But it worries about imported Covid-19 …..
And parties
New Yorkers took the first hits and the hits were hard and deadly…
But they beared down and embraced masks, social distancing and a hard shutdown…
Now with the state almost all reopened?
There is a sense of some normacy…
Wearing a mask all the time is NOT normal…
And the summer and outside stuff is gonna be gone in a few months….
And?
Schools will be reopening in less than a month….
The virus is simply no longer as present in New York as it once was, epidemiologists and public health officials said.
“New York is like our South Korea now,” said Dr. Thomas Tsai of the Harvard Global Health Institute.
But nothing is static about the viral outbreak, experts cautioned. The question now is whether the state, where 32,000 people have died of the virus, can keep from being overwhelmed by another wave, as threats loom from arriving travelers, struggles with contact tracing and rising cases just over the Hudson River in New Jersey.
Officials have also been watching warily as cities once seen as models in virus containment struggled with new outbreaks. Hong Kong moved to ban indoor dining and gatherings of more than two people in late July amid a sharp rise in infections. International flights were diverted from Melbourne, Australia, as cases mounted.
In more than a dozen interviews, epidemiologists, public health officials and infectious disease specialists said New York owed its current success in large part to how New Yorkers reacted to the viciousness with which the virus attacked the state in April.
State officials shut down schools and businesses, sacrificing jobs and weakening the economy to save lives. Adherence to mask wearing has been strong. Many vulnerable New Yorkers are still sheltering in their apartments. Others decamped to second homes.
And, critically, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio reopened cautiously, deciding in late June against allowing indoor dining and bars after seeing those activities connected to outbreaks in other states.
“People in New York have taken matters much more seriously than in other places,” said Dr. Howard Markel, a historian of epidemics at the University of Michigan. “And all they’re doing is reducing the risk. They’re not extinguishing the virus.”…
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Among the biggest threats, officials and epidemiologists said, were out-of-state travelers, who continue to arrive in New York despite a state-mandated 14-day quarantine.
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She said the most important factor in New York’s success so far has been broad acceptance of masks and social distancing..
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What may protect New Yorkers who decide to buck the rules and gather in groups without masks is the fact that so many of their neighbors are still masking up, said Dr. Barbot.
“If a new infection gets introduced into the community, it will be a terminal transmission, meaning that it won’t go any further,” she said. “More people wearing face coverings seems to be in line with that.” She cautioned that it was a theory and the data is not yet there.