Who lives and who dies?
- Bill de Blasio, the Mayor of NYC, has repeatedly stated that by this Sunday, April 5th, without reinforcements, the city will be out of ventilators. Both upstate and downstate reporters are asking: what is the protocol for ventilator allocation in case of a shortage?
- Both Governor Andrew Cuomo and the Mayor have been adamant in their refusal to even discuss the possibility that we would need such guidelines. However, the New York TImes reported today that sources say a draft of such guidance has been circulated and a “a recent executive order by Mr. Cuomo that would protect doctors from lawsuits.”
- Currently, Governor Cuomo has embarked on the huge undertaking of temporarily nationalizing the hospital system in New York State, which means he is making both public and private hospitals work together, and distribute supplies and staff between them, depending on the area with the greatest need.
- Without having a standard set of guidelines for all hospitals to follow, confusion and chaos could overwhelm the newly unified hospital system.
- There was a set of guidelines that was put out in 2015 in case of a pandemic, called “VENTILATOR ALLOCATION GUIDELINES,” Read it HERE.
- Today, Dr. Mitchell Katz, President and Chief Executive Officer of NYC Health + Hospitals said “We’re going to get ventilators and we’re not going to be allowed to run out.”
- With that April 5th deadline looming, many New Yorkers are wondering if they are even going to be allowed to know what the protocol is if, or when, the State and City governments implement one.
Field Hospitals in Central Park
- Some questions about Samaritan’s purse and their Anti-Gay stance effecting the kind of care they will give. The Mayor has been assured the group will not discriminate. Read more in the New York Post.
- In addition to converting locations like the Javits center into ICUs, CEO of NYC Health + Hospitals Dr. Mitchell Katz announced that 20 hotels will be used as beds for recovering or non-ICU COVID-19 patients. Read more at NY1.
Rent Strikes
- Cuomo consistently answered the call to “cancel rent,” with ‘We halted evictions’.
- It’s important to distinguish the difference here: halting evictions means your rent is still due, and you can still be penalized by your landlord, but your landlord cannot file an eviction claim, and the state will not process or serve that eviction until at least June 20.
- Cancelling rent means that either the rent is simply not due or that some other body is responsible for the payment.
- The tenants of 1234 Pacific Street organized and began a rent strike. Follow their campaign on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/1234PacificPowr
- The Right to Counsel NYC Coalition made a toolkit for rent strikes. Find it here.
- Read the FAQ.NYC guide to the first of the month.
- Friend of FAQ Emma Whitford published this report in Law360 about the legal defenses for a hypothetical rent cancellation, spurred by State Senator Michael Gianaris’ bill. Read it at Law360 here.
Counting the Dead
- Dr. Mitchell Katz said that funeral homes were taking longer than usual to collect bodies from morgues because, in many cases, families have had little to no time to make burial arrangements.
- A fleet of refrigerated vans from the Medical Examiner’s office have been deployed to store bodies until funeral homes can come and collect them.
Filing for Unemployment
- The online portal for filing unemployment is buckling under demand, giving some an error message and subjecting others to long wait times.
- “The department’s unemployment-claims hotline received 8.2 million calls last week compared with 50,000 in a typical week, and the website recorded 3.4 million visits, compared with 350,000 normally.”
- Read More in the Wall Street Journal.
Homelessness
- Another report from The City, this time about New Yorkers thrown out of their apartments and now homeless because of COVID-19 diagnoses.
Data
- The State has started putting their COVID-19 statistics in a much easier to read format, with breakdowns by age and gender, and releasing Borough numbers alongside borough ‘cases per 100,000’ to measure relative spread.
Budget
Do-it-Yourself Facemasks
- A veteran developer released a schematic and detailed instructions for homemade facemasks.
- The goal was to provide instructions to assemble masks out of items and cloths available at home.
- The developer, Loren Brichter, is a name you probably don’t know, but you do know his work: he was the inventor of ‘pull-to-refresh’ on the iPhone, as well as many other aspects of mobile phone app design.
Closing Parks
- Mayor de Blasio announced the closing of 10 parks yesterday.
- Today, Governor Cuomo closed all playgrounds, effective immediately, saying, “the compliance is still not where it should be.”
- Open spaces still open, for the time being.
- City Council Speaker Corey Johnson has been very vocal about closing the playgrounds, in spite of the Mayor’s hesitance to do so.
- You can read about the different strategies from the Governor, the Mayor, and the City Council Speaker in this report from the Gotham Gazette.
Looking Ahead
- The state is not making any allowances for religious gatherings. With Passover, Easter, and then later Eid coming up, the city hopes that religious groups will comply but are ready to have NYPD and FDNY close buildings and issue fines if necessary.
- Mounting pressure on tenants and landlords, and the need for clear financial aid for either tenants, property owners, or (eventually) banks.
- Will the triage protocol be made public?
The Numbers
| Friday 4/17, 1pm | Monday 4/20, 2:30pm | |
| Total Cases | 122148 | 132467 |
| – Manhattan | 15952 | 16987 |
| – Brooklyn | 32499 | 35203 |
| – Queens | 37447 | 40714 |
| – The Bronx | 27014 | 29505 |
| – Staten Island | 9166 | 9986 |
| Hospitalization Rate | 26.8% | 26.2% |
| ICU Rate | ?? | ?? |
| Confirmed Deaths | 7890(NYC) / 8893(NYS) | 9101(NYC) / 10022(NYS) |
| Probable Deaths | 4309 | 4582 |
This weekend: 1200+ deaths
