American Crisis summary

On March 1, 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo received a call in the middle of the night. It was Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, with some bad news. 

DeRosa calmly informed Cuomo that New York had registered its first case of COVID-19: a health-care worker who had returned to the city from Iran. 

Cuomo knew deep down that this wasn’t New York’s first coronavirus case. And he was right. The virus had been circulating in the city for weeks, or maybe even months before the government really knew of its presence. 

The scariest thing about it all? Cuomo knew America was unprepared for what was about to unfold.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

• how Cuomo created an action plan to manage the virus;
• why large-scale testing was a bureaucratic nightmare; and
• why showing vulnerability as a leader can help win the support of the masses.

On March 2, Cuomo went to the New York State Capitol in Albany. There, he held a press conference about the arrival of COVID-19 in the city. 

This conference marked the beginning of Cuomo’s daily “briefings,” as they eventually became known. They aired on public television.

Cuomo’s plan for this briefing and all those to follow was simple: He would provide unbiased factual evidence explaining the virus and its progress. He would also try to be transparent, but without creating fear.

The key message here is: In a crisis, leaders must communicate information without raising public alarm.

Throughout his career, Cuomo had seen many crises descend into chaos. And, in most cases, a mishandling of the public’s response had been to blame. 

For example, during a hurricane warning in the Southeast, people panicked and rushed to escape, jumping in their cars and running red lights at high speed. In the confusion, multiple police officers were nearly run over. 

With the coronavirus situation, Cuomo wanted to avoid causing panic at all costs. So he set out to deliver clear information using simple, to-the-point vocabulary. He avoided language that might provoke alarm. 

But, despite these good intentions, Cuomo did make one critical communications mistake. Let’s explain.

On March 3, the state government was informed of a second positive case in New Rochelle – just north of New York City. This area quickly became the nation’s first “hot spot.”

Cuomo knew this would terrify the public. At his briefing, he presented the facts and medical information carefully but without watering down the seriousness of the situation. 

Behind the scenes, the state government was already talking about creating a “containment zone” in New Rochelle. They would close schools and religious gathering places and ramp up local testing. 

So Cuomo communicated the steps of this “containment zone” to the public. But he realized that he’d made a grave mistake. The term “containment” made people in New Rochelle think that they were the ones being confined to the area. But Cuomo was talking about containing the virus.

This proved to Cuomo how a poorly worded phrase could be dangerous. If he was going to keep the trust of the public, he couldn’t slip up like that again.

Early on in the crisis, New York State realized that testing would be the most important tool to contain COVID-19. Tests provided factual information that could help leaders make decisions to slow the spread of the virus.

The problem is, testing in America isn’t straightforward. Why? Well, because there’s no national testing system.

Instead, private laboratories purchase testing machines from large manufacturers. Then the labs get materials that are only compatible with that specific machine.

If this sounds complicated, that’s because it is. In fact, the author refers to testing in the USA as a “bureaucratic nightmare.” 

The key message here is: New York was the first state in the USA to make their own COVID test.

At the start of the pandemic, New York’s testing capacity was severely limited. 

This was because every single specimen from any state had to be mailed to the CDC laboratory in Atlanta. That was the only place where testing was conducted. 

On February 4, the US Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency government authorization. This allowed a small number of clinical laboratories to test for the coronavirus using the same test run by the lab in Atlanta.

That week, the CDC began to ship approximately 200 CDC-developed coronavirus laboratory test kits to the selected US labs. Each kit was capable of testing roughly 700–800 specimens. 

This sounded like good news at the time, but problems soon came to light. 

On February 8, New York State’s public health research lab received the CDC test kits. Upon examining the kits, the lab technicians made two crucial discoveries. 

First, the kits produced false positives. This is when a test reports that someone is infected when they’re not. Second, the chemicals needed to run the CDC test were in limited supply, and they were available only from the CDC.

Realizing that time was of the essence, New York mobilized to create its own COVID test. Their version used chemical reagents that were more reliable in identifying positive coronavirus cases. They were also more commercially available.

This turned out to be a “win-win-win” situation. New York State would have its own test – with results reported within a day – and they were more reliable than the CDC’s. And, by purchasing chemical reagents from commercial suppliers, the state could quickly scale up testing.

Soon, New York led the United States in total tests performed per capita.

By the end of March, everyone was tired.

It had been a month of bad news. A lockdown had disrupted life, and no one really knew when it was going to get better. New Yorkers had begun to lose hope.

