New York — It’s too early to say whether New York state’s regional reopening a week ago is keeping the coronavirus at bay, because the virus can take up to 10 days to result in serious symptoms, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said on Monday.
Any increases in hospitalizations to date are likely from infections before the reopening began, he suggested.
Cuomo also said he’s not going to guess when the rest of the state — including New York City — might start to reopen.
“Now, people can speculate, people can guess, I think next week, I think two weeks, I think a month,” Cuomo said. “I’m out of that business, because we all failed at that business. All the early national experts, here’s my projection, here’s my projection model, they were all all wrong, they were all wrong.”
But in his comments on Monday, Cuomo may have elevated his leadership even further. While many of his critics may seize on his comments as an illustration of the New York Governor's shortcomings, his confession of failure was actually a striking act of leadership at a time when many political leaders refuse to admit miscalculations. By acknowledging that both the pandemic projections and some subsequent guesswork of how to respond to them were wrong, Cuomo showed a remarkable amount of humility that is all too rare in today’s ‘gotcaha’ political environment.
In order for America to successfully navigate what will undoubtedly be a long fight against the deadly coronavirus, it will need to embrace a more nuanced appreciation of how its leaders, and all of us, are doing to make the best-informed decisions possible. By having the courage to admit that mistakes were made, Governor Cuomo set an important example of what reflective leadership can look like on the national stage. And in doing so, he may have also helped give America one more reason to feel optimistic about the way our leaders can respond to this crisis.
Yes, in the early days of this pandemic many of us have made mistakes — and even failed — but learning from our mistakes quickly could be our greatest success of all.