9 ms·

It's so disheartening to see both Cuomo and DeBlasio's absolutely pathetic response to the pandemic - really on every level, but in the case of this article, th

It's so disheartening to see both Cuomo and DeBlasio's absolutely pathetic response to the pandemic - really on every level, but in the case of this article, the economic response. Nearly every other city has taken major steps to make it easier for people to spend time outdoors, for restaurants and bars to serve patrons outdoors, assistance programs for local small businesses, and so forth. By contrast, DeBlasio has been chipping away at Open Streets, cancelled Summer Streets, and both he and Cuomo have been actively impeding restaurants and bars from adapting to serve food and alcohol outdoors. They've insisted that bars cannot serve alcohol without serving "real food" (nachos doesn't count), which is a huge blow to bars which don't have a full kitchen. Even for restaurants and bars which do, though, they've been incredibly aggressive with issuing citations. Many have complained that, if a server clears the empty dinner plates before patrons are finished with their drinks, state inspectors will cite them because "there's no food", even though the bill shows that they were charged for dinner. Others have complained that the city has cited them for "violations", but unlike the health inspectors, doesn't actually provide a list of the offenses that need to be corrected. In addition, they've provided ~zero financial assistance for small businesses - particularly bars and restaurants, which are hit the hardest. That's in stark contrast to other cities in the US and elsewhere, which have given direct cash assistance to help them weather the crisis. It's a disaster all around, and neither the governor nor the mayor have shown any interest in taking meaningful steps to support the state's largest economy. (Cuomo has done a better job at framing his actions to the press, but when you actually look at what he's done, he's done a really awful job).

