April 30, 2020
The 2020 reopening of America is going to have the usual ups and downs - trials and tribulations - as COVID-19 - the unknown part of the equation - remains with us. Each state is coming up with a plan that hopefully will work because the second wave of the disease is said to be worse than the first go-round. People also need to remember that even if their state gets it right - but neighboring states have a reoccurrence of the disease while people travel back-and-forth from state to state they're back to square one.
If the seasons were reversed and we were going into winter people would be more comfortable with staying home. But the warmer weather lures us outdoors, to socialize, have fun, and do anything to get rid of depression and anxiety. For many being in warm weather, relaxing in the sun, the feel of nature, drinking or smoking weed, is part of their daily means of survival.
Speaking of warm weather, they say coronavirus will die in hot weather but don't states like Florida and Arizona have cases of the disease even though the weather is hot?
If anything the reopening of America will be challenged on many fronts so all you can do is hope for the best no matter where you live.
Fortune-telling or unfortunate telling - For a psychic it's always best to tell the truth
Every day clients and others ask me if I see a safe return to normalcy by the beginning of the school year. In most parts of the world I can see that happening as the timelines stop spiking yet never flatten. Yesterday I read a middle-school teacher, Vanessa, from Miami who wondered the same thing. By the evening the news reported ... Miami-Dade and two other counties will continue with lockdown restrictions, even as the rest of the state begins to reopen. I sent her an email link to the article to which she replied taking comfort in the fact that Miami was not opening because she doesn't believe it's safe yet.
We also had a few laughs about the relationship between Florida's Governor DeSantis and Trump. Politics has always had a hypnagogic effect but Trump has made it totally surreal.
Broken people break rules
Let's open America. Any city is as safe as the people who follow the rules but they are as broken as the people within. This week as people walked to the esplanade just outside to watch the military fly-over honoring frontline coronavirus workers in the city - there was little to no social distancing. As I watched from above I could see people trying - but there were just too many people.
This reminds me of another story out of Brooklyn this week featuring the funeral of a Hasidic Rabbi. We witnessed thousands of people gathered in close proximity endangering themselves and police officers trying to disperse the crowds. There has always been a problem with this community in terms of getting vaccinated and following the rules outlined for health and safety.
My friend Karen is a doctor in Park Slope, Brooklyn. She was visiting family in Virginia when COVID-19 hit without warning. Karen decided to wait it out in Virginia but stays in touch with other doctors who share her office space. They report large outbreaks of coronavirus within the Hasidic community many of the people their patients - some dying.
Karen is one of many people rethinking what she wants to do with the rest of her life as she is approaching retirement age. She is thinking of selling her practice and moving to Virginia to be near family there. Others are also creating new game plans. It's the unanswered questions, the not knowing where the economy is going when this is over, the politics, the social aspects, and everything else we sense is on the precipice of change.
The keys to successfully reopening America seem to be ... Testing, Planning, Patience, Personal Responsibility, and Contact Tracing.
As the Hospital ship USNS Comfort sailed under the Verrazano Bridge this afternoon - to the sounds of a 21 gun salute - I listened to my daily briefing by Governor Cuomo. Much to my surprise his first guest was Mayor Mike Bloomberg who totally took control of the situation making me wonder why he is not the Democratic presidential candidate, if there is an election in November. Watch the video or read what they discussed.
Amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and Mike Bloomberg today announced a new nation-leading COVID-19 contact tracing program to control the infection rate of the disease. Mike Bloomberg and Bloomberg Philanthropies have committed organizational support and technical assistance to help build and execute this new program. The contact tracing program will be done in coordination with the downstate region as well as New Jersey and Connecticut and will serve as an important resource to gather best practices and as a model that can be replicated across the nation. There has never been a contact tracing program implemented at this scale either in New York or anywhere in the United States. The program will launch immediately.
As part of this effort, The Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University will build an online curriculum and training program for contact tracers. The New York State Department of Health will work with Bloomberg Philanthropies to help identify and recruit contact tracer candidates for the training program, including staff from the State Department of Health, investigators from various state agencies, hundreds of tracers from downstate counties and SUNY and CUNY students in medical fields. Bloomberg Philanthropies will also work with New York State to establish an expert panel to review the work of the program, and create a best in class model that other states can use for contact tracing. Read more
Cuomo 's second guest was New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio talking about New York City to temporarily suspend overnight subway service due to coronavirus concerns
New York City's subway system will temporarily close down in the overnight hours as the state combats the coronavirus crisis, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Thursday. The overnight shutdowns for the largely 24 hours a day, seven days a week system will begin on May 6, with trains being stopped for cleaning between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. every night, Cuomo said at his coronavirus briefing. The system's trains, which had been cleaned every 72 hours, will now be cleaned and disinfected every 24 hours, Cuomo said.
This is unprecedented, but we must do it, the governor said, calling the plan as ambitious as anything we've ever undertaken. The decision to scale back the hours of the country's largest subway system follows multiple published reports about a growing homeless population on the trains and poor sanitary conditions that had been growing for weeks. You now have more homeless people on fewer trains and you have fewer people to conduct outreach for the homeless people, Cuomo added.