Governor Cuomo, welcome back
to The Daily Social Distancing Show.
Good to be back. How are you?
Uh, I'm doing a lot better now,
and I think a lot of New York is, as well.
It has been a trying time.
The last time you were on the show,
I mean, we were going through one of the most, I think,
chaotic periods that most New Yorkers have ever seen,
figuring out how to fight the coronavirus.
I think the question I have for you is how are you doing
and, from your perspective, how is New York doing?
Uh, I'm doing much better than, uh, I was doing.
I think we're all doing better than we were doing.
Uh, and, look, it was... it was frightening.
Uh, there's no other word besides that.
You know, we were... we were right up on the edge.
I think we were closer to the edge, Trevor,
than a lot of people realized.
New Yorkers, God bless them, went from the lowest...
from the highest infection rate in the United States
to the lowest. And that was all New Yorkers.
That was all social action.
You want to talk about social action, that was it.
Uh, and we're much smarter for it,
and we now do more testing than any state in the United States,
and we are looking at this, Trevor, on a microlevel
that, frankly, no other state
is-is analyzing this situation.
We're tracking this virus on, like, a neighborhood level now
and attacking it on a neighborhood level
to make sure that we stay ahead of it.
Well, let's talk a little bit about that,
because, you know, we have seen throughout the country
that any part of the government that seems to be fighting
to prevent the spread of COVID-19
invariably clashes up against some people or some communities
who feel like their rights are being infringed upon.
You're currently in a dispute
with the Orthodox Jewish community in New York
where some of them have said,
"We can't go to our church services,
"we can't, uh, you know, practice our religion,
and we feel like we're being targeted by the state."
Now, I know you've disagreed with that,
but what exactly is going on there?
And as a leader, how do you convince people
that you're trying to do something
for their good even if they feel like
they don't want to do it for themselves?
No, you're exactly right, Trevor. That is the question.
And, by the way, that's been the question from day one,
and it's become the political d-divide from day one.
That's "I'll wear a mask,
I won't wear a mask." Right?
Uh, the mask has become the symbol of that.
-Yeah. -There's a school of thought that says, uh,
"This is not the problem you make it out to be.
"I'm not worried. I'm not gonna succumb to this,
"and I don't want government telling me what I can do
or telling me what I can't do." Right?
There's a very real school of thought there.
The alternative school is, "This is real.
"Uh, it can kill you.
"And, uh, what you do affects me,
and it's not about just you and life anymore."
There is community.
There is interconnection.
There is a responsibility to other people,
and we have to act intelligently to protect ourselves.
I now have a situation specific where,
when you do this,
uh, all the testing, we've...
We can test, uh...
We can target down to literally the block level
where the cases are coming from,
and we have identified several small communities,
uh, and there happens to be an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community
that, uh, has not been following the rules,
uh, for cultural reasons, religious reasons,
and they have, like, five times the infection rate
that the state has.
And, uh, we've imposed restrictions.
And it's not comfortable,
uh, and especially when you get involved
in-in, uh, religious tensions,
-but it has, really, nothing to... -Right, right.
It has nothing to do with religion.
Uh, it's a public health law,
and I apply it all across the board equally.
Uh, I've had issues
with fancy fundraisers in the Hamptons.
I've had issues with sweet 16 parties,
with Catholic gatherings,
-Jewish gatherings. -Right, right, right.
But it's that same tension.
Some people just deny the virus,
and they don't want government telling them what to do
in any manner, shape or form, period.
Your book, um, has come at a time
when you have been looking back
and even processing the present of what's been going on.
You-you led people,
and people appreciated your-your tone and your tenor.
People appreciated your, um,
I guess your being vulnerable with them.
Your being, um, forthcoming with them.
But there are some people who would say,
"Oh, but, Governor Cuomo,
is this the time to celebrate with a book?"
How do you see the book? And what are you trying to achieve?
I see the book as a caution sign.
I think, Trevor, we're at halftime,
at best, in this game,
uh, and I'm trying to say,
"Let's look at the first half
"and let's look at what happened,
because we have to play a whole second half."
-Right. -And, uh, we scrambled in the first half.
Uh, we didn't-- we didn't, uh, win,
but we didn't lose either, right?
Uh, but we have a whole second half.
Uh, the fall is coming.