king_magic 6y ago
I'd rather not contract COVID-19 and die as a result of an outing to a restaurant or a bar. I'm fine with what Cuomo and DeBlasio are doing.
- departure 6y ago
  Then don't go to a restaurant or bar. Down here in Texas we opened in May and left it up to the individual to make the health choice. I'm active and going to the gym daily and bars during the weekend, but I have friends who won't go outside and haven't dined in a restaurant since March.
  - macintux 6y ago
    Given the disaster that has been south Texas healthcare for the last week or two, that hardly seems like a ringing endorsement. It’s not all about personal choice. Everyone is impacted by the decisions we make. How many healthcare personnel have to die so people can go to the bar?
    - Covzire 6y ago
      Great, now apply that logic to automobiles in general. I think more people understand the situation with COVID than some realize, that it's a trainwreck from top to bottom and a lot of the decisions being made are far more political than they should be, as evidenced by the sheer amount of hypocrisy surrounding the supposed safety of protesting for left wing causes vs anything else. Even if you're totally right, the optics of this hypocrisy have created a permanent and un-mendable fracture where a large chunk of the country is never going to believe anything Coumo or De Belasio say about COVID.
      - dehrmann 6y ago
        > the sheer amount of hypocrisy surrounding the supposed safety of protesting for left wing causes vs anything else Even if these protests have been have been relatively safe, I worry about a publication bias with those findings (publishing that the protests spread covid would be politically risky) and, more importantly, the lack of criticism essentially gave people permission to go have their own gatherings.
      - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
        > Great, now apply that logic to automobiles in general. Do automobile accidents experience exponential growth? If so, I guarantee they'd get the exact same treatment. Or guess what else with your auto example. Drinking and driving. You don't get free reign to do so because society shouldn't have to pay your costs for you.
        Covzire 6y ago
        > experience exponential growth? Exponential growth of the spread isn't the same thing as exponential growth of mortality rates. By now we know that virtually no children are affected by it at all. The most vulnerable are 60+ with preexisting health conditions. The very same kind of people Governor Coumo and a few other governors in the country put at risk by forcing COVID19 positive patients into nursing homes. They've pushed the disease on the most vulnerable while making the least vulnerable afraid of their own shadow, literally, so they stay home and afraid and unable to work in many cases.
- jliptzin 6y ago
  Me too which is why I don't go out to a bar or restaurant. In my opinion people at bars and restaurants are okay with the possibility that they will be infected. For me personally it's not worth the risk, I can cook and have drinks at home.
  - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
    Which is a fine solution if they can guarantee they won't infect others. But they can't, so society should pay the cost for their night out.
    - T-hawk 6y ago
      Then nobody in society should ever drive a car, since you can't guarantee you won't injure others. Society understands the concept of acceptable risk. We need to get past the absolutist hysteria and treat discussions of Covid in that manner too.
      - tarr11 6y ago
        Comparing auto fatalities to covid is a flawed argument. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/24/your-analogy-comparing-coronavirus-car-accident-deaths-is-bad/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/24/your-anal...
      - paxys 6y ago
        Licensing, driving tests, insurance requirements, vehicle safety standards, traffic rules, fines, DUI tests - all of them exist for this very reason. It's bizarre that in America you can have a positive COVID test and visible symptoms and still go about your life infecting others with zero repercussions.
    - mensetmanusman 6y ago
      The only known vaccine is surviving covid. If the young had all been infected by April, things would be quite different now...
- anoncake 6y ago
  Good news! The chance of death is less than 1%, which is neglible.
  - king_magic 6y ago
    Except it's not negligible, at all. Let's say, for argument's sake, the chance of death is 0.8%. Say coronavirus can't be contained, and 100,000,000 Americans contract it - not unthinkable. In that scenario, a "chance of death less than 1%" would kill 800,000 Americans - an unfathomable number. That level of death would plunge the US into far worse than the Great Depression.
    - annabellas 6y ago
      Citation needed for “That level of death would plunge the US into far worse than the Great Depression.” 3 million Americans die every year. The risk of COVID-19 is also highly stratified by age, so looking at a single number like 0.8% lacks important context; the median age of death from COVID-19 is above life expectancy. Your 800,000 number (which is up for debate) also doesn’t take into account what part of that would be mortality displacement (likely a considerable part of it).
      - king_magic 6y ago
        3 million Americans die every year in a normal healthcare system. Throw 2 million additional deaths (one of the early worst case scenarios) - hell, even 800k deaths - into a totally maxed out healthcare system, and you seriously think things are going to be all peachy?
    - anoncake 6y ago
