Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged protesters bemoaning a lack of work to take some of the thousands of advertised essential retail jobs on Wednesday...
Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged protesters bemoaning a lack of work to take some of the thousands of advertised essential retail jobs on Wednesday as tensions continued to bubble across the country over when America can get back to work.
With major delays in unemployment benefit payouts from the states, a haphazard dishing out of money from the federal government and with no real end in sight for the chaos, many say they are willing to now risk their health to get back to work because they can no longer go without paychecks.
On Wednesday Cuomo, in response their outrage, urged them to get jobs as essential workers. Amazon, Walmart, CVS and dozens of other retailers continue to take on staff to meet demand.
He also said that he believes as much as 10 percent of the population of downstate New York has become infected.
'My guess is it's going to be 10 percent, about now, in the high infection areas. It's a guess but I would guess 10 percent downstate, single digits upstate,' he said.
If that is true, that would mean some 860,000 people in New York City had become infected when the current number of confirmed cases is 134,874.
It would bring the case count across the entire state up from some 250,000 to around 1.9million, and means the fatality rate is far lower than is being reported.
Across New York state, the death rate when calculated using confirmed cases, is 5.9 percent. If the true number of infections is more than 1.9million, 10 percent of the population, it would lower that fatality rate to 0.8 percent.
In his angry response to the protesters, he fumed at the suggestion that the 'cure was worse than the illness' itself, as some protesters have claimed, and said they had to consider the possibility of infecting other people and not just becoming infected themselves once they were back in the workplace.
'The illness is death. What is worth than death? And it may be my death as opposed to your death.
'How can the cure be worse than the illness if the illness is death? It does not equal death. Economic hardship, yes, very bad. Not death.
'Emotional stress from being locked in a house: very bad. Not death. Domestic violence on the increase: very bad. Not death And not death of someone else.
Protesters descended on the State Capitol without masks on Wednesday to complain about Cuomo's ongoing lockdown
The protesters held up signs calling Cuomo a 'dictator' and demanding that he give them their 'lives back'
A protester holds up a sign labeling Cuomo a communist on Wednesday outside the State Capitol
None of the protesters wore masks or practiced social distancing. They tooted their car horns during Cuomo's press briefing
'That's what we have to factor into this equation. Yeah, it's your life do whatever you want. But you're now responsible for my life. You have a responsibility to me. It's not just about you. Get your head around the 'we' concept. It's not all about you...
'You wanna go to work? Take a job as an essential worker. Do it tomorrow. You're working.
'You're an essential worker. There are people hiring. You can get a job as an essential worker.
'Now you can get a job and you can go to work and you're not going to kill anyone,' he said.
Essential businesses like Amazon, CVS, Walmart, Kroger and Dollar General are all advertising thousands of positions across the country.
Thousands want to reopen their own businesses and they are being spurned on by President Trump who thinks some states should reopen before others.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, there has been a constant weighing of public health against the economy.
Cuomo said on Wednesday that he refuses to open any part of the state before he knows it is safe.
Hospitalizations, deaths and intubations are all down, but there are still more than 1,000 people being hospitalized with the virus every day.
On Tuesday, 474 New Yorkers died from the disease.
It brings the death toll across the state to more than 15,000.
There were a further 5,526 cases across the state on Tuesday bringing the total number of cases in New York to 257,216.
'We make a bad move, it's going to set us back... we can't make a bad decision.
'This is no time to act stupidly. I don't know how else to say it. This is not going to be over anytime soon.
'I know people want out. I get it. I know people need a paycheck. I also know more people will die if we are not smart.
'There can be a second wave and if you're not ready for it, that's the wave that's going to knock you down. That's what I am worried about,' he said.
With help from the federal government that was agreed in his White House meeting with President Trump on Tuesday, Cuomo said the state will soon go from doing 20,000 tests a day to 40,000 tests a day to find new cases.
Then, the state will use a tracing program that is going to be developed by former mayor Mike Bloomberg to try to find how many people infected people came into contact with.
Bloomberg, who dropped out of the presidential race earlier this year, is donating $10million to the program. It will be run by John Hopkins and will involve hundreds of people, if not thousands, being recruited to build an 'army of tracers'.
Separately, New York is also carrying out a study of 3,000 people chosen at random at grocery stores and on street corners to try to detect antibodies in their blood.
The hope is that test will offer a 'snapshot' of what percentage of the population had the virus and has recovered from it.
He said on Wednesday that the results of that test will be returned 'in a few days'.
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