The Daily - Gov. Andrew Cuomo: ‘It’s Making Sure We Live Through This.’

Episode Date: March 18, 2020

New York was one of the earliest states with confirmed cases of coronavirus, and it now has the most confirmed infections in the U.S. To control the outbreak, the authorities have begun taking increasingly drastic steps, including closing schools and businesses. Today, we talk with the governor, Andrew M. Cuomo, to hear about how he is handling the crisis.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background reading: Life in New York, a city of 8.6 million people and an economic engine for the country, is grinding to a shocking halt.The White House issued plans for an economic stimulus that included sending $1,000 to every American. In Europe, leaders voted to seal the borders of 26 countries. Here are the latest updates on the spread of the virus.

I am now disinfecting this microphone for the governor and the windscreen because that's how we roll these days. Yep. I travel everywhere now with Lysol wipes. Yeah, do you want to disinfect this? Since you'll maybe, depending on our sitting arrangement, might be holding that. Yep. Okay, let's go. Oh, we're going to hold you.

Good to hear from you. How are you? Hey, Michael. Hey, Liz. Are we allowed to shake hands? Oh, you're right, you're right, you're right. Absolutely not. Ritual is very hard.

Governor, this is Lindsay Garrison, Lisa Tobin, Governor Cuomo. Okay. From The New York Times, I'm Michael Bavaro. This is The Daily. Tonight, a scramble to contain the spread of the coronavirus in New York. In New York City tonight, about a thousand people are now under self-quarantine. Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency this weekend

to help fund the medical response to the outbreak. As one of the earliest states with confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and with the most confirmed cases so far, New York State has begun to aggressively move to control its spread. Governor Cuomo signing an executive order closing all schools statewide for the next two weeks. Taking a series of increasingly drastic steps over the past few days. In New York, Governor Cuomo is advising non-essential businesses to close each night at 8 p.m. Mayor de Blasio warned New York City residents to be prepared for a possible shelter-in-place order in the next 48 hours.

Governor Cuomo shifts his emphasis to the health care system. Today, a conversation with Governor Andrew Cuomo. with Governor Andrew Cuomo. It's Wednesday, March 18th. So, I want to thank you for letting us... I'm just examining... Examine the microphone. That's a windscreen. It'll keep your... Keep the wind down.

The wind down. It's just windy. Keep the wind down. The wind down. So, Governor, I want to thank you for letting us in in the middle of an extraordinary crisis and tell you how much we appreciate it. I want to start this conversation by asking you where New York is in this pandemic. It's Tuesday afternoon around 3 o'clock. How many New Yorkers do we understand have the coronavirus at this point? We have right now over 1,000 cases. It's a little misleading because we're talking about these tests as if it's taking a random sample, right? But it's not.

The test results are purely symbolic of how many tests you're taking. We are now taking more tests than most states, and we're finding more positives, which would make sense also because we are the dense state. And this is a function of density at the end of the day. You're getting on a subway train, you're getting on a bus, you're in a crowded restaurant, you're in a crowded office space, and this transfers in the crowds. So that it would be here first is not surprising. That it would communicate most easily here is not surprising. And that we would have the sophisticated health system that would detect it here first is not surprising. So if these are the front lines of this epidemic, and I've heard you describe this as a kind of war that we're in right now,

what stage of the war are we at in a place like New York? we're in right now. What stage of the war are we at in a place like New York? We are seeing the enemy on the horizon and they are approaching very quickly and we don't have our defenses in place. We don't. We don't. Testing was the first level of defense, right? The testing was slow nationwide. We're now ramping up in this state because the federal government, I think, made a wise decision. We were the first to ask for it. I asked the president for it directly. Basically said, decentralize the testing, leave it to the states. We have 200 laboratories in this state. I said, decentralize it, let the states do it. But you weren't allowed at first. Right. The federal government was controlling it and you were running all the national tests

through the CDC, which was then sending them to Atlanta. So we're now ramping up on testing. That's why our numbers are high. But testing is no longer going to keep the genie in the bottle, right? The genie is out of the bottle now. Where this all comes down to is when they talk about flattening the curve, flattening the curve, they're trying to slow the advance of the enemy until we can get enough of our defenses in place. What are the defenses? A health care system that can handle the injured, to torture the metaphor. And we're not there. If you look at the speed, the increase in the rate, the spike in the increase of the number of cases, we're looking at a possibility of an apex being about 45 days away.

