Dear Governor Cuomo

Dear Governor Cuomo,

On March 20th, I stumbled onto your live press conference on the PAUSE being implemented in NY. I was impressed with your comments about bad information among young people. You stated they think: “’I can’t get it.’ Yeah. That is wrong. That is wrong. That young people can’t get it. THAT IS WRONG. It is not a factual statement. 20% of coronavirus cases according to the CDC ages 20-44. OK. France more than 50% of coronavirus cases in ICU under 60 years old. You can get it! ….”

It was nice to see someone come out with a direct statement “That is wrong.” And repeat it three times each time more emphatically.

This Saturday March 28th, I made a concerted effort to listen into your coronavirus update hoping to be just as impressed if not more. ( https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-issues-executive-order-moving-new-york You are getting so much good press.) Sadly, just a couple of minutes into your press conference, I was stumped. How could you, Mr. Facts / Mr. Reality, be saying that in perspective China’s coronavirus epidemic had started twelve weeks ago. For a second there I thought I had tuned into an old press conference, you surely couldn’t be speaking live. I was wrong. You were speaking live on March 28th. However, if we are going to be giving facts then let’s give the correct facts. The first case in Wuhan, China was traced back to November 17th, that is closer to 19 weeks ago. Yes, it is true the doctors in Wuhan didn’t notify their equivalent of the CDC for another four weeks but then they didn’t realize that this was the beginning of a pandemic. It took them about four weeks to do so. Finally Chinese officials acknowledged the pandemic on December 31st. Nonetheless, to contextualize a New York State first case as being only 27 days ago, you need to compare it if anything really to the first case in Wuhan.

Why do I care? Because the step everyone is now trying to talk about is when do we reopen the economy and/or the country? Well if the coronavirus cycles through NY the way it did in Wuhan, you should realize that Wuhan is just barely now beginning to lift restrictions a full 19 weeks after the first case. So yes, Governor Cuomo this is a marathon not a sprint. But just to be clear this is a full marathon, not a half marathon. NY and really the US is maybe four weeks into this at least 19 week cycle.

You go on to talk about testing but some of your ideas seem a bit flawed. Yes, a lot depends on whether we are able to test enough people to make quarantine and isolation decisions based on tests but even more importantly on whether or not getting the disease once really provides immunity to the disease for the individual going forward. I don’t think we really know enough about either aspect. The first assumes that the person cannot test negative even though he/she is a carrier. The second assumes that antibodies will remain in an individual and protect that individual going forward. The newspapers are full of cases of someone who tests negative first and then tests positive. The assumption is that the individual got the virus between the two events. But that is really only an assumption and it may prove to be wrong. In addition, there have already been cases of reinfection and it is hard to know whether there weren’t enough antibodies present or whether the virus mutated enough to work around the former antibodies. Reminds me of the fact that the flu mutates year to year which is why people require new updated flu vaccines. Not to mention that even if Wuhan is now lifting some restrictions; China, in fact, is closing its borders out of concern for reinfections.

But getting back to basics Governor. I know you want to be positive. I know you want to reopen the economy and the country. But just like the young people partying on the beaches in Florida and elsewhere, you are wrong to think this is going to be a half marathon. This really is a full marathon! In fact today you extended the New York PAUSE to April 15th.

I hope you, New York State and the country have the patience, more like the endurance, to face the harsh realities that it will require to finish in one piece. Yes, we are all in this together. We are going to get through this and get back to whatever we were doing before. But as you put it, if we use this time well like for example to reconnect with family, talk to one another and have Sunday dinner together, it will have been priceless.

"Excelsior. E pluribus unum."

Sincerely,

Tania Sole