The nursing home policy may well have been misbegotten, and the state reversed it in May. But the epidemic in the city, which has accounted for 65% of state Covid deaths, was almost surely past its peak when the policy took effect and did not experience a detectable resurgence afterward. It also seems to have been on the decline before Cuomo’s stay-at-home order went into effect on March 22.
Again, these are estimates based on assumptions that may in some cases be faulty, but it does makes sense that the period between March 10 and March 17 would have been decisive. On the 10th, white-collar workers were still coming into the office in New York City, kids were still going to school, restaurant seatings were still about 70% of normal and the mayor was still planning for a St. Patrick’s Day parade. The next day, the actor Tom Hanks tested positive for Covid-19 and the National Basketball Association shut down after one of its players did too, setting off rapid changes in individual behavior and public policy. By the 17th, working from home had become the norm for those who could, schools were closed, restaurants and bars were empty — and there was no parade. (Masks can’t have played much of a role, given that hardly anybody in New York had acquired any as of mid-March.)
If only those changes had come earlier, my chart seems to indicate, more than a million infections and tens of thousands of deaths might have been prevented. This jibes with a recent study by three researchers at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, who estimated that 18,543 lives would have been saved in the New York metropolitan area if its “control measures” had been put in place just one week before they actually were.
For those now living in coronavirus hot spots in the South and West, the hopeful message here is that vastly expanded testing capacity has given more warning of the outbreaks than we New Yorkers got back in February and March, and that resulting behavioral changes may already have turned the tide against the disease. The bad news is that even if this hopeful scenario is correct — and it may not be, given the continuing unwillingness of many Americans to acknowledge Covid-19 as a threat — the epidemic will keep feeling like it’s getting worse for weeks after it has started getting better.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.