-They told us the fall was coming. -Mm-hmm.
They said the infection rate was going to go up in the fall.
Uh, this virus is not done with us.
Uh, and these-- This-this attitude of, uh,
complacency or the fatigue,
COVID fatigue-- "I'm tired of dealing with the virus"--
the virus isn't tired of dealing with you.
And it's alive and it's well and it's spreading.
And, more than anything, Trevor, inform yourself.
You know who's going to keep you safe?
You're going to keep yourself safe.
You have all this political noise, all this political chaos.
Just know the facts,
get the information,
so, uh, you can keep yourself safe.
Uh, and that's-that's what the book is trying to do.
It's trying to spur a factual conversation
about how we get through this.
As Governor Cuomo, one thing people always loved about you
and still love about you, is that you go,
"The buck stops with me, and I'm a leader."
Some people feel like, in the book,
it seems like you are telling us about the problems--
this happened at nursing homes, this happened to hospitals,
this happened here-- but didn't feel
like the buck was stopping with you.
Now, when you look at that as a leader and you go,
"Huh, we've got another wave coming up.
Things might get worse," what are some of the things
you do differently? What are some of the mistakes
that you acknowledge, where you say...
"We're gonna-- we're gonna do this a lot better next time"?
For me, uh,
look, uh, I say, "Hold me responsible."
Nobody holds me more responsible than I hold myself.
Uh, it doesn't matter, uh, you know,
how-how distanced I am from it.
Uh, I believe, when you sit in the seat,
you're responsible, you know?
-Mm-hmm. -And I take, uh, total responsibility.
And a big part of that, uh, book
is about "this is what happened, let's learn from it."
Uh, when I look at that game tape,
uh, and I-I see how the game progressed,
uh, I go through every play
of how I could d-- uh, could have done it differently.
You know, in the very beginning,
the federal government said that they were in charge of testing
and they were doing the testing and it was taking a long time.
I should have said, "Forget it.
Uh, I don't care what you say."
The state should have started the testing earlier.
-Mm. -Uh, we got ambushed by the virus.
We had no idea that it was coming from Europe.
It had been coming from Europe for three months,
uh, and, uh, everybody missed it.
But that-that put New York in the hole.
They kept calling it the China virus.
It wasn't the China virus.
It was the Italy virus and the France virus
and the Spain virus-- it came here from Europe.
Uh, they said there was no such thing
as asymptomatic, uh, spread.
-Right. -They said that you only spread it
when you had symptoms.
You had a cough, you had a sneeze, et cetera.
-That was all wrong. -Right.
Uh, it turned out that you could spread it even without symptoms,
and that's how it got into nursing homes.
The staff were walking into the nursing homes
in February and March,
no symptoms,
but they were carrying the virus.
-And nobody... -But how do you respond--
You're a compassionate person, you know?
That's-that's who you are, as Governor Cuomo.
When you talk to families who say,
"But, Governor Cuomo, why did you force nursing homes
to take these people in?" How do you speak to them?
How do you-- how do you console them
whilst also reconciling with-with your actions,
based on the information that you had or didn't have?
Yeah. The, uh...
It's a good question.
The, um... And you're right.
Part of it is you can only deal with the facts
that you had at that time.
Uh, they told me that, uh...
I was informed by all the experts
that you had to have symptoms, and that's--
Uh, they were wrong,
but I based it on incorrect information.
The unfortunate thing is, Trevor,
there's then a heavy dose of politics
that is injected into this.
The states that happen to have the highest number
of COVID cases happen to be Democratic states,
so you have this whole Republican,
uh, disinformation campaign.
We never forced anyone into a nursing home.
We never forced a nursing home to accept anyone.
That is just not a fact.
Uh, and, yes, there are a lot of...
Well-well, the order, the order--
I-I mean, look, we are now in a moment of respite.
So, going forward, are there ways to clarify the messaging?
Because the-the nursing homes thought
they did have to take the people, you know?
And so that-that is a tough place to be in.
Yeah, and the truth is, uh, look,
we have-- we're still losing people in nursing homes.
Uh, part of it is never gonna change,
because this virus preys on the weak and the old.
-Right. -Uh, and we still lose people in nursing homes.
We now have the strictest guidelines in the country.
