Mayor Bill de Blasio has done a terrible job and throughout the pandemic has annoyed New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. So, when it comes to putting together a massive tracing program for the City of New York who does Cuomo trust? The former mayor and failed Democrat primary candidate, Mike Bloomberg.
Tracing helps researchers follow the trail of who was infected and when it was a strategy that South Korea used to limit the spread of the coronavirus.
“I thank him for taking this on with us,” Cuomo said in a tweet of the former New York City mayor and recent Democratic presidential contender. “It will be expensive, challenging & require an army of tracers. But it must be done.”
“Michael Bloomberg will design the program, design the training. He’s going to make a financial contribution also and put together an organization that can help hire the people,” Cuomo said.
“You have weeks to have this up and running, (it’s a) super-ambitious undertaking. And Mayor Bloomberg will help coordinate the entire effort,” Cuomo said.
“This entire operation has never been done before, so it’s intimidating. You’ve never heard the words testing, tracing, isolate before,” Cuomo said. “But I say, ‘So what? Who cares that you’ve never done it?’ That’s really irrelevant. It’s what we have to do now.”
Cuomo is asking Bloomberg to trace “as many positives as you can.”
“We’re all eager to begin loosening restrictions on our daily lives and our economy. But in order to do that as safely as possible, we first have to put in place systems to identify people who may have been exposed to the virus and support them as they isolate,” Bloomberg said in a statement.
The actual mayor of the city, Bill de Blasio wasn’t even mentioned and it looks like for this he’ll be the second chair to the three-term former mayor of New York City. But hey, at least de Blasio can throw his parade.
