The Local COVID Surge By the Numbers

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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With Coronavirus on the rise again, Governor Cuomo has ordered bars, restaurants, and gyms in New York State to close for indoor activities at 10:00 PM beginning tomorrow night, Friday night. A similar thing in New Jersey begins tonight. Governor Murphy has ordered bars and restaurants to close for indoor service at 10:00 PM. Casinos, however, can remain open for gambling round the clock, just not for food and drink.

Murphy has also canceled interstate youth sports, just interstate youth sports. New Jersey has its highest number of COVID hospitalizations since June more than 1,600 people at the moment about 20 people a day are now dying of COVID again, that had been down in the single digits. The statewide test positivity rate in New Jersey is now over 10% in Newark, it's 20%.

Connecticut also has its highest infection rates since June, it hit 7% on Tuesday. Connecticut yesterday added two more states to its restricted travel and mandatory quarantine list making 44 States in total, almost every state you have to quarantine for two weeks if you arrive from there to Connecticut. In New York, the positivity rate is now over 2%.

If that sounds good, compared to New Jersey and Connecticut, it's still an increase. If it hits 3% schools in New York City are supposed to close, but that's controversial in the city and it's not the policy in New Jersey. Governor Murphy was on the today show this morning and said he has no immediate plans to close schools statewide like he did in March.

Murphy and Cuomo both also said this week they are hoping to avoid a more general shutdown of our States of the kind the region imposed in the spring. In Connecticut, with respect to schools, they're going district by district. For example, NBC Connecticut reports Hamden school leaders are worried about coronavirus cases really taking off after Thanksgiving and want to give parents as much time as possible to prepare for a move to virtual classes.

Hamden is set to vote on Tuesday, whether to switch to all remote. Thanksgiving is becoming a factor in some of these decisions and what school districts anticipate will happen as a result of Thanksgiving. With us now, Jake Dobkin co-founder of Gothamist, who was also the keeper of Gothamist New York COVID data tracker, and Lindy Washburn, award-winning health reporter for northjersey.com and the paper formerly known as the Bergen Record. She's a two-time journalist of the year for New Jersey. Jake and Lindy, thanks for coming on this morning.

Jake Dobkin: Hey, Brian.

Lindy: Thank you for having me.

Brian: Jake, can you explain what's going on in New York in the context of the region 2% positivity doesn't sound so bad.

Jake: Sure. I think that we should really first think about how the region compares to the country, because if you look at the United States over the last week, we've had an average positivity of 8.4%, according to Johns Hopkins, but by contrast and here I'm going to use the seven-day averages so there'll be a little bit lower than the numbers you just used. New York is only at 2.4%, Connecticut at 3.9%, and New Jersey at 5.8%.

They're lower than the country as a whole and that makes sense because we know right now that the outbreak is most concentrated in the West and in parts of the country that didn't see huge outbreaks during the first wave, but like you said, all three of our States in the tri-state area are moving in the wrong direction.

New York has more than doubled that positivity rate in the last month and in terms of the city our seven-day positivity rate is up to 2.6%, which is the ninth street day. It's been above 2% according to our city's department of health. Those numbers of cases are the highest that we've seen since May. Definitely, not the numbers that we want to see going into the cold weather months when we expected the outbreaks to increase

Brian: Lindy, why, with New Jersey at over 10% positivity, that's a one-day stat and the week-long average is lower than that as Jake just indicated, but how evenly is it spread out in New Jersey?

Lindy Washburn: There's quite a bit of variability from County-to-County with that some of the highest rates being in the Northern counties, particularly Essex County, where Newark is the highest hit city, hardest hit County, it had a positivity right close to 20% yesterday.

Brian: I have a couple of clips of mayor Baraka here he was on NY1 the other day, not a place where people from New Jersey usually appear as they focus on New York City news, but of course, it's relevant to the whole region. Here's Mayor Baraka speaking to NY1. I think we have a clip of Mayor Baraka on anticipating an extreme shutdown in the city of Newark If this 20% positivity rate persists.

Ras Baraka: Our cases are more and we have a higher rate of infection and the people who live in this community are more likely to catch COVID-19 than anybody else and are more likely to die.

Brian: Because of that and those dire outcomes and possible outcomes, the mayor said this.

Baraka: We may even shut down the drug stores and all those other places as well, everything, everything we want to completely shut down in those zip codes.