      You got that backwards. 800,000 Americans sounds like a huge number, but it's only 0.24%. It's dwarved by the number of deaths that happen every year -- 2,813,503 (0.86%) in 2017.[1] Absolute numbers aren't relevant, or do you believe Andorra isn't affected by COVID? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm
jrockway 6y ago
New York was the epicenter of the outbreak in the US. The situation has improved, but we aren't out of the woods yet, so I think it's correct to be cautious. My impression from walking around outside is that everyone has optimized for malicious compliance with the rules that do exist, and we don't really appear to be taking the threat seriously anymore. Everyone has gotten masks with exhaust vents, so they can comply with the mask regulations without actually protecting anyone from their disease. Restaurants, stores, and parks are packed. People are basically done caring, and since they won't take steps to slow the spread of the disease themselves, some regulation is required to prevent super-spreading incidents. (Regarding the food rule, I think the idea is simply to reduce the number of people that can dine at a certain place per day. If someone that works there is sick, that limits the number of people they infect.)
- chimeracoder 6y ago
  > New York was the epicenter of the outbreak in the US. The situation has improved, but we aren't out of the woods yet, so I think it's correct to be cautious. New York was the epicenter specifically because both DeBlasio and Cuomo ignored public health officials at nearly every turn, refused to start preparing for the pandemic until the first case had already hit, and even then spent more of their time bickering with each other in a weird power struggle instead of trying to contain the pandemic quickly. Multiple independent studies have shown that Cuomo's refusal to shut down the city when DeBlasio requested it was responsible for over half of NY deaths to date - and even that's not considering the fact that DeBlasio made the request rather late (the city's public health department was advocating it far earlier). https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/05/21/cuomo-de-blasio-blame-ignorance-but-not-themselves-in-wake-of-damning-report-1285383 https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/0... https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-distancing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-distancing...
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
quxpar 6y ago
It's impossible to make rent in the city while at 50 percent capacity. The reckless and inconsiderate patrons are back already, the rest will not be going back to bars and restaurants any time soon, meaning probably two years. How many of these businesses would make it two years under normal conditions? 80% of nyc restaurants fail within 5 years. [1] Nonetheless, I have seen two new restaurants open up in my area - both focusing on take-away with some outdoor seating. When businesses are being forced to adapt to a public health risk, I consider that a positive. However I 100% agree with the need for better use of public outdoor space, the crippling of open/summer streets programs makes no sense. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-restaurants-fail-rate-2011-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-restaurants-fail-ra...
- bobosha 6y ago
  Perhaps the government should broker some temporary rent-per-customer or rent-per-$ sales as a way to help both landlords and small businesses.
- pradn 6y ago
  I don't think it's "reckless and inconsiderate" for people to frequent outdoor restaurants/bars now. NYC has had outdoor dining open for 6 weeks, with low and stable COVID infection rates throughout. A scientific consensus that COVID spreads the most indoors is emerging. Aside from allowing people to enjoy their leisure (with social and mental benefits), we support local businesses and their workers. Is it great that people are even working with the virus around? No, of course not. But with government aid not coming at all, the next best thing to do is to make sure the restaurants have enough money to pay staff and other expenses. The real "reckless and inconsiderate" people are the politicians who are trying to impose austerity, cut benefit checks, and let businesses fail without a care. The elites are presiding over a 30% annualized decline in GDP without a care - mindboggling.
  - munificent 6y ago
    > The elites are presiding over a 30% annualized decline in GDP without a care - mindboggling. It's only mindboggling if you expect them to care about the entire GDP and not just their personal slices of the pie.
gregshap 6y ago
Sure DeBlasio and Cuomo 100% bungled the response in March especially, but you have a lot wrong here. The city has been massively transformed to allow outdoor dining. Easily 1000's of restaurants and bars now have outdoor dining in what would usually be street parking spaces. Manhattan and Brooklyn especially. I've seen less of this in the Bronx, but most restaurants stayed open doing takeout anyway. NYC gave direct cash grants to businesses with <10 employees. I know business owners got the money. Those grants were approved and funded before Care Act / PPP was passed. Once PPP opened there was no point in NYC trying to compete, the city can't print money. Other states were able to give more direct financial assistance to businesses because they didn't have to spend so much on actual COVID response. Remember NY received a tiny amount of federal funding relative to population and actual pandemic impact, because of who was in control of the funding formula.
- whatok 6y ago