The peak of this pandemic here. The peak. That's one projection. 45 days, needing 110,000 hospital beds. In this state, you have 50,000 hospital beds, needing 37,000 intensive care unit beds, and having 3,000 ICU beds. Needing 37,000, having three. Yes. That's a pretty extraordinary gap. Yes, because the injured here are going to be predominantly senior citizens, compromised immune systems, underlying illness. And those people need ICUs. When they come into the hospital, they don't need a normal bed and moderate health care. They need an ICU. So I want to talk about your leadership in this war to similarly torture the metaphor, the work you've done in the last few days to flatten the curve, because you've made some

extraordinary decisions in the past 72 hours or so, efforts to essentially kind of start shutting down systematically elements of our life here in New York. So help me understand the information that you've been receiving, the calculations that you've been weighing, and the very real trade-offs that you understood would have to be made. I'm watching the increase in cases. And you take one measure and you see what the effect was. You take another measure and you see what the effect was. And nothing was having an effect. Nothing we were doing. What steps did you take that were not effective? The testing was supposed to be step one. That was supposed to slow the spread. That didn't work. Okay, the enemy keeps

coming. You start moderate social distancing. Businesses, voluntary basis, work from home. That didn't make any difference. The numbers have kept going up regardless of everything we did. When you keep seeing those numbers increase, your efforts have to become more and more dramatic. Your efforts have to become more and more dramatic. Yesterday, we went to the point of closing bars, restaurants, gyms, and schools with the precaution of providing child care for essential workers, especially nurses, health care workers. The next level of efforts to control density, control the spread, would be to start closing, mandatory closing of businesses. Let me focus in on that decision. Bars, restaurants. Because that is billions of dollars in lost revenue. It's tens of thousands of people out of work. On my way here, I got a text from a friend who said he had just laid off 90 employees and he was crying the whole time he had to do it.

So let's talk about how you made that decision because of the impact that that is immediately going to have. It's a huge part of the economy in the state. And so how did you get to that decision? Michael, you are past the point of monetizing these decisions. What do you mean? You are at a point of deciding how many people are going to live, how many people are going to die.

That's where you are. Closing restaurants reduces the spread of the disease. The disease transfers very quickly, not just in the cough, in the droplets, et cetera. There are some studies that say the disease can live, the virus can live up to two or three days on a surface. Like a table at a restaurant. Just think about that. Like a table in a restaurant, like a sink, like a handrail in a bus, Two or three days.

I mean, it's why this virus is so vicious. And we know the trajectory right now overwhelms the hospital system. Three or fourfold. It's not even close. People will die because they can't get the health care service they need. So you're reducing the number of people who die because they can't get into a hospital bed for every restaurant you close and every transmission you prevent in closing that restaurant. Yes. That's the thing. It's just pure numbers.

Yes. And it's not even just New York. The whole nation is past the point of let's try to save money, right? You look at the Dow Jones market. You look at all the businesses that are closing. This is now a national phenomenon that this economy is going to be very badly hurt. The recovery of this economy is going to be an economic feat never seen before. You're going to have to go back to the Great Depression to come up with a revival plan for the economy like we're seeing now. You're going to see mortgage foreclosures. You're going to see bankruptcies. You're going to see

