The decisions weren’t always obvious.
I was inclined to close as near to everything as possible, because every person who had to go to work was putting their life at risk and I wasn’t going to ask that of one more worker than I absolutely had to. On the flip side, we were also deciding who was about to lose their jobs. There are, for example, more than 100,000 employees of gyms in New York State. Gyms were about as high risk as they come and would likely be closed for a long time.
Food, health care, pharmacies, and supply chain industries were essential; that was easy. But when Robert argued that dry cleaners were essential, I thought he was crazy. There’s nothing essential about dry cleaning. “You’re just saying that because you don’t want to do your own laundry,” I teased him. But the truth is, as he explained it, police and other uniformed personnel need dry cleaners for their uniforms, so they stay open. Verizon stores were essential because people need to be able to repair or replace broken cellphones. I objected to liquor stores staying open, but I was overruled, the argument being we had to be consistent about food and beverage businesses; if you could sell beer at a convenience store, then liquor stores should be allowed to stay open. That was also why we changed the law to allow restaurants offering takeout to offer alcoholic beverages, which had the added advantage of making people a little happier being stuck at home.
As dramatic as New York PAUSE was, the facts had led to the inescapable conclusion. I did not have to convince the people of the state. I believed they would have taken the same action if it were put to a vote. There were still voices in opposition, primarily those on the Far Right. Trump was fanning the flames against government and business closures. But the overwhelming majority of New Yorkers—Democrats and Republicans—knew where we were and what we must do. Closing down the state through the New York PAUSE order was accomplishing the first essential task: communicating the extent of the problem, the urgency, and solidifying New Yorkers’ support for my plan to accomplish mission impossible.
Aside from asking everyone who could stay home to do exactly that, I implemented Matilda’s Law, named after my mother and directed at seniors like her and everyone else in a vulnerable population, which limited home visitation to immediate family members or close friends in order to protect them. In a way, this law felt like a culmination of the daily conversations I had with my mother explaining how we were trying to keep her safe.
During the briefing that day, the main message I wanted to convey was the need for everyone to be safe, and that the only way to do that was together. The human toll all of this was taking was never far from my thoughts. “People are in a small apartment,” I said at the briefing, my voice breaking with the emotion of it. “They’re in a house, they’re worried, they’re anxious. Just be mindful of that. Those three-word sentences can make all the difference. I miss you, I love you, I’m thinking of you, I wish I was there with you, I’m sorry you’re going through this, I’m sorry we’re going through this. That’s going to be a situation that’s going to develop because we’re all in quarantine now.” It was a very emotional moment for me, and it was later reported that I shed a tear. I do know that I welled up with emotion that day.
I also needed to strike the right balance between disclosing to the public the potential of someone in our office having coronavirus while still protecting that person’s privacy and not overhyping what could just as easily come back with a negative result.
At the end of the briefing, as I began to get up from my chair, I dropped the news that a member of our press office was exhibiting signs of coronavirus, adding that we would be quarantining employees of the entire office.
Looking back, I’m not sure it was the most artful way to disclose that information, particularly to a group of reporters who had spent the last twenty days huddled in the Red Room with my press staff, but as we had been learning, sometimes there didn’t seem to be a “right way” to do anything.
It felt as if the ground were shifting beneath us. The final test on Caitlin came back that she was COVID positive. The virus could infect anyone, and its reach did not discriminate. And regardless of perceived power or access, with too few tests and even less information, our entire press office would be quarantined for the next fourteen days.
The burden I asked people to shoulder—quarantining as a precaution after coming into contact with a positive case—was now one my entire press team would experience every day for the next two weeks. By talking about this publicly, I wanted to show New Yorkers that I was in that journey with them, experiencing it, feeling it, suffering it, just as they were. They say relationships take work. My relationship with the people of the state was vital, and I was willing to put in the work.
MARCH 21 | 3,254 NEW CASES | 1,406 HOSPITALIZED | 12 DEATHS
“I don’t believe this is going to be a matter of weeks. How long and how well it takes to get through this is up to us.”
THERE WERE NO DAYS OF the week—one day just blending into the next. One crisis blending into
