Early on in his tenure, Bill de Blasio was known as something of a specialist in disaster management. But when the city needed him most, he had his worst week as mayor. freedlander reports
Photo: Mark Kauzlarich/Bloomberg via Getty Images “For the vast majority of New Yorkers, life is going on pretty normally right now,” Bill de Blasio said on Morning Joe March 10, as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. topped 1,000. “We want to encourage that.” He added that there was a “misperception” that the disease “hangs in the air waiting to catch you. No, it takes direct person-to-person contact.
Shortly thereafter, he declined to cancel St. Patrick’s Day parade and then did. He resisted calls to cancel regular street sweeping and then did. He had a photo op at a 311 call center, where he told a caller who had just returned from Italy that she did not need to self-quarantine, advice that forced 311 to actually call the woman back and tell her to stay inside for 14 days.
New Yorkers, like all Americans, have been desperate these past few weeks for a real leader — someone who can be both a reliable source of information about the nature of the coronavirus threat and the state of the response, and a decisive authority marshaling maximal resources to protect the public.
A few hours later, administration officials came up with a plan for bars and restaurants to close, then found out the next morning that Cuomo had come up with his own plan to close not just bars and restaurants across the state but across Connecticut and New Jersey, too, the better to keep people from sneaking across state lines for a nip.
It is forgotten now in the grip of this latest panic, but early on in his tenure, de Blasio was known as something of a specialist in disaster management. He was out front and visible, shoveling snow in front of his old Brooklyn home in the first days of his administration after a series of crippling snowstorms shut down the city, and hosted off-the-cuff, even charming, press conferences with first responders.
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