The thing is, the coronavirus had begun to expose many problems within American society.

For example, a weak public health system meant that the nation was wholly unprepared to deal with an emergency. State governments had to design their own health operations to deal with the rising number of COVID-19 cases.

The key message here is: The coronavirus revealed why a country needs a public health system.

On March 31, there were 9,298 new cases in New York. Over 10,000 people were hospitalized – a huge jump since the beginning of the month.

At the time, experts told Cuomo that New York would need between 110,000 and 140,000 hospital beds to accommodate new patients in the coming months. But the state only had 53,000.

Cuomo knew that he would have to increase hospital capacity by 50 percent. This wouldn’t be easy.

From the outset, Cuomo was aware that it would be difficult to get all the private hospitals to work together. However, he didn’t realize that even New York City’s 11 public hospitals were not working together as one operation. 

This lack of coordination meant that, if one hospital became overwhelmed, there was no system in place to shift patients, resources, and staff from one place to the next.

So how did Cuomo solve this problem?

Well, with the help of experts, Cuomo created a plan called “Surge & Flex.”

This involved creating a center to coordinate hospital capacity. Any hospital in the state could call 24/7 to request patient transfers, staff support, personal protection equipment, or ventilators.

The operation would be guided by real-time data reporting. This meant that the center could identify when a hospital was reaching capacity and direct patients to a hospital with more space. It also meant that health-care facilities could share supplies and equipment. 

This operation would normally have taken years to implement in the USA. But, out of necessity, Cuomo turned it around in a matter of weeks.

On a relatively normal weekday night, Cuomo was sitting at the dinner table with his three daughters.

They asked him how he stayed so calm at the briefings – especially when they knew how anxious he was. 

Cuomo told them that feeling fear and acting on fear are two different things. 

As a leader, Cuomo knew he had to be strong for the citizens of New York. But this didn’t mean he had to hide the way he felt. In fact, Cuomo learned during the crisis that showing his emotions would be key to connecting with New Yorkers and helping them keep their own fears at bay. 

The key message here is: As a leader, showing emotion and compassion is crucial to winning public support. 

Showing emotion as a politician is often risky. Opponents will take every opportunity to seize on a weakness, and the press is always looking for any controversial statement or action to splash over the morning headlines. 

Cuomo had learned to keep his emotions under wraps throughout his political career – but his morning briefings were different. He found himself being a lot more emotionally expressive than usual. And he accepted the risk that came along with that.

This is because the coronavirus was very obviously an emotional matter that demanded an emotional response. Cuomo thought that if he showed his vulnerability, it would help others deal with their sense of fear and vulnerability, too. 

For example, on March 14, Cuomo implemented Matilda’s Law. He named it after his 86-year-old mother. The law aimed to keep seniors and the vulnerable safe by limiting home visitation to immediate family members or close friends.

During the briefing that day, Cuomo wanted to convey a crucial message to the public: that everyone needed to be safe and that the only way that could happen was if everyone worked together. He also implored everyone to tell their friends and family that they loved them and that they would be there for them no matter what.

Cuomo was emotionally overwhelmed that day. He even shed a tear on camera, but he wasn’t ashamed.

He wanted the public to believe in him – and follow his proposals. So people needed to know him as a person. The only way they could really know him was if he showed his authentic self. 

On April 14 – just six weeks after New York registered its first case – things seemed to be on the up. 

The state had reached the peak of the virus, and the number of cases had plateaued. 

At this point, the city had been on 100 percent lockdown since the middle of March. This meant that schools and nonessential businesses had been closed down. Everyone had been at home 24/7. 

Still, Cuomo knew it wasn’t time to reopen society. While the number of COVID cases had improved, the situation was still extremely fragile. 

However, President Donald Trump had other ideas. 

The key message here is: President Trump’s sole priority was reopening the economy.

Trump hadn’t exactly been active in helping the United States fight COVID-19. In fact, he had been telling the nation all along that the virus was simply a flu that would “eventually go away.”

Even worse was how he treated individual states. They were left to manage the crisis on their own.

For instance, Governor Cuomo asked many times for federal assistance at the start of the outbreak. New York was suffering from shortages of protective equipment like masks, gowns, and face shields. And private manufacturers wouldn’t produce them until authorized by Trump. 

Trump didn’t listen to Cuomo’s pleas, however.

Trump wasn't prepared to get hands-on to help manage the spread of COVID-19. It was only when the situation started to improve that he wanted to get involved. 