  Outdoor dining is a bandaid fix that does not work for all restaurants. Several of the restaurants in my neighborhood that actually have decent sidewalk space are probably serving 50% of what indoor dining would have been. Even with saving money by not employing as many people for solely dining, you have increased costs through constructing bespoke outdoor dining spaces and additional cleaning.
- chimeracoder 6y ago
  > Sure DeBlasio and Cuomo 100% bungled the response in March especially Okay, so we agree on that. > The city has been massively transformed to allow outdoor dining. Easily 1000's of restaurants and bars now have outdoor dining in what would usually be street parking spaces. As journalists have documented extensively, New York's expansion of street space is incredibly paltry compared to what other cities in the US have done. No, it's not zero, but it's clearly not enough (per the article), and it's not even keeping pace with what other cities are doing. > NYC gave direct cash grants to businesses with <10 employees. I know business owners got the money. Those grants were approved and funded before Care Act / PPP was passed. Once PPP opened there was no point in NYC trying to compete, the city can't print money. Yes, there is a a point to the city (and the state) providing direct aid to local businesses on top of the federal assistance. And there absolutely is a point to the city and state targeting funds to essential industries that are hit particularly hard - which is what plenty of other jurisdictions have already done. > Other states were able to give more direct financial assistance to businesses because they didn't have to spend so much on actual COVID response. Remember NY received a tiny amount of federal funding relative to population and actual pandemic impact, because of who was in control of the funding formula. First of all, New York wouldn't have needed to spend as much on COVID response if Cuomo and DeBlasio had actually done their jobs in January or February. But more importantly: the limiting factor here isn't money. As I outlined in my post, the state is actually spending money in ways which are directly harmful to small businesses, with no justifiable public health gain. DeBlasio and Cuomo could literally just base their policies on what other cities and countries have done with success, and that would already be miles ahead of what they've decided to do instead. The problem isn't that they can't. The problem is that they've genuinely expressed zero desire to.
misiti3780 6y ago
On top of their horrible response, the media seems to be giving Cuomo a pass, which i dont understand.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
bsder 6y ago
> It's so disheartening to see both Cuomo and DeBlasio's absolutely pathetic response to the pandemic Grinding this axe kills your credibility. New York sits at the bottom of the per-capita Covid charts in the US. Were mistakes made at the beginning? Perhaps. Hindsight is always 20/20. However, data was scarce. And we had terrible shortages of PPE and no viable tests. And shutting down a school district like New York's takes a lot of time. And we had "liberal hoax" coming from the White House instead of a unified national response. If you want to grind axes about bad pandemic response, pick on those states that refused to learn the lessons of New York and then passed New York in per capita cases 3 months later. After we had PPE. After we had tests. etc. And, New York actually might be able to open schools without a disaster occurring. Other states? Not so much.
- chimeracoder 6y ago
  > New York sits at the bottom of the per-capita Covid charts in the US. If New York were counted as its own country, it would have the highest per-capita COVID-19 death toll in the entire world. And yes, that's because Cuomo and DeBlasio refused to listen to their own public health departments and refused to learn the lessons of other countries that had been hit earlier[0]. > Were mistakes made at the beginning? Perhaps. Hindsight is always 20/20. However, data was scarce. There was copious data - both from other countries and from other US cities - that indicated that New York needed to issue a shelter-in-place order at least a week before Cuomo agreed to. Even San Francisco had already shut down before Cuomo agreed to shut down NYC[1], despite San Francisco having fewer per-capita cases at the time. And even then, Cuomo waffled on whether to shut down the public schools. There's plenty of evidence that Cuomo and DeBlasio ignored the scientific evidence that they had at the time, so you can't chalk up the high death toll to a lack of data. > And shutting down a school district like New York's takes a lot of time. It doesn't. Once Cuomo finally agreed to do it, it happened immediately. Where do you get the idea that it "takes time"? [0] https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/05/21/cuomo-de-blasio-blame-ignorance-but-not-themselves-in-wake-of-damning-report-1285383 https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/0... [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-...
mlthoughts2018 6y ago
> “ Nearly every other city has taken major steps to make it easier for people to spend time outdoors, for restaurants and bars to serve patrons outdoors, assistance programs for local small businesses, and so forth.” Horrible. Just horrible. Making it easy to gather is a bad thing, that will prolong the pandemic and lead to far more deaths and worse total economic outcomes. I think De Blasio and Cuomo have done really a great job in NY, and wish they’d go even further to mandate masks and reduce outdoor dining basically through the rest of 2020.

