On Monday, New York City opens, starts Phase 1. That's great news. You look at the numbers on New York City, they have dropped dramatically. They were at a high of positive testing at 57 percent, they're now down to 2 percent. You want to talk about a turnaround. This one, my friends, is going to go in the history books. New York was the hardest hit and in 98 days we have gotten to a much, much different place. Hospitalizations went from 12,000 down to 1,500.
Phase 1 guidelines starts Monday. It's construction, it's manufacturing, it's curbside pickup. Pursuant to these rules, curbside pickup, in-store pick up where curbside is not practical, they're prearranged, you're not there to browse and shop, social distancing. Construction and manufacturing, masks must be worn. And again, WHO just pointed out how important they are. Employer must provide masks, no congregate settings. We're sending 1 million masks to the MTA, 25,000 gallons of hand sanitizer, made right here in the State of New York, two-ounce bottles for the MTA reopening. The MTA will reopen with disinfected train cars. Never heard of before, used to complain about how dirty they were, they are now disinfected for the first time. My house doesn't have disinfected bathrooms, but the subway cars are disinfected, the Long Island Rail Road is disinfected, buses, etc.
As office workers go back to work, we're allowing commercial buildings to take the temperature of everyone who enters the building. "I don't want anyone to take my temperature." That's going to be a problem because we're giving commercial buildings the right to take the temperature of everyone who walks into a building. It's not just your health, it's the people you could infect. And remember that when you go back to work, it doesn't mean we're going to go back to the way we were, there's no going back in life, it's about going forward and finding a new normal with new behavior and new patterns in the workplace, right? And we need everyone to cooperate with that as they've cooperated all along.
But, congratulations, the people of New York City did this. They heard the information, they reacted, they responded, and they were so smart in what they did, and so disciplined and they went through hell, but they rose to the occasion. We used to talk about flattening the curve. We didn't just flatten the curve, we bent the curve. Flatten the curve was stop the increase and get to a plateau. We went beyond that in New York. We went from the worst to one of the best in a very short period of time. New Yorkers did it.
Back to COVID-19: NYC Resources
This page © 2020 Barry Drogin