22 THENEWYORKER,M AY4, 2020
your doctor.” This was the opposite of
what city health supervisors were advis-
ing: people needed to stay inside and
call their doctor if they felt sick. Mak-
ing trips to doctors’ offices or emergency
rooms only increased the odds that the
virus would spread, and the city’s lim-
ited supply of tests needed to be saved
for people with life-threatening condi-
tions. De Blasio’s staff, however, had
started micromanaging the department’s
communications, including on Twitter.
Finally, on March 15th, the Department
of Health was allowed to post a thread:
“If you are sick, STAY HOME. If you do
not feel better in 3 to 4 days, consult
with your health care provider”; “Test-
ing should only be used for people who
need to be hospitalized”; “Everyone in
NYC should act as if they have been ex-
posed to coronavirus.... New Yorkers
who are not sick should also stay home
as much as possible.” One City Coun-
cil member told me that health officials
“had been trying to say that publicly for
weeks, but this mayor refuses to trust
the experts—it’s mind-boggling.”
As the city’s scientists offered plans
for more aggressive action and provided
data showing that time was running out,
the Mayor’s staff responded that the
health officials were politically naïve. At
one point, Dr. Marcelle Layton, the city’s
assistant commissioner of communica-
ble diseases, and an E.I.S. alum who is
revered by health officials across the na-
tion for her inventiveness and dedica-
tion, was ordered to City Hall, in case
she was needed to help the Mayor answer
questions from the press. She sat on a
bench in a hallway for three hours, away
from her team, while politicians spoke
to the media. (Layton declined interview
requests.) At press conferences, Layton
and other physicians played minimal
roles while de Blasio and Cuomo, long-
time rivals, each attempted to take cen-
ter stage. The two men even began pub-
licly feuding—arguing in the press, and
through aides, about who had authority
over schools and workplace closures.
Eventually, three of the top leaders of
the city’s Department of Health met
with de Blasio and demanded that he
quickly instate social-distancing rules
and begin sending clear messages to the
public to stay indoors. Layton and a dep-
uty health commissioner, Dr. Demetre
Daskalakis, indicated to de Blasio’s staff
that if the Mayor didn’t act promptly
they would resign. (The next day, Lay-
ton’s staff greeted her with applause, and
at least one employee offered to give her
some money if she had to make good on
the ultimatum.) De Blasio was in a cor-
ner: he had long positioned himself as a
champion of the underclass, and closing
schools would disproportionately hurt
the poor and vulnerable. What’s more,
unions representing health-care workers
had threatened that nurses, orderlies, and
others might stay home unless there was
a plan to provide child care.
Nevertheless, de Blasio finally acceded
to the health officials’ demands. On
March 16th, after a compromise was
reached with the health-care unions, city
schools were closed, and Cuomo ordered
all gyms and similar facilities to shut
down. The messaging remained jum-
bled, however. Right before the gym clo-
sure was set to take effect, de Blasio asked
his driver to take him to the Y.M.C.A.
in Park Slope, near his old home, for
a final workout. Even de Blasio’s allies
were outraged. A former adviser tweeted,
“The mayor’s actions today are inexcus-
able and reckless.” Another former con-
sultant tweeted that the gym visit was
“Pathetic. Self-involved. Inexcusable.”
De Blasio and Cuomo kept bickering.
On March 17th, de Blasio told residents
to “be prepared right now for the possi-
bility of a shelter-in-place order.” The
same day, Cuomo told a reporter, “There’s
not going to be any ‘you must stay in
your house’ rule.” Cuomo’s staff quietly
told reporters that de Blasio was acting
“psychotic.” Three days later, though,
Cuomo announced an executive order
putting the state on “pause”—which was
essentially indistinguishable from stay-
at-home orders issued by cities in Wash-
ington State, California, and elsewhere.
(A spokesperson for de Blasio said that
City Hall’s “messaging changed as the
situation and the science changed” and
that there was “no dithering.” A spokes-
person for Cuomo said that “the Gov-
ernor communicated clearly the serious-
ness of this pandemic” and that “the
Governor has been laser focused on com-
municating his actions in a way that
doesn’t scare people.”)
To a certain extent, de Blasio’s and
Cuomo’s tortured delays make sense.
Good politicians should worry about
poor children missing school just as muchas they worry about the threat of an
emerging disease. “That’s why E.I.S.
training is so important,” Sonja Rasmus-
sen, a former C.D.C. official, told me.
In a pandemic, “the old ways of think-
ing get flipped around.” She added, “You
have to make the kinds of choices that,
if you aren’t trained for them, are really
hard to make. And there’s no time to
learn from your mistakes.”T
oday, New York City has the same
social-distancing policies and busi-
ness-closure rules as Seattle. But because
New York’s recommendations came later
than Seattle’s—and because communi-
cation was less consistent—it took lon-
ger to influence how people behaved.
According to data collected by Google
from cell phones, nearly a quarter of Se-
attleites were avoiding their workplaces
by March 6th. In New York City, an-
other week passed until an equivalent
percentage did the same. Tom Frieden,
the former C.D.C. director, has esti-
mated that, if New York had started
implementing stay-at-home orders ten
days earlier than it did, it might have
reduced COVID-19 deaths by fifty to
eighty per cent. Another former New
York City health commissioner told me
that “de Blasio was just horrible,” adding,
“Maybe it was unintentional, maybe it
was his arrogance. But, if you tell peo-
ple to stay home and then you go to the
gym, you can’t really be surprised when
people keep going outside.”
More than fifteen thousand people
in New York are believed to have died
from COVID-19. Last week in Washing-
ton State, the estimate was fewer than
seven hundred people. New Yorkers
now hear constant ambulance sirens,
which remind them of the invisible viral
threat; residents are currently staying
home at even higher rates than in Se-
attle. And de Blasio and Cuomo—even
as they continue to squabble over, say,
who gets to reopen schools—have be-
come more forceful in their warnings.
Rasmussen said, “It seems silly, but all
these rules and SOHCOs and telling
people again and again to wash their
hands—they make a huge difference.
That’s why we study it and teach it.”
She continued, “It’s really easy, with the
best of intentions, to say the wrong thing
or send the wrong message. And then
more people die.”