Brian: Lindy, if he were to do that, that would be a shutdown more extreme than I think anything we've seen anywhere in America because drug stores are considered essential businesses for obvious medical reasons and they have not shut down at any point. What is Mayor Baraka considering?

Lindy: I know what he's done so far, which is to impose curfews, very surgically in three zip codes so that people cannot-- No gatherings of more than 10 people, no team sports, no nursing home visits, and a 9:00 PM curfew in those three zip codes. I think he's waiting and watching to see if the intense effort that's being put in to do contact tracing and to test and isolate people who have tested positive bears fruit. It's yet to be determined what he will do. He did say essential businesses would be retained and gas stations and things like that. I don't think we know yet what his next step is.

Brian: Jake, I'm seeing Staten Island is the new hotspot in New York, in the city, South shore, especially, can you give us some more details about that?

Jake: It's not clear what's causing this uptick. It could be spread from those New Jersey counties you were just talking about obviously Staten Island is quite close to New Jersey. It could be relaxing of social distancing over time, which we've seen around the whole city. It could be a particular resistance to wearing masks in those areas of Staten Island where we know Trump won overwhelmingly in the election. We do know that there are two zip codes on Staten Island that have exceeded 5% positivity rates in the last week. Those are Great kills and Tottenville and that's what led Cuomo to declare a yellow zone, basically, across the entire borough, except for the neighborhoods running along the far West side of the Island.

Brian: For the two of you, Newark and Staten Island could hardly be more different demographically. What ties these places together as hotspots or is the answer nothing maybe there are just different dynamics that can each lead to a spike. Jake, you have any thought about that?

Jake: Yes, it's not as clear as it was when we were seeing outbreaks heavily concentrated in like Borough Park, where there's a heavy Orthodox population, where you might be able to ascribe it to social distancing acceptance in just one neighborhood. Now, I'm looking at rates all around the city and they're rising. It's possible that we've gotten into just a time where we're dealing with extensive community spread coming from a variety of workplaces, restaurants. We're going to see outbreaks in a number of neighborhoods and our efforts to explain them, it's just not going to be as clear cut as it was earlier last month.

Brian: Lindy, I don't know if you have anything to add, but when I say there are different demographically, I don't just mean a lot of white people on Staten Island. A lot of Black people in Newark, it's the kinds of jobs people do that might expose them to the virus. It's the density in which people live very different when you compare Staten Island and Newark, and yet these are places that are spiking at the same time.

Lindy: Yes, I'm not really sure that there is a strong connection bringing the disease back and forth between Newark and Staten Island. I think it reflects more those factors that you're talking about the density of housing, the use of public transportation, the fact that people cannot work remotely as much as some in other places can, there's a lot of healthcare workers that are going back and forth, nursing, home workers, hospital people, first responders that live in Newark. I think that that might be responsible for the spread. Also, they live in multi-generational households, live in apartment buildings and so under those conditions, community spread happens more readily.

Brian: Let's get to the policy responses, which are already controversial in some cases and make it more controversial as we talk about Coronavirus in the tri-state area. Listeners, you can call us up. If you have a question or a policy response of your own at 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, for Lindy Washburn from northjersey.com and Jake Dobkin from Gothamist. This 10:00 PM curfew for indoor bars and restaurants, here is Staten Island assemblyman. Yes, even on freedom-loving Staten Island here is Assemblyman Mark Riley, who represents the South shore questioning whether that's tough enough,

Mark Riley: If you're saying that you can't have something after 10:00 PM, Why? Because COVID only affects people after 10:00 PM, we have to be a little more realistic in how we close things down.

Brian: Why only ten o'clock, Jake?

Jake: That's hard to say we do know that indoor places where people are not wearing masks and where they're shouting, where the music is loud, where there are a lot of people in a small space it's not heavily ventilated. That's where we're going to get those superspreader events and for that reason, it does make sense to shut down bars and restaurants just after 10:00 PM, I don't know, do people get drunker like as the evening goes on and maybe they relax their social distancing even more? Maybe, but I think that Councilman is right that if we're starting to talk about closing down restaurants, maybe it just makes sense to close down the indoor restaurants period. I think that that's the policy that we're starting to edge towards here in New York City.

Brian: Lindy, why ten o'clock for governor Murphy?

