[Genuine Realist]

I think I have recounted how my wife and I were in New York between February 21st and 24th. We attended five crowded Broadway productions in four days.  Every morning, I'd get up for breakfast and mosey down to a really nice place called Virgil's (highly recommended) and have a yogurt/fruitbowl for breakfast. I'm a much lighter sleeper than my wife and would kill time, for the hour or so until she woke and joined me, nursing a diet coke and watching the news. Very, VERY pleasant mornings, that I regret have passed. And . . . 

 . . .  there was literally NOTHING about the virus, except for growing concern about the Italian experience. It was maybe the fifth lead down. No one in the City was at all worried. This wasn't a case where there were iceberg warnings on all sides, and the Titanic sailing blithely along. These weren't even serious news items. There weren't a batch of other countries battening down the hatches, shouted warnings all around, and certain nations (the US among them) ignoring all of the signs. There weren't any warnings. 

I am impressed you had time to poll 8.4 million people. Just because the ones you saw weren't worried, that doesn't mean no one was. I, for one, was scheduled to fly back to NYC from SF on Feb. 25 and cancelled the trip in large part out of concern about SARS-COV-2. By that point I already had several friends who were avoiding the subway and crowds and wearing what we then called "SARS masks" in public. Indeed, Walgreens had sold out of surgical masks by late January - I remember, because they posted notices in every store window and I made an Amazon order of masks that same day - January 26. Clearly plenty of people were worried.

Unfortunately, de Blasio and Cuomo weren't two of them, and both messaged just the opposite, well into mid-March. Meanwhile, on Feb. 26, London Breed declared a state of emergency in SF. There were lots of reasons NYC was going to be much worse hit than SF regardless of leadership, but I am very confident as a former resident of NYC and a current resident of SF that the leadership choices made a big difference, too.

Pretty jejune. I mean as you walked around the City, there was no reaction, no alteration in lifestyle, no discussion . . .  nothing. You get the feel for a public ambiance. This was a public that was less troubled 

Walgreen's sold out of surgical masks? Yawn. All you need is a few dozen survivalists - people who react to anything - to accomplish that?

The declaration of emergency? Another yawn. It's a predicate for action, not action itself - and there wasn't any, not for a couple of weeks, when everyone else acted.. On February 24th, Nancy Pelosi famously urged everyone to go out and celebrate Chinese New Year, 'because 'it is perfectly safe' to be here. Here's one link - https://yournews.com/2020/03/30/1536317/in-late-february-nancy-pelosi-encouraged-large-groups-to-congregate/. There are others.

I'm getting the same reaction I got when I posted 'Timelines'. Some of you are so wed to the idea that the US was delinquent that the notion that its reactions were roughly identical to the rest of the West are infuriating. Why that should be, I don't know.

[Genuine Realist]

I think I have recounted how my wife and I were in New York between February 21st and 24th. We attended five crowded Broadway productions in four days.  Every morning, I'd get up for breakfast and mosey down to a really nice place called Virgil's (highly recommended) and have a yogurt/fruitbowl for breakfast. I'm a much lighter sleeper than my wife and would kill time, for the hour or so until she woke and joined me, nursing a diet coke and watching the news. Very, VERY pleasant mornings, that I regret have passed. And . . . 

 . . .  there was literally NOTHING about the virus, except for growing concern about the Italian experience. It was maybe the fifth lead down. No one in the City was at all worried. This wasn't a case where there were iceberg warnings on all sides, and the Titanic sailing blithely along. These weren't even serious news items. There weren't a batch of other countries battening down the hatches, shouted warnings all around, and certain nations (the US among them) ignoring all of the signs. There weren't any warnings. 

I am impressed you had time to poll 8.4 million people. Just because the ones you saw weren't worried, that doesn't mean no one was. I, for one, was scheduled to fly back to NYC from SF on Feb. 25 and cancelled the trip in large part out of concern about SARS-COV-2. By that point I already had several friends who were avoiding the subway and crowds and wearing what we then called "SARS masks" in public. Indeed, Walgreens had sold out of surgical masks by late January - I remember, because they posted notices in every store window and I made an Amazon order of masks that same day - January 26. Clearly plenty of people were worried.

Unfortunately, de Blasio and Cuomo weren't two of them, and both messaged just the opposite, well into mid-March. Meanwhile, on Feb. 26, London Breed declared a state of emergency in SF. There were lots of reasons NYC was going to be much worse hit than SF regardless of leadership, but I am very confident as a former resident of NYC and a current resident of SF that the leadership choices made a big difference, too.

Pretty jejune. I mean as you walked around the City, there was no reaction, no alteration in lifestyle, no discussion . . .  nothing. You get the feel for a public ambiance. This was a public that was less troubled 

Walgreen's sold out of surgical masks? Yawn. All you need is a few dozen survivalists - people who react to anything - to accomplish that?

The declaration of emergency? Another yawn. It's a predicate for action, not action itself - and there wasn't any, not for a couple of weeks, when everyone else acted.. On February 24th, Nancy Pelosi famously urged everyone to go out and celebrate Chinese New Year, 'because 'it is perfectly safe' to be here. Here's one link - https://yournews.com/2020/03/30/1536317/in-late-february-nancy-pelosi-encouraged-large-groups-to-congregate/. There are others.

I'm getting the same reaction I got when I posted 'Timelines'. Some of you are so wed to the idea that the US was delinquent that the notion that its reactions were roughly identical to the rest of the West are infuriating. Why that should be, I don't know.