king_magic 6y ago

I'd rather not contract COVID-19 and die as a result of an outing to a restaurant or a bar. I'm fine with what Cuomo and DeBlasio are doing.

departure 6y ago
Then don't go to a restaurant or bar. Down here in Texas we opened in May and left it up to the individual to make the health choice. I'm active and going to the gym daily and bars during the weekend, but I have friends who won't go outside and haven't dined in a restaurant since March.
- macintux 6y ago
  Given the disaster that has been south Texas healthcare for the last week or two, that hardly seems like a ringing endorsement. It’s not all about personal choice. Everyone is impacted by the decisions we make. How many healthcare personnel have to die so people can go to the bar?
  - Covzire 6y ago
    Great, now apply that logic to automobiles in general. I think more people understand the situation with COVID than some realize, that it's a trainwreck from top to bottom and a lot of the decisions being made are far more political than they should be, as evidenced by the sheer amount of hypocrisy surrounding the supposed safety of protesting for left wing causes vs anything else. Even if you're totally right, the optics of this hypocrisy have created a permanent and un-mendable fracture where a large chunk of the country is never going to believe anything Coumo or De Belasio say about COVID.
    - dehrmann 6y ago
      > the sheer amount of hypocrisy surrounding the supposed safety of protesting for left wing causes vs anything else Even if these protests have been have been relatively safe, I worry about a publication bias with those findings (publishing that the protests spread covid would be politically risky) and, more importantly, the lack of criticism essentially gave people permission to go have their own gatherings.
    - BoiledCabbage 6y ago
      > Great, now apply that logic to automobiles in general. Do automobile accidents experience exponential growth? If so, I guarantee they'd get the exact same treatment. Or guess what else with your auto example. Drinking and driving. You don't get free reign to do so because society shouldn't have to pay your costs for you.
      - Covzire 6y ago
        > experience exponential growth? Exponential growth of the spread isn't the same thing as exponential growth of mortality rates. By now we know that virtually no children are affected by it at all. The most vulnerable are 60+ with preexisting health conditions. The very same kind of people Governor Coumo and a few other governors in the country put at risk by forcing COVID19 positive patients into nursing homes. They've pushed the disease on the most vulnerable while making the least vulnerable afraid of their own shadow, literally, so they stay home and afraid and unable to work in many cases.
jliptzin 6y ago
Me too which is why I don't go out to a bar or restaurant. In my opinion people at bars and restaurants are okay with the possibility that they will be infected. For me personally it's not worth the risk, I can cook and have drinks at home.
- BoiledCabbage 6y ago
  Which is a fine solution if they can guarantee they won't infect others. But they can't, so society should pay the cost for their night out.
  - T-hawk 6y ago
    Then nobody in society should ever drive a car, since you can't guarantee you won't injure others. Society understands the concept of acceptable risk. We need to get past the absolutist hysteria and treat discussions of Covid in that manner too.
    - tarr11 6y ago
      Comparing auto fatalities to covid is a flawed argument. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/24/your-analogy-comparing-coronavirus-car-accident-deaths-is-bad/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/03/24/your-anal...
    - paxys 6y ago
      Licensing, driving tests, insurance requirements, vehicle safety standards, traffic rules, fines, DUI tests - all of them exist for this very reason. It's bizarre that in America you can have a positive COVID test and visible symptoms and still go about your life infecting others with zero repercussions.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    The only known vaccine is surviving covid. If the young had all been infected by April, things would be quite different now...
anoncake 6y ago
Good news! The chance of death is less than 1%, which is neglible.
- king_magic 6y ago
  Except it's not negligible, at all. Let's say, for argument's sake, the chance of death is 0.8%. Say coronavirus can't be contained, and 100,000,000 Americans contract it - not unthinkable. In that scenario, a "chance of death less than 1%" would kill 800,000 Americans - an unfathomable number. That level of death would plunge the US into far worse than the Great Depression.
  - annabellas 6y ago
    Citation needed for “That level of death would plunge the US into far worse than the Great Depression.” 3 million Americans die every year. The risk of COVID-19 is also highly stratified by age, so looking at a single number like 0.8% lacks important context; the median age of death from COVID-19 is above life expectancy. Your 800,000 number (which is up for debate) also doesn’t take into account what part of that would be mortality displacement (likely a considerable part of it).
    - king_magic 6y ago
      3 million Americans die every year in a normal healthcare system. Throw 2 million additional deaths (one of the early worst case scenarios) - hell, even 800k deaths - into a totally maxed out healthcare system, and you seriously think things are going to be all peachy?
  - anoncake 6y ago
    You got that backwards. 800,000 Americans sounds like a huge number, but it's only 0.24%. It's dwarved by the number of deaths that happen every year -- 2,813,503 (0.86%) in 2017.[1] Absolute numbers aren't relevant, or do you believe Andorra isn't affected by COVID? [1] https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/deaths.htm

jrockway 6y ago

New York was the epicenter of the outbreak in the US. The situation has improved, but we aren't out of the woods yet, so I think it's correct to be cautious. My impression from walking around outside is that everyone has optimized for malicious compliance with the rules that do exist, and we don't really appear to be taking the threat seriously anymore. Everyone has gotten masks with exhaust vents, so they can comply with the mask regulations without actually protecting anyone from their disease. Restaurants, stores, and parks are packed. People are basically done caring, and since they won't take steps to slow the spread of the disease themselves, some regulation is required to prevent super-spreading incidents. (Regarding the food rule, I think the idea is simply to reduce the number of people that can dine at a certain place per day. If someone that works there is sick, that limits the number of people they infect.)

