A friend often likes to compare what happened in New York to other states, and specifically blames Andrew Cuomo for the devastation that New York has experienced. This has now come up several times–and not just with this one friend. I’m suspicious that this is part of a disinformation campaign designed to deflect from the massive culpability of the Federal government for the now more than 2 million infections in the USA and 118,000 fatalities.

I want to be clear that I’m not suggesting that my friend is deliberately taking up a disinformation campaign. We know that the Trump re-election campaign and various allies periodically seed the news and social media with misinformation, people who like those sources (eg, Fox News) pick up on these things, and many of them simply don’t know that they have become the agents of tricksters.

We know that Trump and his administration received numerous warnings about the pandemic beginning in December 2019. We know that Trump not only ignored these warnings, but actively discouraged the agencies which are responsible for protecting our health–for example, by telling the CDC that they could not have any public news conferences. These are undeniable facts. The Trump administration took no public action on the virus until the drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average seems to have informed him that a problem did indeed exist. After that, for most of the month of March, the Administration committed blunder after blunder engendering chaos throughout the country, and completely failed in its most important obligation: to protect the citizens of the United States from this disease.

Without question, New York State, and the New York Metro area has experienced the worst effects of the pandemic in the USA so far. I don’t have the expertise to judge whether State or local governments did everything that could have been done, but each time this issue has come up, I have tried to avoid the fog of the political cloud by asking a couple of simple questions. Every state in the USA is dependent on national resources. In this case, among the most important are the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and FEMA. And so my most basic question is: which recommendations issued by these organizations for the prevention of COVID did New York Metro Area governments fail to follow? Given that I have been asking this question for more than two weeks now, and I’ve received exactly zero replies, my conclusion has to be that Cuomo and the governors of NJ and Connecticut, as well as local authorities followed all guidelines and instructions they received from the relevant health authorities.

It is, of course, an understandable and rational question to wonder why New York suffered so much more intensely and with so many more fatalities than other areas of the country. Is that because governors in places like my state of Tennessee, Florida, Nebraska, etc were more competent than Cuomo? It’s going to take months and maybe years to get the complete story on this question, but the evidence is already pretty clear that New York’s fate was sealed a month earlier than Cuomo could possibly have acted. Genetic markers for COVID have demonstrated that the West Coast (California and Washington State) illness was brought into the country via Asia, while the source of the New York infections were from Europe. Without a Federal shutdown to all travelers from these places, the virus was going to hit the New York Metro area because it is the primary recipient of air traffic from Europe. No governor and no mayor had that authority. That was the responsibility of the US federal government, and for the months of January and February, no part of that federal government was actively considering preventative measures.

New York and the West Coast were hit the earliest, and the population density of New York, the reliance on mass transit (some quibbling over this, but I think it’s just basic logic), and the delay in shutting things down to control the spread of the virus meant that New York couldn’t avoid the worst any more than it could have if an atomic bomb had been detonated there. That delay is where a lot of the complaining is sourced, but it’s always great to be able to argue from 20-20 hindsight. Back when Cuomo and the other authorities were moving to get things shut down, there was significant reaction. We can talk about the strained relations with Hasidic Jews who were at first reluctant to abide by the restrictions some other time. The fact is that tens of millions of people were not going to give up their livings and their social lives overnight. As for the mortality rate, no secret there either. Because New York was the first, and because the virus was strong and concentrated there, it took a long time for medical authorities to develop protocols, triage, and treatment. The rest of the country is now benefitting from the knowledge developed in New York and Seattle.

The essence of the question of the culpability of actors like Trump and Cuomo is a variation on the theme that we heard over and over again during the Watergate era, first uttered by Tennessee Senator Howard Baker: “What did the president know and when did he know it?” The clear answer to this question is that Trump was told about the issues months before he chose to act but detractors cannot cite a single instance where Cuomo did not act in accordance with his executive duties.

Now we are in a different phase of the crisis. Those who would like to deflect from Trump’s culpability are pointing to and lauding states (mostly) led by Republicans where there have been far fewer infections and fatalities than New York. All over the world, the overwhelming majority of western democracies are beginning that same return to normal life—and every, single one of them has done immensely better than Trump’s feeble response to the crisis. Only the dictator of Brazil is giving Trump a run for his money.

As I write this, the virus is spreading with increasing speed through several Republican stronghold states. The worst case for the moment seems to be Arizona where the governor, Doug Ducey, lifted restrictions two weeks ago. Ducey is refusing to consider reimposing restrictions even as dozens of restaurants in Phoenix have voluntarily closed their doors because of the many cooks and staff who have become ill.

Meanwhile, in Florida, the state to which Trump is moving the Republican convention, the state is reporting its third consecutive >2,000 new cases per day. Governor Desantis is apparently unconvinced that this is any sort of a problem.

In Arkansas, a very small state, restrictions were never seriously imposed and have now been entirely lifted. I wouldn’t have expected a dramatic increase since things really haven’t changed that much there, but I would have been wrong. Apparently, people see the restriction easing as an excuse to go back to pre-virus behavior which I’m surmising because the cases in Arkansas have spiked up. There are now active cases in every Arkansas county (save one), and the state experienced its worst single-day increase (761) since the epidemic began.

After all this, which governors are doing their jobs and acting to safeguard the health of their citizens?