‘Worst Is Over,’ Cuomo Says as States Snub Trump on Restarting Economy – The New York Times

With the number of new deaths and rate of hospitalizations falling in New York, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Monday that “the worst is over” in the coronavirus pandemic, and he announced an alliance with six other Northeastern governors to explore how to eventually lift restrictions — a move that appeared to be an implicit rebuke to President Trump.

The governors from New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Massachusetts and Rhode Island said they would begin to draw up a plan for when to reopen businesses and schools, and how quickly to allow people to return to work safely, although the timeline for such a plan remained unclear.

“If you do it wrong, it can backfire, and we’ve seen that with other places in the globe,” Mr. Cuomo said. “What the art form is going to be here is doing that smartly and doing that in a coordinated way.”

The joint effort was the first of two announced on Monday: The governors of California, Oregon and Washington, three Western states that were among those that felt the impact of the virus before it spread rapidly in the Northeast, announced a similar pact. All but one of the 10 governors on the two coasts are Democrats.

In moving ahead on their own, the governors were all but disregarding President Trump just as he was trying to assert control over the question of when and how to reopen the country — a move that set up the possibility of a collision course between the states and Washington.

The president spent Monday assembling a task force to advise him on a path to restoring some semblance of normal life in America. He rejected the notion that the decision would be left to the governors, even though they have been the ones to close the schools and issue the stay-at-home orders, not the federal government.

“For the purpose of creating conflict and confusion, some in the Fake News Media are saying that it is the Governors decision to open up the states, not that of the President of the United States & the Federal Government,” he wrote on Twitter. “Let it be fully understood that this is incorrect. It is the decision of the President, and for many good reasons.”

Hours after his tweet, and after the governors’ announcements, Mr. Trump doubled down on his claim that his executive powers superseded that of states.

“When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total,” he said at his evening briefing at the White House.

Moments after that, Vice President Mike Pence modulated the president’s sentiment somewhat, saying the administration would issue guidelines for the states to follow on reopening the economy. “We’ll work with those states and in some cases it’ll make sense for them to work on a regional basis,” Mr. Pence said.

Mr. Trump offered no legal or constitutional basis to back up his claim to exclusive authority to reopen society.

And soon after, Governor Cuomo called in to CNN and said: “You don’t become king because of a national emergency.”

The federal government issued guidelines last month recommending that Americans refrain from gatherings of over 10 people and take other measures, but the binding orders to close were issued by the governors and mayors. It also remained unclear how Mr. Trump could overrule a governor who wanted to keep businesses and schools closed even after the president wanted them to reopen.

In staking out his authority, Mr. Trump seemed to be contradicting his previous position that handling the coronavirus outbreak was essentially a local problem. The president had resisted enacting a national stay-at-home lockdown, leaving it to each state to decide on its own; the president also has said that it was a state’s job to properly manage its hospital beds and ventilators.

The focus on reopening the economy came even as the death toll in New York State surpassed 10,000 people, but other indicators continued to plateau or decline slightly, leading Mr. Cuomo to declare that the worst of the outbreak may have passed.

Nearly 19,000 people remain hospitalized in New York, the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, but the rate of hospitalizations has slowed markedly over the last week, and the 671 deaths announced on Monday marked the lowest one-day death toll in a week.

But even with the numbers plateauing, Mr. Cuomo said, the situation could worsen if New Yorkers ignored social distancing measures.

“I believe the worst is over if we continue to be smart,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said during his daily briefing in Albany. “I believe we can start on the path to normalcy.”

With millions of people filing for unemployment benefits and tax revenues drying up, the governors from the seven Northeastern states said the objective was to gradually increase economic activity and the number of employees considered essential workers, while tracking closely the virus’s infection rate. They added that they needed to act in concert to prevent people from crossing state borders to shop or do business in states with looser restrictions.

The seven states together have recorded over 325,000 confirmed virus cases and more than 14,400 deaths, around 63 percent of the country’s total. The governors of those states sought to cast their action both as a sign of hope and as a recognition that they had to act on their own.