massive unemployment claims all across the board. I don't see you sugarcoating this at all. No, this is going to be our state finances are decimated, right? How does the state work? The state is just a percentage of every other business. Those businesses are all closed. Or their revenues have been cut by 50, 60, 70%. But I think the good thing as a nation is we said, so what? So what? What value on a human life? If I can save here 5,000 lives, 10,000 lives, I don't care what it costs, Michael. That's what I'm going to do. I wonder what you want to say to somebody who has

just lost their job, because there are now a lot of them who may not be able to pay their rent, who may not be able to pay their mortgage, who may lose their housing, and who are really scared because of these economic consequences. What do you want them to hear you saying? I would say first, I hope no one in your family or no one you know dies because of this. Because that's what we're trying to accomplish. I hope no one in your family dies. Second, we all understand the economic consequences. It's not just you. It is everyone.

And by the way, take solace in that fact. Because maybe if it was just you, you could be forgotten and left on the side of the road. It's not just you. It's everyone. And it's everywhere. The Italians have an old saying that the rich man is the man who has health, right? If you have your health, you can figure anything else out. And it's true. We'll figure out the economy. You know, I went through 9-11. Oh, downtown Manhattan is devastated. We have to rebuild. How do we do this? We're alive, first of all.

And if we are alive, we'll figure out the rest. We'll figure out the money. It's making sure we live through this. We'll be right back. Governor, I want to understand how you're thinking about something else, which is hospitals, supplies, and readiness. You've started to signal that there's a major shortage of ICU units. What about respirators? I mean, what does the picture start to look like in a couple of weeks? And are we ready for it? We are not ready for it, certainly, today. The picture looks like you have tens of thousands of people coming to the hospital. These are respiratory illnesses. They can't breathe. They need an ICU bed with a ventilator. Okay, buy more ventilators. Okay, you can't.

You can't. Because the entire world is trying to buy ventilators. So you've tried to buy ventilators. We try every which way to buy ventilators. We're trying to go to China, which is now over it, trying to buy their ventilators. I mean, it is a global competition to buy ventilators. medical stockpile. I reached out to the president. Federal cooperation is everything, Michael, because it's whatever the federal government has in that stockpile is going to be our main access. Did you ask to tap into the stockpile? And what did the president say? Yes. If I can ask.

He has said he will be very helpful. We're looking at the Army Corps of Engineers to try to build additional hospital beds, convert dormitories, et cetera, because you're overwhelming the capacity of the health care system by two or three times. You need backup staff, backup nurses, back up doctors, more space, more equipment, more gloves, more food, more everything. Is there a version where hospitals can handle this influx, or is it just a matter of how short they fall? There's no way they can handle this. So then, do you accept that some incredibly difficult decisions are going to have to be made inside hospitals in the coming days? Decisions of who lives and who dies, who gets a bed, who doesn't, who gets a respirator, who doesn't get a respirator, who to prioritize. Is that something doctors should be deciding or is that something government should be playing a role in? It will be a question of triage.

Remember, most of these people will have serious underlying conditions already. And in some ways, it will become self-selecting depending on how ill you were when you came in. Right. But when the decision has to be made, do I put the 85-year-old with underlying conditions in the ICU who might have a 50-50 chance? Or do I put a 45-year-old in the ICU who's come in with respiratory problems who has a 60% chance? We just talked to a doctor in Italy who had to make these choices. Do you want to be the one issuing protocols? Do you want the president to be issuing those protocols? Who should be guiding those kind of awful decisions?

Well, I pray we don't get there. But if we get there, it should be guiding those kind of awful decisions? Well, I pray we don't get there. But if we get there, it should be a medical decision unless God intervenes and God makes the determination first. What is the ideal role of the federal government right now in your mind? Right now, crank up the Army Corps of Engineers, which does have building capacity. Add to hospital capacity in the states that need it. New York would be at the top of the list. That's what they do, right? They build the infrastructure for war. They go into a country where nothing exists. They cut down trees. They build roads. They build camps because the states don't have the capacity or the resources. I don't have a workforce.

