7 Heads Better than 1 on Plan to Reopen COVID Corridor in the Northeast!

Dear Commons Community,

Seven governors in the Northeast announced yesterday that they plan to roll out a regional effort to reopen the economy in a “coordinated way” amid the coronavirus crisis.  Gov. Andrew Cuomo (New York),   Gov. Phil Murphy (New Jersey), Gov. Ned Lamont (Connecticut,  Gov. Tom Wolf (Pennsylvania), Gov. John Carney (Delaware), Gov. Gina Raimondo (Rhode Island) and Gov. Charlie Bak (Massachusetts) all agreed to the effort.  This came on the same day that President Trump insisted he alone has the power to declare the U.S. open for business.  As reported by the Daily News:

“We should start looking forward to reopening, but reopening with a plan, and a smart plan, because if you do it wrong, it can backfire,” Cuomo said yesterday during an afternoon conference call with the other  governors. “What the art form is going to be here is doing that smartly and doing that productively and doing that in a coordinated way.”

Each state will name a public health official, an economic development official and the chief of staff for each governor to a working group that will share information, resources and “intelligence” about an economic path forward, the governors said.

Cuomo said earlier that easing stay-at-home restrictions, expanding the category of essential workers and testing capacities would be among the first priorities as he reported that more than 10,000 New Yorkers have so far died from COVID-19.

Decisions will be made based on the directions of public health experts, not politics, the governor added.

Both New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont said a regional approach makes the most sense, given the interconnected economies of the states.

“You know all of our pandemic here in Connecticut is all along that I-95 metro-north corridor where we have hundreds of thousands of people going back and forth between New York and Connecticut,” Lamont said. “It is the commuter corridor for us, but it’s also the COVID corridor, which is why it’s so important we work together thoughtfully on this,” he added.

“For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government,” Trump tweeted earlier in the day. “Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect.”

Trump has floated the possibility of getting the country going again by May 1, a goal he set after initially saying he’d like to see things reopened by Easter.

But Cuomo and others have cautioned that lifting restrictions too quickly could have catastrophic consequences.

Trump “left it to states to close down without any guidance, really,” Cuomo said, noting the president’s penchant for leaving difficult decisions up to the states as the pandemic worsened.

“He took the position it was the states’ decision, they were responsible for purchasing supplies, etc., that was the management for this emergency,” he added. “If they want to change the model, they can change the model. He is the president of the United States. It’s civics 101.”

The governors of Washington, California and Oregon announced yesterday they’re also working on a coordinated effort to re-open their economies.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, meanwhile, said the U.S. and New York City can’t relax coronavirus restrictions and return to normal until there’s widespread testing and municipalities can provide basic services.

“Our national government still hasn’t figured out how to provide testing on a wide scale, and that’s the only way we get to normal,” de Blasio said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Monday.

de Blasio said that social distancing and business closures appear to have helped the city reduce the number of new coronavirus patients and hospitalizations but that he wasn’t sure if there’s been a “plateau” or peak across the five boroughs just yet.

As of early Monday, there were 6,182 reported deaths in the five boroughs, up by 393 people from Sunday. In total, the city had 106,813 confirmed coronavirus cases as of yesterday, up by 4,309 from a day earlier, according to the city Health Department.

While the drop in hospitalizations has indicated the spread of COVID-19 is beginning to taper in New York thanks to strict social distancing and a statewide shutdown of all but a handful of essential businesses, there is still the risk of a resurgence.

Cuomo said that it appeared  that the state had reached a “plateau” even as another 671 New Yorkers died from coronavirus on Sunday, bringing the death toll statewide to 10,056.

The governors in these states are approaching this critical issue correctly.

Tony

 

 

3 comments

  1. we are passing very dangerous days in america these days and our government shouldnt cancel quarantine at all , and we americans are against of this issue. we really must decrease the death rate of coronavirus and the break it.