New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said last Tuesday that residents should avoid traveling this holiday season, and the city would strictly enforce a two-week quarantine for those visiting from other states which have seen an increase in cases.
The Wall Street Journal reported that due to the virus outbreak, de Blasio said, “This year we have to do things differently.”
De Blasio has insisted NYC must to remain diligent and cannot afford to give up ground on battling the virus, as New York State reported 20,000 COVID deaths in the spring.
The New York Times, however, reported that NYC hospitals are not seeing the increase in cases they absorbed in the early months. The report also said there are fewer people are dying. The paper said that, in the spring, the City had over 800 confirmed and probable deaths from the virus. The City reported 139 deaths in the past four weeks as of last Saturday, The Times said.
“There is a much lower recent mortality rate,” Dr. David Reich, President of Mount Sinai Hospital, told the paper.
De Blasio called on the federal government to mandate that all passengers should be required to prove they have not tested positive in the past 72 hours before their flight. The report said the State University of New York will require its 140,000 students to take a COVID test and will be required to have a negative result before heading home for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Cuomo said the testing does not apply to residents from Connecticut, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.
“Four days plus three days is seven days, and that’s basically, by all probability, the incubation period,” Governor Cuomo said. He continued, “There will be no metrics. There will be one rule that applies across the country.”
TREND FORECAST: Tourism, which is already dead in New York, will continue to worsen as more restrictions are placed on incoming travelers. Moreover, with winter setting in and with strict capacity limits in restaurants, museums, and numerous venues, already dire business conditions will worsen considerably.
TRENDPOST: Yesterday, Massachusetts Governor Charles Baker declared a new set of COVID War rules, including curfews and new limits on social gatherings, which will go into effect on Friday. Part of the new mandate includes mandatory mask-wearing in public regardless of how close you are to others.
Further destroying already sinking businesses, the governor said there will be a 9:30 PM curfew for all restaurants and liquor stores and no indoor gatherings over ten people.
The Boston Herald reported that critics blasted Baker’s new orders and called them “nanny state” measures. Indeed, as we have noted, according to scientific data and hard facts, the masks being worn by the vast majority do not stop the spread of the virus, nor do they protect someone from getting it.
Furthermore, Baker’s demand that people wear masks regardless if no one is near them further illustrates the flagrant violation of not only scientific fact to mandate such an order, but continuing examples of how the rights of individuals are being stripped away.