Mobilize FEMA, Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has tremendous potential when it works well, right? FEMA did Hurricane Katrina, which was FEMA not doing a good job. FEMA can be extraordinarily good when it's staffed and funded. So we need them fully deployed here. And are they doing that? The president has now, I believe yesterday, the president's tone was 100% serious. He showed more sobriety on this issue than he has shown. I spoke with him twice today already. I know he has his team working. I was on the phone with him late last night, early this morning. So I believe he is fully committed, and he understands the role, and he understands the severity.

And that is good news. Let me ask you directly, what do you think of President Trump's leadership in this moment? It began with some skepticism about the severity of the situation. It has changed, like you just signaled. Is the president your partner here? Yeah, let me say this. I have had a tumultuous relationship with this president. I have opposed many of his policies vociferously. You could probably say there has been no governor in the country who has been as aggressive in his opposition to the president as I have, both ideologically and practically.

And I probably have sued the president more than any governor in the United States. So having said that, I said to the president again this morning, look, forget everything. Forget Democrats. forget Republicans. We're Americans. And that always came first. And that's where we are. I put out my hand in partnership. I need your help. I'm grateful for your help. I'll be a committed partner. Let's get this done. Let's save lives. Did he say anything to make you feel like that was to be reciprocated? Yes. Yes. He said, yes, exactly.

You know, this country has gotten itself into this hyper-partisan hype, you know, this ideological intensity. And I understand why. It has been for me me too, in truth. But then something happens and it changes your whole perspective, right? You can be fighting in your family with your siblings and I'm not going to go to your birthday party and I'm not going to. And then the parent dies and you say to each other, like, what have we been doing? What a waste of time. You think we're at a moment that may transcend? You're talking about Americans dying here.

That's what you're talking about, Americans dying. Forget everything else. Life is, is life and death. And that changes your perspective. You know, we can have the arguments another day. It also changes, by the way, your perspective on government. Think about this. When was the last time this country actually needed government?

Needed it. Needed it to be competent and qualified and needed leaders to be real leaders, not celebrity leaders, not good-looking, handsome, charismatic leaders. I like this one. This one's sexy. This one's funny. This is a totally different lens. No, this thing called government is very serious. This is serious business. You have to know what you're doing. You have to know how to mobile. What is this Army Corps of Engineers and FEMA? And how do you build a hospital in 45 days?

And how do you do triage? And how do you make all these things happen in state-local relations and passing emergency appropriations? And how do you get emergency funding for purchasing and emergency orders? Wow. I didn't even know government did that. This is what government is actually for. And every so often, we have a moment that demonstrates why government exists.

Yes. And it doesn't matter until it matters. Right. Is there more coming, Governor? What kind of measures should your constituents, should all New Yorkers, and maybe even people beyond New York, be getting ready to take on? As we walked into this room, we got word, for example, that it looks like New York is going to essentially order a shelter-in-place condition, which means basically you can't leave your house. What more is coming? Yes. That is not going to happen. Shelter in place. For New York City or

any city or county to take an emergency action, the state has to approve it. And I wouldn't approve shelter in place. That scares people, right? Quarantine in place, you can't leave your home. The fear, the panic is a bigger problem than the virus. It is. Yes. And I shut that down immediately. The density control measures would be more, we're going to close businesses. You're going to potentially close all businesses.

Potentially. Potentially. Italy took the most drastic density control that only essential businesses, grocery stores, first responders, pharmacies, et cetera. But I am against quarantines. You must stay in your home. you can come out of your house just don't be in a crowded situation don't cause more density don't sneeze in someone's face within six feet right go walk in the park i mean that is a nice thing that's a positive suggestion you go no i try to take an evening walk. I appreciate that.

The old neighborhood, they used to say, go take a walk in the park. That was a bad thing. In Queens. In Queens. If we're at a moment where it's too late to look back and say, if only we had done this, if only we'd done that, and instead we're at a moment where even if the government steps up in every way we want it to, everyone now has to do their part as well. What's your message to them? First of all, welcome to life. If I had only done this, if I had only done this, if I had only done this.

