Via NY Post:
While public-health officials were getting in front of the coronavirus in Seattle, Mayor Bill de Blasio dragged his feet and openly bickered with Gov. Andrew Cuomo in New York, according to a report highlighting the night-and-day disparity between the cities’ responses.
“It feels like we might have stopped the tsunami before it hit,” Dr. Francis Riedo, the medical director for infectious disease at a hospital in suburban Kirkland, Wash. told The New Yorker for a piece published Sunday.
Despite their outbreaks emerging at around the same time, Washington had seen fewer than 700 fatalities as of last week, as compared to more than 17,000 in the Empire State.
“I don’t want to tempt fate, but it seems like it’s working,” Riedo told the magazine. “Which is what makes it so much harder when I look at places like New York.”
Though factors such as New York’s more dense population and status as an international travel hub presented complications with which Seattle didn’t have to contend, the Big Apple’s leadership committed several unforced errors, according to the report.
While the Evergreen State let scientists, rather than politicians, guide its decision-making and public messaging from the get-go — in accordance with guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — de Blasio and Cuomo have thrust themselves into the spotlight in New York.
Their already contentious relationship repeatedly manifested itself in petty one-upmanship and disjointed public policy on everything from schools to playgrounds to stay-home orders, all while the disease continued to spread.