All staff members for a nursing home get tested once per week,
and nobody else tests every worker once a week.
Having said that,
it's still not a bulletproof plan.
-Right. -Because even if you get a test once a week,
you can get that virus in between the tests
and you can show up for work the next day,
no symptoms, you don't feel anything,
and you can bring that virus into the nursing home.
Uh, it is-- it is an imperfect--
Whatever we do is gonna be imperfect.
It's really, uh, an impossible, impossible situation.
Once the virus makes it to this country,
-you're in trouble. -Mm-hmm.
Uh, and that's one of the lessons that I focus on.
-Yeah. -We knew, we knew that these viruses were developing.
We had MERS, we had SARS,
we had Ebola, we had dengue.
Uh, we knew these viruses--
what they call "zootropic" viruses,
from animals to human beings--
we knew they were coming out of wet markets in China.
Uh, that's been happening for 20 years.
Uh, how-how did we let our guard down as a nation,
where we just let it happen again?
We had no notice.
All these agencies that are supposed to be
international global health watchdogs.
But once that virus is in your house,
once it's in your country,
uh, it's virtually impossible to stop the infection.
Now more than ever,
New Yorkers are gonna be looking to you to say,
"Governor, what is the plan going into the winter?
"What is the plan going into the time
when the numbers might go up again?"
And I know, as a New Yorker,
I've been hearing a lot of people concerned,
because, you know, maybe Mayor de Blasio says one thing
and then you say a different thing.
For clarity's sake, what is the plan going forward
and what do you think New Yorkers need to focus on,
considering COVID fatigue
and all of these issues that we're dealing with?
Yeah. On the first point, uh,
it's important that people get clear information
and they have, uh-- they know who to listen to.
And, look, uh, politics,
a lot of people have a lot of different opinions.
COVID, a lot of people have a lot of different opinions.
Uh, and you have mayors who say one thing,
county executives who say one thing.
There's a lot of politicians in New York.
Uh, first point is the state is in charge.
Uh, you can have an opinion, Trevor,
about what should open, what should not open,
but, frankly, it's irrelevant. (chuckles)
The state makes the law and the state makes the policy,
and, uh, that's-that's the way it is.
The law says we make the policy
for the entire state.
Uh, going forward, the fall, we do have to be very careful.
Our infection rate statewide is very low.
Still one of the lowest, thank God. About one percent.
We are doing this obsessive testing
-that gets us into these neighborhood clusters. -Mm-hmm.
And we then attack these neighborhood clusters
like firefighters stamping out embers.
And that's what we're doing
in some of the ultra-Orthodox communities,
fundraisers in the Hamptons, bars, restaurants, etcetera.
One bad situation,
one bad party can create 30 or 40 cases, right?
-Wow. -That's going to continue.
And then we have to move to the next stage,
which is the vaccine.
This is not over until there's a vaccine.
We did a letter to President Trump.
I'm head of something called "the chairman..."
I'm the chairman of the National Governors Association.
-Right. -Vaccine--
first you have to develop the vaccine.
Then Americans have to believe it's safe.
And then you have to administer it.
And how do you administer
20 million vaccinations in this state?
Who's going to do that?
How long does it take?
This is a massive logistical exercise
that we have never done.
-Right. -And I want to know now
from the White House, what are we...?
Who is going to do what on this vaccination program?
-Mm. -And what is the federal role?
What is the state role?
And let's talk this through and let's understand it
and let's not have the same chaos
that we had in the beginning.
Before I let you go-- and I appreciate your time today--
on a personal level, again,
I just wanted to touch base with you as a human being.
I last remember you being single,
and now the weather is changing,
which means it's going to be a lot harder to go out for a date
because you can't be inside with strangers.
Have you taken the time to just at least, you know,
have a socially-distant meal with anybody just in life?
Did you take the time? I know you were very busy,
so I just wonder, as a person,
if you've taken the time to do that for yourself.
Trevor, on a human level, on a social level,
nobody wants to have dinner with me.
I have... I have no offers.
(both laugh)
-The only people I have... -Well, you know what?
You get us... you get us through the second or third wave,
and I'm telling you,
a lot of those offers will come rolling in.
Governor Cuomo, thank you so much again for your time.
Thank you. Thank you, Trevor. Thank you.
I really appreciate you. Thank you very much.