New York City Started Re-Opening Yesterday-- Cautiously

America 2020 by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday, as states and cities rush to re-open, some carefully, others not, the Washington Post ran a piece by Joel Achenbach, Shutdowns prevented 60 million coronavirus infections in the U.S., study finds. "Shutdown orders," he wrote, "prevented about 60 million novel coronavirus infections in the United States and 285 million in China, according to a research study published Monday that examined how stay-at-home orders and other restrictions limited the spread of the contagion. A separate study from epidemiologists at Imperial College London estimated the shutdowns saved about 3.1 million lives in 11 European countries, including 500,000 in the United Kingdom, and dropped infection rates by an average of 82 percent, sufficient to drive the contagion well below epidemic levels."

The two reports, published Monday in the journal Nature, provide fresh evidence that aggressive and unprecedented shutdowns, which caused massive economic disruptions and job losses, were necessary to halt the exponential spread of the novel coronavirus.

But the overwhelming majority of people remain susceptible to the virus. Only about 3 percent to 4 percent of people in the countries being studied have been infected to date, said Samir Bhatt, senior author of the Imperial College London study.

“This is just the beginning of the epidemic: we’re very far from herd immunity,” Bhatt said Monday in an email. “The risk of a second wave happening if all interventions and precautions are abandoned is very real.”

The first study, from researchers at the University of California at Berkeley, examined six countries-- China, the United States, France, Italy, Iran and South Korea-- and estimated how 1,717 interventions, such as stay-at-home orders, business closings and travel bans, altered the spread of the virus. The report concluded that those six countries collectively managed to avert 62 million test-confirmed infections. Because most people who are infected never get tested, the actual number of infections that were averted is much higher-- about 530 million in the six countries, the Berkeley researchers estimated.

Timing is crucial, the study found. Small delays in implementing shutdowns can lead to “dramatically different health outcomes.” The report, while reviewing what worked and what made little difference, is clearly aimed at the many countries around the planet that are still early in their battle against the coronavirus.

“Societies around the world are weighing whether the health benefits of anti-contagion policies are worth their social and economic costs,” the Berkeley team wrote. The economic costs of shutdowns are highly visible-- closed stores, huge job losses, empty streets, food lines. The health benefits of the shutdowns, however, are invisible, because they involve people not sickened.

That spurred the researchers to come up with their estimates of infections prevented. The Berkeley team did not produce an estimate of lives saved.

Achenbach is a health-and-politics reporter but J. David Goodman covers lobbying, fund-raising and the influence of money in politics. Interesting that the NY Times assigned him the job of covering the reopening of New York City. But with Cuomo in charge, it was a sensible approach. "Exactly 100 days since its first case of coronavirus was confirmed, New York City, which weathered extensive hardship as an epicenter of the worldwide outbreak, is set to take the first tentative steps toward reopening its doors on Monday," he wrote on Sunday. "Getting here took the sacrifice of millions of New Yorkers who learned to live radically different lives. More than 205,000 have been infected, and nearly 22,000 have died."

As many as 400,000 workers could begin returning to construction jobs, manufacturing sites and retail stores in the city’s first phase of reopening-- a surge of normalcy that seemed almost inconceivable several weeks ago, when the city’s hospitals were at a breaking point and as many as 800 people were dying from Covid-19 on a single day.

Many retail stores, battered by months of closure, are readying to do business again on Monday, starting with curbside and in-store pickup. Construction companies are adding safety features and stockpiling masks and gloves. Manufacturers, whose shop floors have idled since March, are testing machines.

State and city officials said they were optimistic that the city would begin to spring back to life. Testing is robust, reaching 33,000 people on a recent day. And new infections are now down to around 500 a day-- half as many as there were just a few weeks ago.

That is low enough for New York City’s corps of contract tracers, who began work last week, to try to track every close interaction and, officials hope, stop a resurgence of the virus.

New confirmed cases on Sunday and Monday for New York state was 1,018 and 1,064. NYC was 460 and 389:

Brooklyn- 168 and 129
Queens- 114 and 134
Bronx- 98 and 74
Manhattan- 54 and 42
Staten Island- 26 and 10

Suffolk County, a big suburb on Long Island, filled with crackpot Republicans who refused to wear masks or social distance, had 291 new cases on Sunday and 364 on Monday, each day the worst of any county in New York state. Commuters from Suffolk County could well spread the contagion in the city. Cuomo, who is always trying to take credit for NYC's progress, even though thousands became sick because he was so slow to recognize and act on the pandemic early on, said "You want to talk about a turnaround-- this one, my friends, is going to go in the history books."

New York City, like nine other regions in the state, was required to meet seven health-related metrics before beginning reopening. New York City was the last part of the state to do so; much of upstate has already moved on to Phase 2, which allows most stores, offices and hair salons to open, with restrictions on capacity and social distance.

