One issue we had was in New York City where we had a higher level of density than we wanted - especially in the New York City parks, especially with young people. I've been as direct as I can and as blunt as I can on young people and the misinformation that they have. You can catch the coronavirus. You may think you are a superhero. You're really not. You can catch it and you can transfer it which makes you dangerous to the people who you love. But the New York City parks have been a problem. I saw the problem. I saw firsthand, I spoke to Mayor de Blasio, I spoke to Speaker Johnson. We said come up with a plan in 24 hours that everybody agreed with. They came up with a plan. We're now implementing that plan. I signed off on that plan. The plan is going to pilot closing streets in New York City because we have much less traffic in New York City. We have many fewer vehicles in New York City. Open streets. People want to walk. They want to go out and get some air. They want a less dense area, so pilot closing streets to cars, opening streets to pedestrians.
We'll also enact mandatory playgrounds social density - that's probably a new concept - no close contact sports in a playground. No basketball, for example. You cannot do it. We are asking people to do that on a voluntary basis. If there is non-compliance with that, we will then make it mandatory and we will actually close the playgrounds. We don't want to do that because playgrounds are a place to get open air, but you have to exercise social density even in a playground. Again, it's voluntary. The Mayor is going to make it clear that this is important to the people of the city. If it doesn't happen we will actually close down the playgrounds. I don't want to do that, but we do need to reduce the spread of the infection and that is what is most important.
This is very interesting, because the evidence suggests that the density control measures may be working and again, we're doing this from projections. But look at this because it's interesting: This past Sunday, the projection was that hospitalizations were doubling every two days. On Monday, the numbers suggested that the hospitalizations were doubling every 3.4 days. On Tuesday, the projections suggested that the hospitalizations were doubling every 4.7 days. Now, that is almost too good to be true, but the theory is given the density that we're dealing with, it spreads very quickly but if you reduce the density you can reduce the spread very quickly.
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