Thread by @nytimes

The first confirmed coronavirus case in New York was a woman who flew into JFK in February and tested positive March 1. The next day, Gov. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio promised investigators would track down every person on her flight.

No one ever did.
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It was perhaps inevitable that New York City would be hit hard by the virus. But initial efforts to stem the outbreak were hampered by the city and state government's own unheeded warnings, slow decisions and political infighting, the New York Times found.
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Had New York City and the state adopted widespread social distancing measures a week or two sooner, the estimated death toll might have been 50-80% lower, said Tom Frieden, the former head of the CDC and former commissioner of the city's Health Department
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The federal response was chaotic and dysfunctional from the earliest days and serious problems with testing made it far harder to gauge the scope of the outbreak. As a result, city and state officials often had to make decisions with little assistance from the federal government.

But from the start, even after the first confirmed case was announced on March 1, de Blasio and Cuomo worried as much about panic as they did about the virus.

Each day in early March brought new action: restrictions on gatherings, reduced bar occupancy. But the biggest battle was closing the school system. It wasn't until March 15, after alarmed health officials forecasted a chilling death toll, that de Blasio was finally persuaded.

The mayor said, 2 days later, that something similar to a shelter-in-place order would soon need to be imposed for New Yorkers. This time, Cuomo resisted. He favored a more gradual shutdown.

The governor, the mayor and top aides emphasized they had no misgivings about their initial handling of the response.

"I think New York was early," Cuomo said at a news conference on Wednesday. "I think the actions we took were more dramatic than most."
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