chimeracoder 6y ago
> New York was the epicenter of the outbreak in the US. The situation has improved, but we aren't out of the woods yet, so I think it's correct to be cautious. New York was the epicenter specifically because both DeBlasio and Cuomo ignored public health officials at nearly every turn, refused to start preparing for the pandemic until the first case had already hit, and even then spent more of their time bickering with each other in a weird power struggle instead of trying to contain the pandemic quickly. Multiple independent studies have shown that Cuomo's refusal to shut down the city when DeBlasio requested it was responsible for over half of NY deaths to date - and even that's not considering the fact that DeBlasio made the request rather late (the city's public health department was advocating it far earlier). https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/05/21/cuomo-de-blasio-blame-ignorance-but-not-themselves-in-wake-of-damning-report-1285383 https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/0... https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-... https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-distancing-deaths.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/20/us/coronavirus-distancing...
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago

quxpar 6y ago

It's impossible to make rent in the city while at 50 percent capacity. The reckless and inconsiderate patrons are back already, the rest will not be going back to bars and restaurants any time soon, meaning probably two years. How many of these businesses would make it two years under normal conditions? 80% of nyc restaurants fail within 5 years. [1] Nonetheless, I have seen two new restaurants open up in my area - both focusing on take-away with some outdoor seating. When businesses are being forced to adapt to a public health risk, I consider that a positive. However I 100% agree with the need for better use of public outdoor space, the crippling of open/summer streets programs makes no sense. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-restaurants-fail-rate-2011-8 https://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-restaurants-fail-ra...

bobosha 6y ago
Perhaps the government should broker some temporary rent-per-customer or rent-per-$ sales as a way to help both landlords and small businesses.
pradn 6y ago
I don't think it's "reckless and inconsiderate" for people to frequent outdoor restaurants/bars now. NYC has had outdoor dining open for 6 weeks, with low and stable COVID infection rates throughout. A scientific consensus that COVID spreads the most indoors is emerging. Aside from allowing people to enjoy their leisure (with social and mental benefits), we support local businesses and their workers. Is it great that people are even working with the virus around? No, of course not. But with government aid not coming at all, the next best thing to do is to make sure the restaurants have enough money to pay staff and other expenses. The real "reckless and inconsiderate" people are the politicians who are trying to impose austerity, cut benefit checks, and let businesses fail without a care. The elites are presiding over a 30% annualized decline in GDP without a care - mindboggling.
- munificent 6y ago
  > The elites are presiding over a 30% annualized decline in GDP without a care - mindboggling. It's only mindboggling if you expect them to care about the entire GDP and not just their personal slices of the pie.

gregshap 6y ago

Sure DeBlasio and Cuomo 100% bungled the response in March especially, but you have a lot wrong here. The city has been massively transformed to allow outdoor dining. Easily 1000's of restaurants and bars now have outdoor dining in what would usually be street parking spaces. Manhattan and Brooklyn especially. I've seen less of this in the Bronx, but most restaurants stayed open doing takeout anyway. NYC gave direct cash grants to businesses with <10 employees. I know business owners got the money. Those grants were approved and funded before Care Act / PPP was passed. Once PPP opened there was no point in NYC trying to compete, the city can't print money. Other states were able to give more direct financial assistance to businesses because they didn't have to spend so much on actual COVID response. Remember NY received a tiny amount of federal funding relative to population and actual pandemic impact, because of who was in control of the funding formula.