The road back will undoubtedly be challenging. More than 885,000 jobs vanished during the outbreak, and strong gains are not expected for the city until 2022. The city budget hemorrhaged tax revenue and now faces a $9 billion shortfall over the next year.

And the reopening has been complicated by the vast protests for racial justice that have swept the city for more than a week and have forced government officials and business owners to unexpectedly adjust their plans.

Hundreds of stores were burglarized by looters who took advantage of the protests to prey on commercial districts, from Midtown to the Bronx. Shop owners scrambled to cover windows in plywood rather than reaching for welcome banners. Police officers enforced a nightly curfew.

...Even before the protests, some public health officials were privately fretting that the timeline set by Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio was too ambitious. They worried that infections could increase as people returned to work and commuters began to take the subway again.

But the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said it did not believe that rush hour would meaningfully return on Monday-- or anytime soon. Even when schools and Broadway are allowed to open in the fourth and final phase of the reopening, the authority is projecting ridership will be under 70 percent.

One person briefed on the authority’s planning said officials there expected the trains to be at well below 50 percent capacity at least through Labor Day-- a calculation based on the idea that many office workers would continue to work remotely into the fall.

Many business leaders, particularly those in office-based jobs like technology and finance, are watching the transit system for signs that it is safe. The authority has embarked on large-scale cleanings and required riders to wear masks, but said social distancing may not be possible if subways and buses carry anywhere close to their normal loads.

...Some businesses are taking it slowly and carefully.

Only about a third of textile workers in the city are expected to be back at work on Monday, said Edgar Romney, the secretary-treasurer of their union, Workers United/SEIU. Businesses that are operating have altered their shifts to reduce crowding and installed plastic shields to separate tightly packed sewing machines.

But many, particularly in Midtown Manhattan, have remained closed, he said.

For retailers, the picture is even more complex. Just opening the doors does not guarantee that customers will return. Curbside pickup does not make a lot of sense for many retailers either, particularly in Manhattan.

Business groups said many retailers were waiting for the next phase to venture out, when outdoor dining is allowed, office workers are permitted to return and shoppers are able to enter and browse around all types of stores, local business groups said.

The earliest that could begin would be late June, based on state mandates that each phase last at least two weeks. But Mayor de Blasio said on Thursday that he did not anticipate the city moving into the next phase until early July.

“Businesses can be ready, but are the consumers ready?” asked Thomas J. Grech, president of the Queens Chamber of Commerce. “I want to demonstrate to the buying public, to the consumers out there, that the businesses are making it safe.”

When more than 100 workers return next week to Newlab, a technology hub in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, they will have the option of wearing a device that buzzes every time two colleagues get too close to each other-- a high-tech way to enforce social distancing.

The devices, made by StrongArm Technologies, a company based in the hub, were already being worn by most of the 80 or so workers deemed essential.

“In the first week, people were getting buzzed all the time,” said Shaun Stewart, the chief executive of Newlab. “It flashes and it vibrates. That alone, that immediately changes your behavior and your perspective on distancing.”

The city’s contact tracing efforts are far less high tech. But for the past week, newly infected New Yorkers have been receiving calls from the new corps of tracers. City Hall did not provide figures for how many people they were able to reach.

“The beginning of any program is challenging,” said Jay Varma, an adviser to Mr. de Blasio on public health. But so far, he said, “people are willing to participate, they’re willing to give information about their health conditions and about their close contacts.”

Still, a jump in cases could overwhelm the system, as happened at the start of the pandemic in New York in March.

Officials are watching barometers of the virus’s spread closely, from new positive tests to emergency room data, for any sign that the newly flattened curve of infection might be arcing upward again.

The work of contact tracing has taken on new urgency because of the public outpouring of anger at the death of George Floyd, a black man killed in Minneapolis on May 25 in a confrontation with four police officers... [which] raised questions about how mass gatherings might spread the virus, with some participants not observing social distancing.

“On the public health side, this has been a really long, arduous nearly 100 days of something none of us had never dealt with before, and then you see that activity, of course you’re concerned,” said Jim Malatras, a close adviser to Mr. Cuomo. “The top blew off. The top blew off across this country.”

Mr. Malatras said he envisioned several possible results of the demonstrations.

People who are asymptomatic could transmit the disease far beyond the ranks of the protesters. Or, if there is no immediate surge of infections, some New Yorkers may begin to doubt strict adherence to social distancing.

The impact of having crowds of at least 20,000 protesters on the streets would not be apparent for as long as two weeks, officials cautioned.

“The mayor is appropriately concerned about the risk of a resurgence due to the mass gatherings that have occurred,” said Mr. Varma, adding that “there is a lot that we don’t know about how people’s behavior will change after June 8.”

He said, however, that because the protests took place outdoors and many demonstrators wore masks, the risks may have been lessened.

The state and the city will not make a decision about moving to the second phase of reopening for at least two weeks, at which point the public health effects of the protests should be more clear, officials said.