EDITOR'S NOTE:
This was Day 33 that we were not called on to ask Mayor Bill de Blasio a question.
All we want to know is it appears that two week after election day the COVID-19 indicators started to jump up, because people were crowded on lines outside and inside poll sites, with a many as fifty or more voters inside certain poll sites not socially distanced.
Then with the stoppage of Indoor dining we can not understand how the 12th City Council Special Election can go on, especially since the mayor says there will be anther shutdown right after the December 22nd Special Election, an right before the Christmas holiday/New Years Eve celebration in Times Square.
Mayor Bill de Blasio: Good morning, everybody. Well, the worst of the storm is passed and there's actually some sun peeking through the clouds this morning. So, that's a really good sign. We're going to talk about the storm in just a moment, but first I want to talk about yesterday – so meaningful, so powerful, so emotional – being at Elmhurst Hospital, the place that was the epicenter within the epicenter of the coronavirus crisis, the place that was hit hardest all in New York City. 10 months ago, Elmhurst Hospital, going through hell, but what strong people there at Elmhurst, what good people, the health care heroes who saw us through. How amazing to be there yesterday as the first health care workers in our public hospitals got their vaccine. Talk about an amazing turnaround that the vaccine, being given to the very same people who saved lives by the thousands 10 months ago. Two health care workers were the first to be vaccinated in all of our public hospitals, Veronica Delgado, who is a lead physician assistant in the emergency department, and, William Kelly, service aid in the environmental services department. They both were wonderful and they both spoke from the heart about how important it was for their fellow health care workers and all New Yorkers to get the vaccine. And William said something that just brought it all together. He said, I hope everybody takes the shot so we can all get back together. Think about that. That's the simplest most powerful explanation of why we need the vaccine, so we can all get back together. I want everyone to be thinking about that in the weeks and months ahead, about getting that vaccine and helping others, encouraging others to do it. It means we can turn the page and start to do the things we love and get back together with our family and friends the way we've missed so much. So, the approach we're going to take on this vaccine is really to amplify voices like Williams, folks in every neighborhood. We had some of our colleagues from the clergy on yesterday. You're going to be hearing from clergy. You're going to hear from elected officials, community leaders, and every-day New Yorkers talk about why the vaccine is important, why it's safe, why it's easy, why it's effective. We need to get the word out.
Now, we have just started in the last few days the vaccine effort. It's going to ramp up much more every single day, but here's the up-to-date number of people vaccinated in New York City – 5,200; new since yesterday morning, 3,565. These numbers are going to grow rapidly with each day as the approach to the vaccine gets refined more each day and more and more people are brought into play. So, again, first few days is going to be a slow and steady ramp-up, then you're going to see a takeoff. And, now, we have, so far, in New York City 42,900 doses have arrived. So, we have plenty of supply. We're going to be getting that out all over the city.
Now, at the same time, we’ve got to get people good information. Just as important as where the vaccine is, is making sure people understand it, they trust it, they get answers to their questions. We fight back misinformation. There's a lot of misinformation out there, we have to overcome that and we have to remind people of a situation we're living with. The virus keeps causing us a challenge. The rate of infection keeps going up in the city, hospitalizations keep going up. We've got a serious issue here. That's why we need the vaccine to fight the virus. But, in the meantime, we need everyone to do what you know how to do, the masks, the social distancing, no travel, no big gatherings, keep gathering small. These are the things we're going to need to do to keep fighting this virus. And a lot of people have said to me these last few days, we don't want to see another pause, we don't want to see another shutdown – nor do I, but if you don't want to see those things, do something about it. Cancel travel plans, keep the gathering small, wear the mask, do all the things that help us fight the virus so we can try and avoid some of those measures that none of us want to see.
Okay, let me go back to the storm. We were certainly braced for a major storm and already we know that the amount of we saw in the last 24 hours was the most we've seen since January 2016. So, it's really been years since we've had this kind of challenge. And we saw up to almost 11 inches in the Bronx, so far. Most of the rest of the city, somewhere in the five-to-eight inch range. So, serious amount of snow, but certainly our Sanitation Department can handle it. They have handled a whole lot worse than this, and they've done it brilliantly. I have the honor of being at the Sanitation Garage on the Lower East Side yesterday, talking to the good men and women who do this work. I want to shout them out again – thank you to all the Sanitation workers. You are heroes. You don't get enough credit. I want to keep giving you credit. You go out there as many hours as it takes, you clear the way, and, because of you, this morning, vaccine shipments are moving around New York City and people are getting the things they need. Food shipments are moving, the things people need the most. Folks are able to get to work because of you. So, thank you, to everyone at the Sanitation Department. Snow, as I said, tapering off now – just a little bit left. It'll end altogether around 1:00 PM. Lot of winds still, but we can handle it. And those plowing operations continue all over the city. So, this is a reminder, please help the Sanitation Department, help the good men and women doing this work, get out of the way to the plows. The best thing you can do, don't be out on the streets, don't drive until we get through the plowing today. Tomorrow's going to be a much better day. Help out our good friends at Sanitation by giving them the freedom to do their job. Stay off the streets to the maximum extent possible today.