whatok 6y ago
Outdoor dining is a bandaid fix that does not work for all restaurants. Several of the restaurants in my neighborhood that actually have decent sidewalk space are probably serving 50% of what indoor dining would have been. Even with saving money by not employing as many people for solely dining, you have increased costs through constructing bespoke outdoor dining spaces and additional cleaning.
chimeracoder 6y ago
> Sure DeBlasio and Cuomo 100% bungled the response in March especially Okay, so we agree on that. > The city has been massively transformed to allow outdoor dining. Easily 1000's of restaurants and bars now have outdoor dining in what would usually be street parking spaces. As journalists have documented extensively, New York's expansion of street space is incredibly paltry compared to what other cities in the US have done. No, it's not zero, but it's clearly not enough (per the article), and it's not even keeping pace with what other cities are doing. > NYC gave direct cash grants to businesses with <10 employees. I know business owners got the money. Those grants were approved and funded before Care Act / PPP was passed. Once PPP opened there was no point in NYC trying to compete, the city can't print money. Yes, there is a a point to the city (and the state) providing direct aid to local businesses on top of the federal assistance. And there absolutely is a point to the city and state targeting funds to essential industries that are hit particularly hard - which is what plenty of other jurisdictions have already done. > Other states were able to give more direct financial assistance to businesses because they didn't have to spend so much on actual COVID response. Remember NY received a tiny amount of federal funding relative to population and actual pandemic impact, because of who was in control of the funding formula. First of all, New York wouldn't have needed to spend as much on COVID response if Cuomo and DeBlasio had actually done their jobs in January or February. But more importantly: the limiting factor here isn't money. As I outlined in my post, the state is actually spending money in ways which are directly harmful to small businesses, with no justifiable public health gain. DeBlasio and Cuomo could literally just base their policies on what other cities and countries have done with success, and that would already be miles ahead of what they've decided to do instead. The problem isn't that they can't. The problem is that they've genuinely expressed zero desire to.

misiti3780 6y ago

On top of their horrible response, the media seems to be giving Cuomo a pass, which i dont understand.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

bsder 6y ago

> It's so disheartening to see both Cuomo and DeBlasio's absolutely pathetic response to the pandemic Grinding this axe kills your credibility. New York sits at the bottom of the per-capita Covid charts in the US. Were mistakes made at the beginning? Perhaps. Hindsight is always 20/20. However, data was scarce. And we had terrible shortages of PPE and no viable tests. And shutting down a school district like New York's takes a lot of time. And we had "liberal hoax" coming from the White House instead of a unified national response. If you want to grind axes about bad pandemic response, pick on those states that refused to learn the lessons of New York and then passed New York in per capita cases 3 months later. After we had PPE. After we had tests. etc. And, New York actually might be able to open schools without a disaster occurring. Other states? Not so much.

chimeracoder 6y ago
> New York sits at the bottom of the per-capita Covid charts in the US. If New York were counted as its own country, it would have the highest per-capita COVID-19 death toll in the entire world. And yes, that's because Cuomo and DeBlasio refused to listen to their own public health departments and refused to learn the lessons of other countries that had been hit earlier[0]. > Were mistakes made at the beginning? Perhaps. Hindsight is always 20/20. However, data was scarce. There was copious data - both from other countries and from other US cities - that indicated that New York needed to issue a shelter-in-place order at least a week before Cuomo agreed to. Even San Francisco had already shut down before Cuomo agreed to shut down NYC[1], despite San Francisco having fewer per-capita cases at the time. And even then, Cuomo waffled on whether to shut down the public schools. There's plenty of evidence that Cuomo and DeBlasio ignored the scientific evidence that they had at the time, so you can't chalk up the high death toll to a lack of data. > And shutting down a school district like New York's takes a lot of time. It doesn't. Once Cuomo finally agreed to do it, it happened immediately. Where do you get the idea that it "takes time"? [0] https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/05/21/cuomo-de-blasio-blame-ignorance-but-not-themselves-in-wake-of-damning-report-1285383 https://www.politico.com/states/new-york/albany/story/2020/0... [1] https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-new-york-suffered-nearly-10-times-the-number-of-deaths-as-california https://www.propublica.org/article/two-coasts-one-virus-how-...

mlthoughts2018 6y ago

> “ Nearly every other city has taken major steps to make it easier for people to spend time outdoors, for restaurants and bars to serve patrons outdoors, assistance programs for local small businesses, and so forth.” Horrible. Just horrible. Making it easy to gather is a bad thing, that will prolong the pandemic and lead to far more deaths and worse total economic outcomes. I think De Blasio and Cuomo have done really a great job in NY, and wish they’d go even further to mandate masks and reduce outdoor dining basically through the rest of 2020.