“Travel From New York City Seeded Wave of U.S. Outbreaks” screamed a headline in The New York Times on Thursday, May 7th. How many of us New Yorkers took their report to heart?
The paper told the story of recent research on how the coronavirus plague spread so widely in the United States. Evidently, China doesn’t have all the blame. The paper stated it this way, “The coronavirus outbreak in New York City became the primary source of infections around the United States, researchers have found.”
“The research indicates that a wave of infections swept from New York City through much of the country before the city began setting social distancing limits to stop the growth. That helped to fuel outbreaks in Louisiana, Texas, Arizona and as far away as the West Coast. The findings are drawn from geneticists’ tracking signature mutations of the virus, travel histories of infected people and models of the outbreak by infectious disease experts.”
Whoa! This should stop us New Yorkers in our tracks!
We New Yorkers need to reflect that we did not do enough to prevent the spread of the virus from our city to the rest of the nation. We have been so focused on our own travail and filled with admiration for Gov Cuomo’s looking out for us that we must not forget that we could have done more.
How many events with out-of-town guests did we hold just before the lockdown? How many of the speakers and participants from those events went back home with the plague? Should we have cut all out-of-the-city transportation sooner? Admittedly, we were not quite sure about what was happening. That was a good excuse for a moment. However, when other states said that they didn’t want New Yorkers passing their virus to others, our leaders hotly denounced them as un-American.
Remember how angry Gov Cuomo was that Rhode Island and some other states were checking to see if New Yorkers were entering? Did anybody shout out a check on the actions of our forceful leader? Maybe the New York Post, but anybody else?
For myself, I shouted plenty of warnings to friends here since January 17th, even canceling a Chinese New Year’s dinner, but I didn’t think in terms of the danger to friends around the country. If we are going to criticize the Chinese government for its cover-up and delay in warning the world, we must be completely candid about our own shortcomings.
Now that the country is opening up and churches and other religious groups may start holding gatherings, they must be honest and transparent if their actions cause people to get sick and die. Otherwise, we don’t have the moral authority to hold the Chinese Communists to account for their cover-ups that led to an infliction of a worldwide wound.
We all hope that opening up can relieve the hunger, fear, and isolation of our people. It is a tough choice. However, we must go forward with honesty and alertness. I go to God with some self-reflection on our failings here in New York
