ALBANY, NY – New York Governor Andrew Cuomo put his foot down. The stupid people who are getting COVID-19, because it’s their own fault, better stop spreading COVID-19 or he’s shutting down the restaurants.
Following updated guidance from the CDC, the Governor announced that if a region’s hospitalization rate does not stabilize in the next five days, additional restrictions will be applied to indoor dining. If the hospitalization rate does not stabilize in New York City in the next five days, indoor dining will be suspended; if the rate does not stabilize in regions outside New York City, capacity restrictions will be reduced to 25 percent.
Meanwhile, just across the Hudson River, lockdown specialist, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy disagreed with Cuomo’s assessment, saying there’s no evidence that indoor dining is contributing to the spread of COVID-19 in his state.
“If after five days we haven’t seen a stabilization in a region’s hospital rate, we’re going to clamp down on indoor dining. Five days, if the hospitalization rate doesn’t stabilize in New York City, we’re going to close indoor dining,” Cuomo said. “We’re now at 25 percent in New York City. In the rest of the state, any region where the hospitalization rate doesn’t stabilize – they’re now at 50 percent capacity indoor dining – we’re going to go to 25 percent.”
The science behind Cuomo’s statement doesn’t even make sense. There is absolutely nothing anyone in New York can do right now to have an impact on hospitalizations in the next five days. Anyone who has COVID-19 already has it, whether they know it or not and with a 3 to 7 day incubation period, it’s apparent Cuomo just wants to shut down indoor dining.
“So to recap, we’re going to monitor the hospital capacity, if it doesn’t stabilize, we’re going to reduce the indoor dining restrictions, we go to zero New York [City], 25 percent everywhere else,” Cuomo said.