Gov. Cuomo Weighs Out His Coronavirus Strategy
[guest post by Dana]
Striking the right balance for their state is what every governor is trying to work out:
Sweeping statewide quarantine orders may not have been the most effective strategy to combat the coronavirus, Gov. Andrew Cuomo conceded on Thursday, as he weighed plans to restart the economy.
“We closed everything down. That was our public health strategy,” said Cuomo during an Albany press briefing. “If you re-thought that or had time to analyze that public health strategy, I don’t know that you would say ‘Quarantine everyone.’”
…
“I don’t even know that that was the best public health policy. Young people then quarantined with older people, [it] was probably not the best public health strategy,” he said. “The younger people could have been exposing the older people to an infection.”
Further:
Cuomo’s office said the governor was referencing a study by a Yale professor, who wrote a column that appeared in the opinion section of the New York Times last week.
They pointed The Post to nearly identical comments Cuomo made about the topic during a press conference Monday, when he explicitly named the piece’s author, Dr. David Katz.
“There’s a theory of risk stratification that Dr. Katz who’s at Yale University is working on, which is actually very interesting to me,” Cuomo told reporters then. “Isolate people but really isolate the vulnerable people. Don’t isolate everyone because some people, most people, are not vulnerable to it.”
He added: “And if you isolate all people, you may be actually exposing the more vulnerable people by bringing in a person who is healthier and stronger and who may have been exposed to the virus, right.”
This was Cuomo on Tuesday, defending his lockdown order:
Why all of this? Because it’s 1 percent or 2 percent of the population. It’s lives, it’s grandmothers and grandfathers and sisters and brothers…And you start to see the cases on TV. It’s a 40-year-old woman who recovered from breast cancer but had a compromised immune system and four children at home. That’s what this is about. It’s about a vulnerable population…
It’s still really tough going in New York:
New York continues to see its infection trajectory rise unabated, with cases soaring to nearly 45,000 and deaths surpassing 500 by Friday morning, as Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced more than 7,000 new positives overnight.
COVID-19 has, in two weeks, claimed more lives in New York City than homicides did all of last year.
The number of hospitalizations is up 13-fold over the last 10 days, Cuomo said, but the rate of admittances doubling is slowing — from every two days earlier this week to every four days by Thursday. That, despite the surge in overall numbers, could signal a slowing rate of spread, Cuomo says. But, he acknowledged, the height of the crisis is still ahead — about 21 days out.
Here’s Cuomo today, hoping for the best but preparing for the worst:
I hope NY doesn’t ultimately need 30,000 ventilators.
But I don't operate on opinion and hope.
I operate on facts and data and science.
All the projections say we will need 30,000-40,000 ventilators.
So that is what we will strive to have.
— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) March 27, 2020
–Dana
What an uneviable task these governors have. It’s the job they were hired to do, of course, but nonetheless, unenviable.
Dana (4fb37f) — 3/27/2020 @ 11:08 amCuomo is also going after Trump regarding the number of ventilators the state is requesting:
This was Trump yesterday:
Read the whole thing.
Dana (4fb37f) — 3/27/2020 @ 11:51 amNow that we have actual pushback from GM and Ford as to ventilators, how can DJT avoid invoking the Production Act?
This promises to be a super contentious presser later today.
Cuomo and the other Governors are now scheming to be made whole for budget decisions they made which resulted in massive deficits/debt. While he certainly has performed and spoken well the vast majority of the time about COVID-19, he (and any other who will now try) will be making a major error by grabbing for unrelated funding. To me, it is imperative that these leaders stay in the lane of fighting this virus. There can be no “balancing” or incorporation of extraneous matters.
Ed from SFV (950df5) — 3/27/2020 @ 11:52 amTrump can’t argue/challenge/dispute w/a bug: the coronavirus doesn’t tweet, won’t hold pressers nor call in to Fox’s Hannity– it is always on the move, “unavailable for comment.”
But feisty governors are– so he has found Twitter foils.
DCSCA (797bc0) — 3/27/2020 @ 11:57 amThe only logic is it’s better to look back and say we had too many ventilators than too few.
Very encouraged by those guys who came up with a way to configure one ventilator to serve four people.
__
Regarding NYC – Posted this on Monday but it seems like a year ago:
https://twitter.com/ranjanxroy/status/1242117958480076801?s=20
harkin (b64479) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:12 pm_
What Push back?
Bothell, Wash. – Ventec Life Systems announced today General Motors will build VOCSN critical care ventilators at GM’s Kokomo, Indiana manufacturing facility with FDA-cleared ventilators scheduled to ship as soon as next month. This effort is in addition to Ventec taking aggressive steps to ramp up production at their manufacturing facility in Bothell, Washington.
Across all manufacturers, there is a global backorder of critical care ventilators capable of supporting patients fighting COVID-19. The companies are adding thousands of units of new capacity with a significantly expanded supply chain capable of supporting high volume production. GM is contributing its resources at cost.
GM will also begin manufacturing FDA-cleared Level 1 surgical masks at its Warren, Michigan manufacturing facility. Production will begin next week and within two weeks ramp up to 50,000 masks per day, with the potential to increase to 100,000 per day.
Time123 (af99e9) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:15 pm“ What an uneviable task these governors have. It’s the job they were hired to do, of course, but nonetheless, unenviable.”
They are fortunate they have a designated piñata in Trump.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:16 pmAnd why is trump telling GM to build them at the lordstown plant?
GM sold that facility to another company.
Does this level of inaccuracy count as lying? Or is it just a weak command of the facts? Either way he really seems to be falling apart.
