state. We could have had an upstate-versus-downstate split, or a Democrat-versus-Republican split, but that didn’t happen. We could have been derailed by racial or religious tensions or any one of the fault lines that exist across this country, but that didn’t happen. New Yorkers showed they were capable of more goodness and more strength than they knew. Only a strong body politic can overcome the virus, and that’s what happened in New York. It’s in the numbers, it’s in the bending of the curve, it’s in the conquering of the mountain. It is the very definition of e pluribus unum—out of many, one.
As of this writing, New York’s infection rate has been at 1 percent or below for months, enabling us to authorize the reopening of schools in the fall if the infection rate stays low. The reality is, we don’t know what the fall will bring. I hope we will be able to keep the virus under control but with travelers bringing the virus here from out of state, the fall flu season and colder weather, and the continual federal denial, even if we remain New York Smart, COVID can come back here and start spreading again.
But even if we see a second wave in the fall due to factors beyond our control, it is inarguable that New York’s success is an antidote to Trump’s message of nihilism. In the test of the two theories, the results are clear: New York tough, strong, united, disciplined, and loving defeated Trump’s approach of division and fear and retaliation.
We have for two and a half centuries built the strongest nation on the globe. America’s only threat is from within, from the growing division among us. People’s frustration is turning to fear, and the fear is turning to anger, and the anger is turning to division. It is impossible to overstate how dangerous this is. I don’t actually fault our federal government for causing the fear and frustration, but I fault them for a failure of leadership and government malfeasance. I fault them for deepening the division for their own political purpose. They didn’t cause the darkness, but they have exploited it.
At the end of the day, we were right, and Trump was wrong. This isn’t only a philosophical argument; it is quantifiable: Look at what New York managed to achieve and what Trump’s denialism produced across the country. If you can do it here, you can do it anywhere—not because the song says so, but because we are a microcosm of everything that’s happening in this country.
New York is living proof that in the end love wins.
A BLUEPRINT FOR GOING FORWARD
PROPOSED FEDERAL PROGRAM TO ADDRESS COVID AND FUTURE HEALTH CRISES
AS I SAID IN MAY when we began our reopening, the hard truth is that the COVID-19 pandemic has reshaped our nation and transformed our daily life. This statement was in recognition that to simply reopen to how things were before COVID-19 would be misguided—the world today is not the same world it was before the crisis began. I said that while COVID had brought unprecedented challenges, we must recognize the opportunity to “reimagine” and build back better than ever before. We must seize the moment to transform our health, education, and housing systems, our economy, and much more.
Most urgently, we need to reexamine and restructure our public health infrastructure to combat future pandemics and viral outbreaks, using the lessons we learned over the past months. Below I detail eight priorities that I believe must be addressed as part of building back America’s public health system better and stronger than ever before.
We must draw clear lines of responsibilities and authority between the various levels of government during a health crisis; the people must know who is in charge and when.
An early detection system of domestic and international public health threats is essential.
The leadership of public health organizations tasked to respond to future public health threats must be able to operate free from political interference.
Government’s response to public health threats must be informed and guided by data.
The federal government must build a public health emergency operation team and program with the capacity to coordinate and respond to major health crises.
The country must have a health screening system as part of its border patrol control system.
State governments must reinvent the public health capacity.
Citizen action is essential.
1. We must draw clear lines of responsibilities and authority between the various levels of government during a health crisis; the people must know who is in charge and when.
During the pandemic, the federal government on several occasions created unnecessary public confusion—at a time when there was no room for error—by attempting to overstep its authority. The U.S. Constitution, specifically the Tenth Amendment, reserves broad authority for the states including over matters of public health. In a pandemic, the federal government should issue data-based uniform standards to give states the information and guidance they need to make decisions, such as closing businesses or schools. Once state government has set the rules, local governments must actively monitor and enforce compliance in their communities. This responsibility of the local governments is critical, because failure to ensure businesses and individuals are adhering to public health mandates and guidelines will result in viral spread.
Issuing data-based uniform standards and guidance is just one of the federal government’s roles during a pandemic. It is also the federal government’s responsibility to set national travel standards for both international and domestic flights during an emergency. When a pandemic is identified overseas, any delay in quickly stopping international travel activity can lead to rapid virus spread in the United States. As COVID demonstrated, federal inaction or delay in stopping international flights from hot spots overseas to the United States places states in a position where they are unable—both legally and practically—to control the virus from coming in. During a pandemic, the federal government must exercise its authority to conduct robust airport screenings of both domestic and international flights.
COVID demonstrated the need for states to redesign their public health care into a more coherent system and provide resources to modernize the system using technology. The federal government should provide states with the regulatory flexibility to innovate, because states are laboratories for nationwide change. For instance, in the new normal states must design a telemedicine program that is capable of providing patients with medical advice over the internet. Such a program will ensure the public has access to an array of health-care services in the midst of a public health emergency while helping keep people in their homes rather than having to enter hospital emergency rooms or local clinics where they might become infected or infect others. Likewise, states should strategically use their regulatory authority to expand private sector capacity during a pandemic. For example, states must enlist private local laboratories to assist in a public health emergency as a condition of their licensing.
2. An early detection system of domestic and international public health threats is essential.
The COVID crisis has illustrated with full force and fury that we are a global community, but we must also act locally. The COVID
virus was discovered in late 2019 in China, but allowing it to travel for weeks without tracing or examination was a gross error with serious consequences that impacted New York State and, by extension, our entire nation and the world. A recent study by the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai found that the virus was already spreading in New York in early February 2020, well before New York’s first official case on March 1, 2020. CDC reports in May and July confirmed the strain of the virus that spread in New York was from Europe, not China. The lack of an early detection system rendered New York effectively blind, because the erroneous information that the virus was still spreading from China led to the CDC’s early decision to reserve the nation’s limited testing capacity for travelers from China rather than Europe.
This initial error was compounded by the premature and ultimately wrong conclusion that COVID was transmitted by symptomatic and not asymptomatic individuals, which exponentially multiplied the number of people infected. This false premise was accepted early in the United States, even though doctors in Europe had publicly pronounced the possibility of asymptomatic spread as soon as the virus was detected. This warning was largely ignored.
An early detection system of domestic and international public health threats is essential for helping states fully understand the complexity of the threats posed by global pandemics and appropriately prepare. As we now look back, the lack of early warning detection as well as inaction by the federal government was a profound and deadly problem. A national security matter of this magnitude should not be left to the capacity and accountability of any international organization like the WHO. The United States must build our own capacity to adequately detect and understand the next global health crisis. This requires data and clear information to enable our government to make informed decisions. The more quality information we have, the better we will be able to respond to crises.