“Seeing as how we had the responsibility for closing the state down, I think we probably have the primary responsibility for opening it up,” said Gov. Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania. ”We’re simply saying it’s our responsibility to steer our way through these uncharted waters. And it’s our responsibility to figure out a way back.”

Mr. Cuomo also seemed confused by the president’s assertion that only he could open the economy.

“If it is your authority to open, why wasn’t it your authority to close?” he asked.

The action on the East Coast came as Washington, Oregon and California — the nation’s most populous state — also announced “a shared vision for reopening their economies,” amid the outbreak, which has been less catastrophic thus far in that region.

Like the plan in the Northeast, there was little detail on the timing or scope of such an economic restart, but the states said they would prioritize the health of particularly vulnerable populations, like seniors. “We need to see a decline in the rate of spread of the virus before large-scale reopening,” read a joint statement from the three states’ governors.

Mr. Cuomo has said a successful approach to reopening the economy would hinge on the ability to ramp up testing for antibodies to identify people who are immune to the virus and could safely return to work.

New York business leaders were cautiously encouraged by the action taken by Mr. Cuomo and other governors, noting that the state’s economy had been battered in recent weeks after a decade-long run that had seen low unemployment and strong consistent growth.

“There’s no doubt there’s going to be economic harm, there already has been,” said Heather C. Briccetti, the president of the Business Council of New York State. “The question is how do we thoughtfully exit the shutdown and how do you take steps to reopen so that you don’t prolong the harm.”

Small business owners warily rejoiced at the prospect of reopening at some point.

Michael Mirzayev, 22, who co-owns the Coney Island Pet Grooming in Brooklyn, said that he was hopeful that businesses could reopen by May or soon thereafter, but not if it meant the virus could see a resurgence.

“We have been hearing that Cuomo is planning to reopen, and we hope it’s true,” said Mr. Mirzayev, who runs the pet salon with his mother. “We have to get back to work and stuff to pay for just like everyone else.”

Mr. Cuomo has reiterated that measures to reopen schools and loosen restrictions on businesses and transit systems should be coordinated with regional and county governments in the New York City metropolitan area, in order to avoid another surge in the number of cases.

“This virus doesn’t understand school district boundaries, and these systems we’re talking about don’t work on any of these boundaries,” he said. “Schools, transportation, jobs; they don’t work on a county basis.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio said on Monday that New York City would keep track of three indicators to determine when the city might reopen: the number of people admitted to hospitals, the number of patients under intensive care and the percentage of people testing positive.

“We’ve got to see them all move down in unison over a prolonged period of time to be able to get to that next phase where we have low-level transmission and then we can start on the path to a more normal life,” Mr. de Blasio said.

Mr. Cuomo’s tentative steps toward a reopening of the economy came a little more than three weeks after an executive order took effect, closing down all nonessential businesses and hitting the brakes on the state economy.

Asked whether suggesting that the worst had passed could encourage people to disregard warnings about social distancing and other containment efforts, Mr. Cuomo pushed back.

“That’s why I’ve said the exact opposite 57 times,” Mr. Cuomo said. “Stay the course, stay the course, it’s working, stay the course, stay inside, take precautions. That’s why I say that 100 times.”

At the same time, Mr. Cuomo said that he wanted the public to believe in the data, which has shown a decrease in deaths over the last two days. The highest number of daily deaths was reached on April 8, when 799 people were reported to have died.

Indeed, doctors in some hospitals in New York City and its surrounding areas said the volume of coronavirus patients coming into their emergency rooms has continued to decline.

The number of patients with the coronavirus at hospitals operated by Northwell, the state’s largest health care provider, declined to 3,267 on Monday morning from a high of 3,425 people last Tuesday, according to a spokesman.

Still, other health care professionals, like Michael Pappas, a resident in family medicine in New York City, cautioned against reopening the economy too soon without adequate testing capabilities and safety protocols in place.

“Coming back to work prematurely in these conditions, means that CEOs will stay in their mansions while putting the most vulnerable sectors at risk,” he said. “These government politicians and corporate executives are betting with our lives.”

Reporting was contributed by Peter Baker, Jeffery C. Mays, Matthew Haag, Brian M. Rosenthal and Michael Rothfeld.