That's life, my brother. That's all of us. I forget that. You're here now. What do you do now? And that's all that matters. The enemy has not advanced to a point where they are in the foxhole, right? We still have some time. Not much. Not much. But what we do between now and then matters gravely. But what we do between now and then matters gravely. Do everything you can.

Do everything you can to flatten that curve. Yes, your friend who owns the restaurant, I'm sure, is very angry at me. But you know what? I did it because I believe it was necessary to save lives. We're going to have to take more actions like that to reduce the density and flatten the curve. Do everything you can to build more hospital beds in 45 days. Well, it's impossible. Yeah, well, I'm going to try my damnedest to show you it's not impossible. Do everything that you can humanly possibly do. Extend your imagination in a way you never thought. Extend your ambition beyond yourself.

Because it's not about you. It's about us. It's about the collective. It's about society. Don't expose yourself to other people. Don't indulge yourself. Yeah, I know you really want to go out and go shopping. Yeah, I know you do. to go out and go shopping. Yeah, I know you do.

But don't think of just yourself. Save as many lives as you can. Be responsible. Be civic-minded. Be kind. Be considerate. Think of one another. Yes, we're going to have an inconvenient period for a few months. We are. Deal with it. And deal with it gracefully. And deal with it with kindness and intelligence. Governor, I really appreciate your time. Thank you for having us in.

Thank you. And good luck getting through all this. Thank you. We're going to walk in this office and keep our space. Can I just ask a quick question? If it says New York City tells 8 million people to be prepared to shelter in place, that is not going to happen? No. But it's playing on the television right now. Yeah, I know.

So what are you going to do? I don't know anyone at CNN. Yeah, but see how scary that is? Your brother is an anchor on CNN. That was a joke. Bada boom, bada boom. Bada boom. I normally hold up a little sign that says, joke coming.

No, but I'm sorry to interrupt, but in all seriousness, if that's on CNN right now. We already put a statement out that said that we were not considering it. Okay. So it'll be clarified hopefully in the next five minutes. Okay. But that's why the fear, why the panic. Because you watch things like that all day. And everybody, somebody says something and then it's on the screen right away.

Oh my God, I'm going to be locked in my home. I better go to the store and buy stuff. And now the stores are... We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Tuesday, dozens of countries moved to close their borders to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The less travel, the more we can contain the virus. Therefore, I propose to the heads of state and government to introduce temporary restriction on non-essential travel to the European Union.

travel to the European Union. The European Union voted to shut off at least 26 of its nations to nearly all outside visitors for at least 30 days and perhaps longer, while Russia will bar entry to most foreigners starting today. In the United States, where thousands of businesses have stopped operating over the past few days, the Trump administration said it was racing to stimulate the economy, to stave off a deep recession. We're looking at sending checks to Americans immediately. And what we've heard from hardworking Americans, many companies have now shut down, whether it's bars or restaurants. Americans need cash now, and the president wants to get cash now.

During a news conference, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin outlined a plan under negotiation with Congress for direct payments to Americans. And I mean now in the next two weeks. How much? There's some numbers out there. They may be a little bit bigger than what's in the press. Go ahead, please. Meanwhile, on Tuesday night, West Virginia became the 50th state to report an infection. And Joe Biden won all three primaries on Tuesday in Florida, Illinois, and Arizona, dashing Bernie Sanders' hope of a comeback and solidifying Biden's lead. You know, it's in moments like these that we realize we need to put politics aside and work together as Americans. On Tuesday night, Biden devoted much of his victory speech to the pandemic.

A coronavirus doesn't care if you're a Democrat or Republican. It will not discriminate based on national origin, race, gender, or your zip code. It will touch people in positions of power, as well as the most vulnerable people in our society. We're all in this together. This is a moment for each of us. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.