Now, alternate side parking update – it’ll be suspended through Saturday, December 19th to help continue the snow removal. And let's talk about schools as well today. Schools closed today, we announced that early afternoon yesterday. It's a remote learning day. Obviously, a new reality for our kids. Look, our kids need the chance to keep learning. They've been through so much this year. They have lost ground in terms of their learning. We need to help them. We have the ability to keep learning, going into today, because of remote learning. So, all kids have the opportunity to do that. There'll be a chance after school, obviously, kids love being out in the snow, so they can go out and have a great time – some sledding, maybe some snowball fights, whatever they can do after school. But I want to make sure everyone knows, tomorrow school we'll be back in session in-person. We are good to go for tomorrow. Friday, school will be back in session in-person.
Okay. Let's turn that outdoor dining. A lot of concern about making sure that the mom and pop restaurants out there and all the people who work in the dining industry had their jobs tonight, and so many people rooting for them. Here's the update – it's going to take a couple of different stages to get the final answer today. What we can say with assurance is that in Manhattan, right now – Manhattan did pretty well in this storm. In Manhattan, we're going to have outdoor dining up and running tonight. And, obviously, that's where a lot of the restaurants and jobs are. So, we can tell you right now through the great efforts of Sanitation Department, we'll have outdoor dining up and running in Manhattan tonight. For the other four boroughs, we're going to have an update by about one o'clock today. And it could be different by borough – obviously, different boroughs had different amount of snowfall, different conditions, different realities. We're going to speak to that later on today, after Sanitation has a chance to do some more assessment and come back with the latest updates. So, we will keep the public posted and we'll keep our colleagues in the restaurant industry posted as we get that information over the next few hours.
Okay. With that, to give you further updates, I’m going to first turn to our Emergency Management Commissioner. And she and her team have done a great job dealing with all the issues around the storm, as they do with every major weather event and every challenge this city faces. My pleasure to introduce Commissioner Deanne Criswell.
Commissioner Deanne Criswell, Office of Emergency Management: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I think you've covered a lot of it, but I'll just reiterate a couple of really important points. The bulk of this storm has moved through the city, but there still is a winter weather – a winter storm warning in place until 1:00 PM. We didn't get as much snow as we thought we were going to get, but we did get a wet, heavy snow. And so, that's making for some pretty messy conditions out there. And so, with that, I want to encourage everybody, you know, as you're going out and you're shoveling today, really take care of yourself, make sure you're staying hydrated and take breaks in between shoveling because it is to be a little bit draining for you because it is a heavy snow. One of the positive things about this as we did not have as many power outages or downed trees that we thought we might have because of the wet snow and the wind. And so, because it was not as much, we didn't have the significant outages. And so, that was a really good piece of the storm.
It is going to remain breezy today, though. As the snow starts to fade away by 1:00 PM, you're going to see winds go through the evening. And as the snow melts a little bit, the weather isn't going to get much warmer. And with that wind, you're just going to see it turn back into freezing conditions later tonight. And so, I want to just caution all New Yorkers, please take care, please stay off the roads if you don't have to be on them. And if you're out walking around as these conditions may turn icy again later this evening, please take extra caution. And, as always, please look out for your neighbors, take care of one another and stay safe.
Mayor: Thank you very much, Commissioner. And thanks to you and your team for a great job. And now, also with tremendous thanks, turning to our acting Sanitation Commissioner and everyone at Sanitation – I just – I love what these guys do. I'm so proud of their effort and they're doing it again right now out there, getting the city back on the feet in record time – amazing work they do. My pleasure to introduce Sanitation Commissioner Ed Grayson.
Acting Sanitation Commissioner Ed Grayson, Department of Sanitation: Thank you, Mr. Mayor. As the Mayor said, and as Deanne went over, we have definitely had a major storm event. We saw some depths that we haven't seen in a few years. And, more importantly, the makeup of the composition of the storm with some sleet mixing in this makes it for a difficult plow storm. However, throughout the overnight and continuing today, we have basically plowed every street in the city. We're continuing with salting operations and we will continue with plowing operations to get our streets safe and clear for everyone. Mother nature, however, is not being very kind on the backend of this storm. So, while we're seeing some clearing, we're going to have really cold temps. So, what we want to make sure everybody's doing is heeding the warnings. If you can stay off the road, please do that. We will be continuing our plowing and salting operations continually throughout the rest of the day into tonight.
Looking ahead, as the Mayor said, we will be giving some guidance later on for the remainder of the decisions on outdoor dining structures. The outdoor dining structures did well structurally for the most part from our frontline reviews, from what we saw, and our operators did well navigating around them. So, that means that the messaging worked and we can't thank the restaurant owners and small businesses enough for doing their part. And we'd like to thank all the residents who did their part by not parking near them and giving us the room we needed. We ask that to continue.