Lindy: I think the governor is trying to be very nuanced in his approach. He faced a tremendous amount of pushback from the restaurant and hospitality industry after the closure of restaurants earlier in the pandemic and he really is trying to avoid that. Even as it is the hospitality and restaurant association says maybe 40% of restaurants will close permanently as a result of the pandemic so he's chiseling around the edges. In his press conference, he said that after ten o'clock, you'd see more people start to lose their inhibition, let their hair down.

They take their masks off whatever, they tend to cluster at the bars and so he's also imposed a ban on bar seating and standing their bars and no tables for dining within six feet of bars. He says that bartenders have been a particular vulnerable group most recently in some of the outbreaks that the department of health has seen.

Brian: Jake, Governor Cuomo makes it sound like he's being dragged, kicking, and screaming into even this much closure, listen to this.

Governor Cuomo: The States around us have done this. We're going to do it also because again, symmetry, I don't want people in Connecticut saying, "Well, we can't meet at my house so we'll go meet at your house in New York."

Brian: One of the other restrictions that I had mentioned is only up to 10 people in at-home gatherings. Even 10 sounds like a lot to me at the current moment, but Jake, Governor Cuomo sounds like he's being dragged, kicking and screaming to even that?

Jake: Yes, some of the scuttlebutt around the newsroom is that Cuomo has built his reputation on the success that we've had in New York state and really does not want to have to go back on that since he just released a book last week on the glorious victory that we've had here and this might be a source of discomfort or embarrassment for him, but I think we've seen Cuomo generally make decisions based on the numbers. I think that if the numbers go the wrong way, we're going to see him and also de Blasio who don't agree on much, but they do seem to both be moving in a direction of more restrictions.

Brian: There's push and pull in either direction here to do more with respect to indoor dining or do less. I have a number of tweets coming in from people in the restaurant industry who think that's too much because restaurants now know how to operate safely. One tweet says, "This conversation is neglecting to acknowledge what restaurants have had to implement in order to reopen indoors, air filtration, and heightened ventilation included." That's the restaurant industry's position.

On the other hand, an editorial in the Times Today says, "Basically it's crazy to consider closing schools at 3% positivity, which could come as soon as next week while letting bars and restaurants stay open for indoor service at all, it should be the other way around." Lindy, what's Murphy's take on schools if the state is now over 10% positivity, at least for a day and well over 3%, which is the New York threshold statewide so much higher than the city, he must feel pretty differently than New York City does at this point.

Lindy: The differences that the state of New Jersey is really leaving it to individual districts to decide what they will do in their districts and so there's a great deal of variety in the approaches and even within a district. They’ll go for a couple of days and then two cases will be reported at a high school and the high school will shut down or they adapt and are very fluid in their response to the specific situation. The state does put out a weekly matrix by region dividing the state into six regions to guide the superintendents in those regions as to what they do, but he has stood back at least in this school year from taking a statewide approach to closing everything

Brian: Regina on Staten Island, You're on WNYC. Hi Regina.

Regina: Yes. Hi, thank you Brian for taking my call. I love you. I'm calling because I am very upset. One of all council people in Staten Island Councilman Borelli, just posted yesterday that he is going to ignore what Governor Cuomo said about 10 people coming to his house for Thanksgiving and we don't have to pay attention to those rules. Everyone is welcome at his house and I called his office.

I think that's very irresponsible modeling that he's giving. You were asking why Staten Island would be different and I think a lot of people, especially on the South Shore, I hate to say, ignore the social distancing and ignore the mask-wearing. I live on the North shore and I see that there's more adherence over here. There is Trump rallies on Staten Island and so on without the distancing and I think that is part of the reason why the rates are rising in those areas on Staten Island.

Brian: Thank you very much I appreciate that. Now here's a take, I'm going to read cold from this. This is pushback on that theory that's being widely discussed that because a lot of people on Staten Island are Trumpy in their views when it comes to Coronavirus, that's a reason for the spike. The Conservative National Review has an article just out this morning, New York Times, "Dubious link between Staten Island conservatism and rising COVID rates." It says Republicans are calling this story reckless and it says the time story doesn't actually offer any conclusions about Staten Island, how it became a virus hotspot.