Time123 (af99e9) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:20 pmI think they’d rather have a competent person in the oval office right now.
Time123 (52fb0e) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:20 pmPart of Cuomo’s strategy is not criticizing Trump directly, which is smart because Trump has told blue state Governors they have to treat him well to get stuff:
Baby Trump at work.
DRJ (15874d) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:22 pmThere are several sources of information on the trajectory of CV-19 and more and more we’re seeing less-than-doomsday scenarios. The fact that the growth in the number of cases in NY, while still increasing, is slowing is exactly what Levitt predicted. I think a balance to the hysteria is needed and may even be welcome by some.
While I understand Cuomo “preparing for the worst”, Birx’s remarks made it very clear that not all those infected require hospitalization, an ICU bed, and a ventilator. And if they do, that bed and ventilator is not tied up indefinitely. Many of the local “horror” stories that are meant to garner mindshare have been debunked by many on the ground here. Besides, even if NY had sufficient ventilators, it doesn’t have the techs and nurses to operate them.
https://rutgers.forums.rivals.com/threads/perspective-on-coronavirus-from-stanford-biophysicist-and-nobel-laureate-michael-levitt.192325/
https://fsi.stanford.edu/news/coronavirus-deadly-they-say
Mo Hawk (6c01b3) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:25 pmI think they’d rather have a competent person in the oval office right now.</em
Polls suggest your thinking on this is becoming more on the fevered fringe of the spectrum.
Colonel Haiku (2601c0) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:31 pmBaby Trump at work.
Reminds me of this:
In a well-known quotation, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) advised the poet and cultural critic Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) that ‘when you come to Royalty, you should lay it [flattery] on with a trowel’
The governors seem to be using Disraeli’s trowel.
Bored Lawyer (56c962) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:40 pmThis just reinforces what we already know about Trump, sadly: his foremost focus is himself, he expects elected officials who need anything from the federal government, especially blue state governors, to kiss the ring first. No matter a pandemic, dying Americans, a blown-up economy. Nothing is more important to him that gettng the adulation he demands. I hate seeing this confirmed during such a trying time.
Dana (4fb37f) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:40 pmWe keep telling each other that Trump only cares about Trump. We know this. And yet when something happens, we still expect Trump to respond like a normal human. He can’t, and we should stop expecting it.
DRJ (15874d) — 3/27/2020 @ 12:57 pmI’m sure you do.
Make America Ordered Again (23f793) — 3/27/2020 @ 1:09 pm@ #6 – For good or for ill, the Production Act also gives the government broad pricing powers. The push back is that the GM bid is too high for the government’s liking.
DJT has little choice but to go all the way on this.
This just in, he did it.
It’s a brave new world, eh?
Ed from SFV (950df5) — 3/27/2020 @ 1:12 pmPremium ventilators can cost $25-50,000 each. 80,000 Ventec-GM premium ventilators would cost $1 Billion, or $12,500 each.
DRJ (15874d) — 3/27/2020 @ 1:24 pmStill some critical unknowns:
Note: The report states that ventilators use more than 1,500 unique parts, and these parts are sourced from a dozen nations. Given that, there is an availability issue to deal with.
Dana (4fb37f) — 3/27/2020 @ 1:33 pmSomething going on in China. Hope the people can remain calm but also they tired of getting stepped on.
Things China Doesn’t Want You To Know
@TruthAbtChina
There are MASSIVE protests developing right now on the Jiujiang Yangtze River Bridge that joins the Hubei and Jiangxi provinces in Eastern China.
The situation is rapidly evolving.
https://twitter.com/TruthAbtChina/status/1243473247536058368?s=20
harkin (b64479) — 3/27/2020 @ 1:37 pm_
American Lives vs Trump owning criticism.
To every commenter, to Trump, to actual literal patriots, this is a very easy call. You don’t even have to think about it. Unfortunately, to some it’s an easy call they got wrong.
Dustin (928d9a) — 3/27/2020 @ 1:43 pmThe GM press release said they will build/can build 200,000 ventilators at 10,000 a month. (Reports say there would be 80,000 built or 8 months worth.)
According to the press release, GM is doing its work at cost.
DRJ (15874d) — 3/27/2020 @ 1:46 pmThere’s a lot that goes into building a machine that will function in a health care setting. GM has resources to deal with it but this is a major under taking, especially for a company that had a lengthy strike last year and just shut down all of it’s factories. No one know what the demand will for new cars for the rest of the year…
Time123 (d1bf33) — 3/27/2020 @ 2:08 pm23 – there is a lot of very rapid innovation going on right now, from modifying existing ventilators to handle multiple patients to building respirators from snorkeling masks. Short term fixes, yes.
https://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/feature/uc-san-diego-engineers-and-doctors-team-up-to-retrofit-and-build-ventilators-with-3d-printing
The manufacturing processes that use 3D printers are not approved by the CDC, so we won’t see them until the 2030s if we’re not flexible enough to meet the challenge. I would say that if I had a choice between a ventilator with components from a 3D printer or nothing (quite the Hobson’s choice), I think I’d ask for the ventilator.
Our reliance on GM for these ventilators gives me pause. We need speed, so waiting on older manufacturing processes seems to be a poor choice.
Mo Hawk (6c01b3) — 3/27/2020 @ 3:32 pmTrump routinely makes his self-absorption abundantly clear in his public pronouncements. Anyone who doesn’t see it must be willfully blind to the most obvious thing about him.
Radegunda (39c35f) — 3/27/2020 @ 9:04 pmHe fights.
Not for us but he is fighting everybody trying to help us so there’s some fight in him.
Dustin (928d9a) — 3/27/2020 @ 9:34 pm