His proposal? Open the states up again and kick the economy back into gear. 

The thing is, Trump technically didn’t have the authority to do this. Since the start of the outbreak, governors across the country had been legally mandated to make decisions on the coronavirus. Trump’s suggestion that he could reopen the states if he wanted to was, quite frankly, illegal.

The president didn’t see it this way, though. In one of his daily briefings, Trump said that he had “total authority” to do whatever he pleased. 

To cut a long story short, Cuomo appealed to the White House lawyers. He asserted that the president’s desire to reopen the states was simply unlawful. He insisted that a smart, multiphased reopening was essential for controlling the virus in New York. 

It worked. Within 24 hours, the president had said he would allow the governors to authorize their own reopening plans. Cuomo, and New York, had won. 

It was a normal morning for Governor Cuomo. 

His team assembled in the living room of the Governor’s Mansion and ate breakfast. Together, they flipped through their Powerpoint slides in preparation for the morning briefing. All the while, CNN played in the background. 

Suddenly, a video came on the television screen. It showed the death of George Floyd – an African-American man killed during an arrest in Minneapolis.

The key message here is: After the death of George Floyd, New York faced a social crisis and a public-health crisis.

Shortly after hearing the news, Cuomo traveled to Iona College in Westchester County, where he planned to announce that New York was finally set to reopen on June 8 – just a week away. 

This was a monumental day in New York’s battle against the coronavirus. But now, a new crisis was emerging. Protests were kicking off in Minneapolis and other cities across the nation. 

In his briefing, Cuomo announced that he supported the protestors. As a former prosecutor, he knew that the murder of George Floyd was a criminal act, driven by systemic racism. He also knew that it fit into a continuum of cases that had been going on for centuries, whether it was Rodney King in 1991 or Breonna Taylor in 2020.

This was the moment where Cuomo knew he had to step up as a leader. He had to support the protestors in gaining justice. But he also had to prevent the coronavirus epidemic from spiraling. 

There was no doubt that the protests posed a risk for New Yorkers. People were gathering in huge groups. Social distancing wasn’t always observed. 

Thankfully, the protests emerged when the virus’s presence in New York was at a low point. Also, the protests were held outdoors. Most people wore masks. 

Cuomo did a few things to help the situation. One was that he signed an executive order that allowed all protesters to be eligible for a COVID-19 test, and he encouraged them to take it.

He also signed an executive order to protect private business owners. The order enabled them to deny admission to anyone not wearing a mask.

Most importantly, though, Cuomo tried to bring calm to what he saw as a “sea of division.” This was a moment of national reckoning for America. It required a leader to take control.

By June 19, Governor Cuomo had been doing briefings every day for 110 days. New York had been reopening for one month, and the infection rate had dropped. 

People kept asking Cuomo how New York had managed to turn things around – especially as the state was originally the hot spot for the virus. 

The answer to this question was pretty clear to Cuomo. It all came down to the people of New York.

The key message here is: The unity of New Yorkers helped lower the number of COVID-19 cases.

The United States as a whole had been wracked by inequality and division for years, a fact that the coronavirus highlighted anew. 

For example, in New York, the infection rate in lower-income communities was higher than in higher-income communities. 

Elmhurst, in the borough of Queens, is a case in point. The community there is largely made up of low-income families and newly arrived immigrants – people that don’t have reliable access to health care. This neighborhood also suffers from a housing shortage, with many immigrants living in inadequate space. In March, Elmhurst was a coronavirus hot spot, with an infection rate of 50 percent. 

So it’s no wonder that many experts didn’t think New York could “flatten the curve” as quickly as it did. They assumed that New Yorkers would be unable to come together as a community.

But during the crisis, the people of New York came together and supported one another.

For example, Cuomo put out a call to ask retired health-care professionals to sign up to be relicensed – to help hospitals treat COVID patients. He also asked medical and nursing school students who hadn’t yet graduated to serve. 

In response to this, 100,000 health-care professionals agreed to help out. That included 30,000 from outside New York State. 

All these efforts combined helped New York get a handle on the virus. Together, according to Cuomo, they had “achieved the impossible.”

So, when the 111th day of the coronavirus arrived, Cuomo ended his daily briefings. The immediate job of flattening the curve was done. He wanted people to feel a sense of accomplishment. 

Of course, there would be new challenges ahead. But Cuomo had newfound confidence in what the people of New York could achieve together.