In fact, according to the articles officials have not said why specifically Staten Island is seeing more cases. The paper relies on generalities and anecdotes to make its case. Staten Island is a decidedly suburban community, the kind of place where people live in detached single-family homes with yards and get around in cars. There are no mass transit hubs or large pedestrian plazas for the virus to spread. It's interesting Jake because as I'm looking now, I'll keep scrolling down and see if I find it. They say the article is full of generalities, but they don't offer an alternative hypothesis. Oh, I see their alternative part. Now I see it it's that a lot of Staten Islanders are going to New Jersey and coming back on the weekends.

Jake: Great. I think we've already addressed that. I've looked at pretty closely at this because I also do the maps for our election results and a lot people ask me to do a correlation map between the Trump vote and the positivity per neighborhood, but I'm not ready to make that conclusion yet because I feel like if Trump was the driving factor, we'd expect to see high positivity rates in every upstate County that voted heavily for him and we just don't see that. Conversely, some democratic voting areas like Astoria and East New York have seen a very high positivity rates this week. Sometimes you can get a correlation without causation and it's some other factor that's driving the increase. I think it's just too early to say.

Brian: In this case, by the way, Governor Cuomo agrees with the Trump supporters, listen.

Cuomo: Staten Islanders spend a lot of time going back and forth to New Jersey and New Jersey as a very high rate. I think that's part of what's driving the high rate in Staten Island.

Brian: Listener Michael writes on Twitter, a commonality between Staten Island and Newark, I was emphasizing some of the differences earlier. This says both Staten Island and Newark have a lot of essential workers, be it police and fire on Staten Island or hospitality, healthcare, and retail employees in Newark. They both have a disproportionate amount of non-remote work residents. Lindy, interesting.

Lindy: Yes, I agree with that. Another thing though that I wanted to mention is that in New Jersey the governor has not imposed that limit on indoor family gatherings or parties of 10 people. He's keeping it at 25 and he said earlier this week at his press conference that he really didn't want to go further given the difficulty of enforcement, his focus is on the areas that he calls the public square, where law enforcement can see what's going on. He hasn't taken that step yet, even with Thanksgiving coming up.

Brian: Rick in Astoria you're on WNYC. Hi, Rick.

Rick: Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I'm a small business owner with a liquor license in Astoria and I've supported Governor Cuomo throughout the crisis for the most part, but when he comes out with these new mandates and these new requirements, the messaging has just been all over the place. It's been very confusing to follow and trying to get it all parsed out has been very difficult.

There were a number of agencies involved and it just seems like they don't have any business leaders, anybody from the various different industries that are affected by these new mandates that are being included in these press releases to try to take some of the confusion out. I just wanted to throw that out there. I think that the governor's office in all the States need to do a better job of the messaging because it's already frustrating enough in this business climate that we're in.

Brian: Rick, thank you very much. Nancy in Manhattan, You're on WNYC. Hi Nancy.

Nancy: Hi, thanks for taking my call. My comment is in regard to outdoor dining. I live in the East Village where in certain areas there are back-to-back restaurants and they've set up outdoor seating. On one particular Saturday morning, I was walking down the street and it was like an outdoor superspreader event because there was a DJ on one corner, there were two blocks of restaurants and no one who was sitting at a table and they were right next to each other, there was nothing physical distancing, they were all talking loudly and to honest, I felt like I had told my breath when I walked past.

Brian: Nancy, I'm going to leave it there and ask Jake who's our stats guy if there are any stats about outdoor dining causing spread if people are sitting close together and talking loudly and there are restaurants back to back and the way that Nancy describes in her neighborhood or are we learning that just being outdoors is that protective.

Jake: We do know that being outdoors where there's a high rate of airflow is helpful. One thing that Gothamist has noticed over the last couple of weeks is this phenomenon of outdoor-indoor dining, where the outdoor dining areas are being converted to indoor areas by building walls and roofs to the point where you basically have an indoor restaurant outside on the street. In that case, I think the dynamics are different because obviously the airflow in a temporary building that you've set-up with four walls and a roof is going to be lower. I think that's one area we need to keep an eye on.

Brian: Seth in Weehawken, you're on WNYC. Hi, Seth.

Seth: Hey, Brian, you are a God among men. Thank you and your staff for all you do, great public service. There's been a lot of concentration on small businesses and on the restaurants and all that, but offices are reopening and people are going back into the office. I think a lot of bosses are telling their employees that it's fine to take off your mask when you're at your desk and there's a lot of open floor plan offices. I'm sure that some offices have been better about putting up Plexiglas dividers than others, but I'm wondering if there's any evidence about offices being spreaders and if either governors in New York or New Jersey has said anything about restrictions in offices.

