In the last week of January an adviser to the president, Peter Navarro, sent an internal memo that should have set off alarm bells. It said that the coronavirus was not contained to China and could possibly affect 200 million Americans. There are only 330 million Americans total. The memo went on to say the virus could result in one to two million lives lost—more casualties than have been sustained in any war the nation has ever been engaged in. Navarro is not a junior staffer. He is a senior political aide with direct access to the president. Who read the memo? What was done as a result of this memo? Absolutely nothing.
MARCH 3 | 1 NEW CASE | 1 HOSPITALIZED | 0 DEATHS
“Every day matters.”
NEW YORK CITY IS UNIQUE, and people often assume that situations in New York City can’t happen “somewhere else.” When New York had its second positive case, this time in New Rochelle, in Westchester County just north of New York City, I knew that attitudes would change. Despite New Rochelle’s proximity to New York City, it was really Anyplace, U.S.A. This area would quickly become the nation’s first “hot spot,” due in large part to the fact that patient zero, a lawyer named Lawrence Garbuz, was infected well before he knew it.
Patient zero attended a Bat Mitzvah ceremony and a funeral as a member of a congregation at a local temple, along with hundreds of other guests. In his other interactions over several days—working at his law office, taking public transportation, and visiting a doctor’s office—he spread the virus to dozens of people. The New Rochelle man was the first known American “super-spreader,” an infected person who happens to be in the company of a large number of people and can spread the virus in a short period of time.
If COVID could explode in New Rochelle, it could happen anywhere. I knew this would strike a troubling chord in people, and so I explained the situation carefully at my daily briefing. As I had the previous day, I presented the facts, including dates and medical information. I didn’t hold back any information because I thought it was too difficult or frightening. It’s not my place to filter or edit the truth. The people of New York are not children, and I am not their father. In fact, I don’t even filter the truth for my kids. People will make the right judgment if they know the facts.
The facts from New Rochelle were startling. Patient zero was critically ill, and the virus was spreading like lightning. He could have been anyone’s husband, brother, uncle, or friend. There was no malice or irresponsibility on his part. Not only was the situation in New Rochelle a wake-up call for people all over the state, it was the first time the state government needed to answer questions because the federal government was quickly doing an about-face on taking control.
A local doctor was among those infected soon after patient zero. We were telling anyone who tested positive that they couldn’t go to work. Local health officials told him to shut down his office, but the doctor refused. He said closing would hurt his business. The state Department of Health also told him to shut down, and he said, “On what authority?”
That’s when I heard about it. The last thing I wanted was a lawsuit, which would take weeks of hearings to get a resolution. We didn’t have weeks. So I called him myself.
He wasn’t impressed; in fact, he was really angry.
What mattered was persuading him to do the right thing, to protect other people, so I let him vent, and then I talked him through the reasoning. “We’re all doing things we don’t want to do,” I said. “We have to do this.” Finally, he agreed to close.
Next, we talked with local officials about shutting down the schools. The pushback was fierce. The Orthodox community didn’t want to shut their schools, and they felt discriminated against. They were a sizable political constituency, and the local officials were intimidated. The head of the local public school board also called us, enraged. She said they shouldn’t have to close, because the kids testing positive didn’t go to the public schools. She emphasized how many of the kids in the public schools were food insecure and that school was a major source of meals. As a result, the state elected representatives were against shutting the schools, fearing it would be too disruptive.
What really stood out was that no one thought the outbreak itself was a big deal. So a few people got the bug, why shut everything down? It was the first manifestation of the disconnect people had about the threat. I realized we were going to have to make some incredibly tough decisions and work vigilantly to achieve public support for them.
We were already talking about creating a containment zone in New Rochelle, where we would close schools and religious gathering places and focus our testing on residents. Gareth Rhodes, a longtime trusted aide, and Melissa printed out a map and laid it on the conference room table. The three of us, along with the health commissioner, Howard Zucker, talked about how big to make it. There was no playbook, no guidelines coming from the federal government; it was up to us. We decided on a uniform mile from the center.
We got on the phone with Noam Bramson, the mayor of New Rochelle, and George Latimer, the Westchester County executive, explaining where the line was going to be drawn. Noam pointed out that the line went right through the middle of a golf course. “Do you know which side of the line the golf course clubhouse falls? Depending where the line is, a wedding
