My team was doing everything they could. We brought in Google to launch a streamlined unemployment application and reboot the website. We brought in over three thousand additional people to handle the incoming requests, contracted with outside call centers, and reassigned personnel from other state agencies to help manage the influx. Pre-pandemic, it took two to three weeks to process payments—the deluge of incoming caused a backup, and the public was understandably panicked; so many New Yorkers live check to check, and people in New York City paid rents that could swallow more than half of a worker’s income before they could even think about food and utilities. There was very little patience and lots of anxiety.
I told my team to strip out all the bureaucracy but not become lax on the mandated federal certifications. I have seen too many times when government “waste, fraud, and abuse” becomes an all-too-easy refrain when a mistake is made. My team worked very hard to accomplish both goals, and while nothing is ever perfect—especially in an emergency—as of this writing, we were successful in preventing over $1 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims, protecting taxpayer money and upholding the integrity of the system.
APRIL 7 | 8,174 NEW CASES | 17,493 HOSPITALIZED | 731 DEATHS
“This is not an act of God that we’re looking at; it’s an act of what society actually does.”
SOME GOOD NEWS: THE NEW York State lab had developed its own test for antibodies. It was a new weapon in the arsenal. There were now two types of tests: diagnostic and antibody. Diagnostic tests detect whether a person is positive or negative at the time of the test. The antibody test tells you whether the person has had the virus in the past. Experts at this time said they believed that once a person was infected, they could not be reinfected. This was promising, if not entirely conclusive. It suggested that the presence of antibodies could identify workers who could immediately return to the workplace safely.
The antibody test could also help determine how the virus was spreading and where. It could target the spread by demographics and geography. To me, data was the key. We were flying blind for so long, looking at vague projection models with so many caveats they were virtually meaningless. Maybe, just maybe, now we would have actual facts that we could study and that wouldn’t change. I was also worried about protections for our essential workers, and this test could now give us specific data as to the infection rates among different work groups.
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“EMOTIONALLY OVERWHELMING” IS A concept that I now fully appreciate. It is the culmination and bombardment of a number of intense and sometimes conflicting emotions. The fear and exhaustion were constant. The intensity was also a constant. But I also had a growing frustration at the “unforced” errors. We will make mistakes no matter how good we are at what we do. There will be unknowns and miscalculations. But unilateral, unnecessary, unforced errors are incredibly infuriating for me to accept.
The COVID virus was starting to spread across the country. The federal government was still in full denial and minimization mode, but they had also persuaded a number of states to follow their political posture. This was an unforced error. Every health expert and scientist who researched COVID said the same thing: COVID will spread. This country made that horrendous blunder once already when the virus spread undetected from China to Europe to New York. We watched the spread across countries, and we saw the pain. I was watching it spread from New York City to Long Island and then upstate. We know it will spread within states and among states. We know that if some states allow it to spread, it will infect us all. It is a proven fact. Why is the nation making these unnecessary, damaging mistakes?
APRIL 8 | 10,453 NEW CASES | 18,079 HOSPITALIZED | 779 DEATHS
“Every number is a face.”
THERE HAD BEEN A SERIES of national polls that had tested different officials’ credibility and popularity during the COVID crisis. The most credible and popular had always been Dr. Anthony Fauci. He communicated with sincerity, and he was not a politician. There was also the suggestion that he had been more loyal to science than to Trump. I spoke to Dr. Fauci regularly and he was a great support.
Right below Fauci was me. This came as a huge surprise. I knew the briefings had attracted a large national audience, but it had been a relatively short time—it only felt long! The briefings were generating a lot of social media. While everyone was locked in their homes, they spent a lot of time on their computers. One moment that lightened everybody’s mood was Randy Rainbow’s parody of the song “Sandy” from Grease, now renamed “Andy.” I don’t know if it was Randy who coined “Cuomosexual,” and to this day I’m not really sure what it means, but I think it’s a good thing.
Trump was still not rated favorably at all. His popularity had been falling from past polls. People didn’t believe him and didn’t think he knew what he was talking about—a bad combination. It was remarkable that my polling was as high as it was, because I had been making a lot of difficult decisions and this had been my first exposure to a national audience on any significant scale. I am also a known Democrat from a northeastern state, which immediately brings a certain negative baggage. It still amazes and heartens me that people just wanted the truth, competence, and confidence from their leaders.
I’d always admired Winston Churchill as a great leader, and he’s served as an inspiration throughout the crisis. He communicated with people and urged them to action. He also delivered. He made the mechanism of government produce,
