New York must stand with Texas and Florida
We have been where you are and we know what is coming; we would not wish it on anyone.
By the time New York began its “PAUSE” order, we now know that COVID-19 had been spreading in the city for at least a month. By the time we had the testing infrastructure and surveillance in place to know that we had a problem, it was way too late for us to avoid the disaster that occurred.
And disaster is the right word. Even though it feels triumphant to have made it to a safer place, we lost 32,000 citizens of our state to the virus and there is no guarantee that it won’t come back. I check our new case counts daily, and immediately get nervous anytime things to up. The 500–1000 cases per day that we’ve had lately don’t put me much at ease.
But it’s nothing compared to what is happening in Florida and Texas right now. These are huge states, so it is hard to compare to what happened with a specific, local focus in NYC vs what is happening across those states, but there is only one part of the US that has seen numbers like FL and TX, and it’s NY.
We know what is coming in those states. And frankly, we need to open our hearts to the people who live there. The Internet media narrative about these states right now focuses on the callous and ignorant…