Our goal today and for the remainder of the day is to continue widening streets and salting, and we look to do that. Tonight, for those who are enjoying some outdoor dining after the final decisions are made. All I can say is this, it might not be a night to wear your good shoes, only because it's going be a lot of slush out there, because our job is to continue throwing salt out. We have to do that because of the rate of the cold weather coming and beyond this storm. Also looking ahead, I'd like to let everybody know that tomorrow we will be employing emergency laborers. So, the shift will be 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. We're going to do that Friday and Saturday, 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. We've pre-registered over 500 laborers. Consider this the first notification, although you will be formally notified to come down. And, for anybody else interested, you can go to nyc.gov/notify to find out more information. We will certainly take all the help we can get because we're about to move into a manual operation, starting tomorrow to get some of these catch basins and crosswalks and hydrants cleared to make sure that we're all healthy and safe in the wake of this event.
Once we finished clearing everything, we'll we're going to be out there, as I said, all night, for the remainder into tomorrow. We'll talk about where we're going to be on refuse and recycling. We will continue to be delayed. The snow response will take all of our efforts for a while and we hope to update shortly on where we'll be. So, that is our update for the storm. We've done a great job. The men and women continue to do a great job and we'll be out there for the rest of the day. Thank you, sir.
Mayor: I want to say our Sanitation Commissioner is doing a lot for us here, he’s doing a great job and also telling us not to wear our fancy shoes tonight. I thank you, that is very good guidance. That's news you can use, everybody. A couple other things – so, obviously, it’s be cold the next few days. Code Blue is in effect, that means making sure that any homeless folks who need shelter, we go out and quickly give them assistance. If you see anyone in need a call 3-1-1. Obviously, if it’s urgent, call 9-1-1 right away. And, most importantly, everyone, look, you heard the warning from Commissioner Criswell, be careful about shoveling, don't overdo it. If you've got someone who needs help in your neighborhood shoveling, if there's a senior that maybe you can chip in with or get someone to help them out, that's really great. Look out for your neighbors. Look out for someone that has any special need. New Yorkers do an amazing job looking out for each other. It's going to be cold. You know, we're going to be dealing with the snow and removal of the snow the next few days, let's be there for each other, as always.
And that's a segue to what it means to be there for each other – well, New Yorkers do it all the time, but our colleagues in Washington are not doing such a great job. There's a discussion going on right now on the stimulus. And this a new stimulus proposal simply falls short. It's just not going to do enough to help New York City in New York State. We are not going to recover without help. We didn't create the coronavirus. The federal government has an obligation to New York. We were the epicenter of this crisis – they have an obligation to help us. They simply haven't helped us enough.
So, what do we see right now in Washington? Endless discussion that now is leaving out all state and local aid. That means the City government, State government will not be able to get back on our feet and serve our people. It's just doesn't make any sense. If you sideline local aid, you sideline the recovery. There won't be a recovery. So, right now, I don't know what – how on earth these discussions are leaving out local aid. I don't find this package acceptable. It's not going to get us where we need to go. What is in the package that at least I can say is a step in the right direction, direct payments to every-day New Yorkers, every-day Americans – of course we know we need that. That is one of the things that has sustained us to the degree we have been able to keep going. We also need to see, obviously, school funding. Keeping schools going has been a huge challenge, keeping them safe and healthy. We need school funding. We need transit funding – the MTA is in dire shape. We need to keep it going, that's urgent. And FEMA aid – this is the most obvious of all. We bore the brunt. We put out a huge amount of money to keep people safe, keep them healthy, keep them fed, keep a roof over their head. We have done extraordinary things in this city. Federal government should reimburse for those direct COVID-related resource – direct COVID-related costs. When you think about things that came from the coronavirus, not something that this city ever could have been prepared for, those are federal obligations. So, FEMA reimbursement should be at 100 percent to make us whole, help us back on our feet. That's something that's still could get done here that would be crucial for New York and so many other places to have borne the brunt. So, really, really unhappy with what I see, but if they are going to do a deal, at least get it right on the things that they're talking about now and help us keep going. But we're going to need a much bigger stimulus than this. We're going to need local and state aid as part of it, if we're serious about helping people and getting back on our feet.
Okay, let me go to our indicators. Number one, daily number of people admitted to New York City hospitals for suspected COVID-19 – today's report, 174 patients. We want to be under 200 – today, we are. It's been a tough in some of the last few days, but at least that's a little bit better number for today. But the number that's not good, hospitalization rate per 100,000 – today's number is 3.06. We want to be under two, so that is not a good sign. New cases – this number keeps just getting bigger and bigger – probable cases and confirmed cases go to 2,739. We want to be under 550. We’ve got a long way to go and everyone needs to be a part of turning it around. And then, percentage of New York City residents testing positive on the seven-day rolling average – today’s report, six percent. Again, that's an unacceptable number. We need to get under five and keep going down for there. So, six percent is not acceptable. We’ve got a lot of work to do.
