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RICHARD HÉTU
Special collaboration
“If you like your neighborhood bar, go there now”, even said Bill de Blasio during a press briefing, while urging his fellow citizens to respect the rules of “social distancing”.
A few hours later, the mayor of New York announced the closure of bars, restaurants, gyms and movie theaters in his city. These measures were in addition to the suspension of classes confirmed earlier in the day after threats of revolt from teachers and parents.
On March 15, the American metropolis had already identified more than 300 cases of coronavirus contamination. How many other people were infected during this Sunday when Bill de Blasio invited New Yorkers to support their local businesses?
The media have devoted an avalanche of reports to Donald Trump’s false or untruthful statements regarding the coronavirus. But the mayor of New York, whose city has become the epicenter of the epidemic in the United States, is himself beginning to be the subject of damning articles on the same subject.
“When New York needed him most, Bill de Blasio had his worst week as mayor,” the magazine wrote. New York on March 26, when the Politico site mentioned two days later the “De Blasio coronavirus crisis”.
“Very little threat”
Throughout this crucial week, the mayor of New York has played down the threat of the coronavirus.
“For the vast majority of New Yorkers, life is going on as normal right now,” Bill de Blasio told the MSNBC show. Morning Joe, March 10. “We encourage that. “
Two days later, to justify his refusal to close the city’s public schools, he added, “If you are under 50 and healthy, which is the case with most New Yorkers, there is very little threat. “
During the same week, he also claimed on the radio that an asymptomatic person could not transmit the coronavirus and advised a woman returning from Italy that she did not need to go into quarantine.
And he refused until the last minute to cancel the St. Patrick’s Day parade.
Yet New York City Health Commissioner Oxiris Barbot began the week urging Bill de Blasio to adopt drastic measures to stem the coronavirus epidemic. The mayor opposed it for several days, perhaps exacerbating the unprecedented health crisis facing New York today.
“If I had been one of his advisers, I would have absolutely told him not to say and not to do what he said and did,” he told Press Brian Strom, epidemiologist and rector of the faculty of biomedical and health sciences at Rutgers University, New Jersey. “Would restrictive measures adopted a few days earlier have made a big difference? It is impossible to know. What is clear from the normal epidemic curve is that the faster the intervention, the flatter the curve. “
“Not a local problem”
But the Dr Strom is reluctant to blame Bill de Blasio.
“No one is surprised that New York is hit harder than other cities, because it’s a densely populated city. But what New York is experiencing is what New Orleans, Chicago, and other major cities will soon experience. It is not a local problem, but a national problem. And the absence of a real national response puts local officials in front of difficult choices. Should the mayor of New York have shut down his city while the rest of the country was still open? This is the situation he was in. “
In fact, for several days, Bill de Blasio defended himself by claiming that closing the city’s schools, restaurants and cultural institutions would cripple the city’s economy and disproportionately harm the most disadvantaged New Yorkers. .
Today, he rejects criticism of him and attacks Donald Trump.
“When the president says New York State doesn’t need 30,000 respirators, with all due respect, he’s not looking at the facts of the astronomical growth of this crisis,” he said. he says friday on abc show Good Morning America. “And a respirator means a person lives or dies. “
But Rudolph Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg’s successor has yet to find the tone, words or policies to rise above the fray and impose his leadership, unlike his Democratic rival New York and state governor, Andrew Cuomo. Many New Yorkers won’t forget what this often-called arrogant politician did the day after the city’s gyms were announced to be closing at 8 p.m.
Early in the morning, he went to his gym in Park Slope, Brooklyn, sending New Yorkers another message that was as contradictory as it was confusing.
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