Brian: Seth, thank you for that Lindy Washburn from northjersey.com. Let me turn to you on that. We've talked on this show before about how the Midtown and downtown office occupancy rate in Manhattan is still really low, 15% compared to pre-COVID and business leaders are actually trying to get Mayor de Blasio to encourage people to go back to their offices. I think his judgment is that this is not the time to step that up, but what about the office? The Hudson River Waterfront and other office areas of new of North Jersey, do you know what's happening?

Lindy: I have not seen any specific information about outbreaks tied to offices in New Jersey, but what I can say is that last Thursday new restrictions or an executive order that the governor issued took effect, which required workplaces to take preventative steps and to provide masks and hand sanitizer and time for hand-washing to their employees, as well as, to have screening in place when people enter and to put barriers up for those who worked close to each other within 6 feet. There has been an effort to address some of the issues that come up with reopening offices while still really encouraging people for the most part if they can to work remotely.

Brian: This is WNYC FM HDN (AM) New York, WNJT-FM 88.1, Trenton, WNJP 88.5, Sussex, WNJY 89.3, Net Kong and WNJO, 90.3 Toms River. We are in New York and New Jersey public radio as we're finishing up with Jake Dobkin from Gothamist and Lindy Washburn from northjersey.com on the rising Coronavirus numbers in our area and the policy responses to them that are emerging.

I want to finish up with schools because as people talk about indoor dining and bars and gyms and we'll leave for another day that Governor Murphy is letting casino gambling go 24 hours a day nevertheless, schools have always been controversial through this period what to do about schools and now we get to this moment and the record in schools has so far been pretty good. Is that what you're reporting on New Jersey indicates?

Lindy: Yes, so far the state latest figures were that there were 36 in-school outbreaks, that is two or more cases where they appear to be connected and the transmission was likely within the school since the beginning of the school year and they affected 146 people. We have millions of kids in the schools and thousands of school buildings, but that's a pretty good record so far. It doesn't appear that the K through 12 education, at least is a major contributor, colleges is another story.

Brian: Jake in New York, I saw the head of the teacher's union on NY1 yesterday, and when they hit that 3% positivity rate in New York, which is probably inevitable in the next few weeks we know the teacher's union wants to get the heck out of there. They're already shaken the trees to stick to that 3% threshold, but I think there's going to be a lot of pressure on Mayor de Blasio to go back on that policy because there are not many cases in schools.

Jake: That's right. In New York, we've had about 700 students and about 700 teachers positive since September which are not huge numbers. That makes sense to us because, in a school where mask use is enforced people aren't screaming, there's better airflow. We wouldn't expect that to be a place where there's a lot of those super spreader events. Like you said that 3% threshold that Bill de Blasio said, we're getting pretty close to it. I don't see the teacher's union backing down once we get there. It'll be very interesting to see if our schools stay open on the other side of the Thanksgiving holiday.

Brian: There are problems as we head into winter with schools that may not have presented themselves in the fall. We'll make this the last question and see if either of you have a thought on it. Notably, ventilation because for those classrooms that have windows and you can throw open the windows and get it fairly well ventilated. We've already had stories about classrooms getting too cold now with the weather starting to turn.

I know it's been warm the last few days, but we had cold days before that and is the ventilation really that good and classroom after classroom, after classroom, that kids are not going to start spreading it more and teachers aren't going to start getting it in and kids aren't going to start bringing it home. I don't know how well we know the answer to that question yet, Lindy.

Lindy: We don't really and many, many school districts have some very old buildings, whereas the cost of retrofitting with there are filters or high-powered fans is really prohibitive. The districts don't have the money, the money hasn't been forthcoming from the federal down to the state level. That's a very good question going forward as to how they'll be able to maintain safe air quality in these buildings.

Brian: Jake, a last thought on that then we're out of time?

Jake: Yes, we've seen a lot of teachers sending us pictures of their classes, wearing coats and one class even brought in sleeping bags. That doesn't seem like a strategy that's going to last into a New York City winter, but I guess we'll have to say.

Brian: Jake Dobkin co-founder of Gothamist, who's also the keeper of Gothamist, New York COVID data tracker, and Lindy Washburn, Award-winning healthcare reporter for northjersey.com. Thank you both so much.

Jake: Thanks, Brian.

Lindy: Thank you.

 

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