Re: COVID-19 - Part 2
By
Aaron Blake and
JM Rieger
April 1, 2020 at 9:54 a.m. EDT
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poli...os-repeated-comments-downplaying-coronavirus/
From Dr. de Blasio
"The mayor said Feb. 26 of the city’s 1,200 hospital beds: “We’ve got a long time to ramp up if we ever had anything like that [kind of crisis]. So, the capacity we have right now is outstanding given the challenge we’re facing right now.”
He added:
“We can really keep this thing contained.”
In the weeks in between, de Blasio repeatedly said the coronavirus was transmitted through prolonged, close exposure and played down the idea that it could travel via casual encounters or touching surfaces that an infected person had touched ...
“Occasional contact, glancing contact, temporary contact does not, from everything we know about coronavirus, lead to transmission,” he said March 3. “It needs to be prolonged, you know -- if not intimate, at least prolonged, constant contact.”
He added March 8: “Certainly, on most surfaces like metal, plastic -- you know, a desk, a kitchen counter, a subway pole, it’s only a matter of minutes before the disease dies, the virus dies in the open air.”
On March 9, he suggested that transmission was likely to take place only if people were engaged in lengthy contact involving a “direct hit."
“Two people deep in conversation for a half-hour, animated conversation,” de Blasio said. “The best thinking of the medical personnel is that, in animated conversation, sometimes people project some saliva and that may have been the contact. Obviously, another option is someone sneezed or coughed, like looking right at the person they were deep in conversation with."
He added: “So, that’s the evolution -- that is still close proximity, and you need that direct hit, with the exception, again, of right to the hand, right to the face, in fast proximity. Because otherwise the virus just wouldn’t live that long.”
He said people in crowded areas shouldn’t worry.
“It’s not people in the stadium, it’s not people in the big open area or a conference and all,” de Blasio said. “It’s people close up to each other, deeply engaging each other to the point that the inadvertent spitting that comes with a conversation sometimes, or a sneeze or a cough, directly goes at the other person in close proximity.”
A spokesman for de Blasio, Freddi Goldstein, defended de Blasio’s commentary on the coronavirus.
“It’s easy to sit on the sidelines and have an opinion,” Goldstein said. "The mayor carries the responsibility of 8.6 million New Yorkers. He must think about their safety, their livelihood, their education. Every decision he has made has been deliberate and thoughtful. That’s what you need in a crisis.”
De Blasio on March 9 also downplayed the option of closing schools, saying: “Is it anywhere near to where we are now? No.”
Six days later, he announced that the largest school district in the country would close.
The next day, he went to the gym mere hours before such facilities in the city would be shut down, drawing a backlash even from his own former aides.
On Sunday, de Blasio reflected on the situation. “This is just about how we save lives going forward,” he said. “This was a very different world just a short time ago.”
