During a Wednesday press conference, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said social distancing will be key to making sure state hospitals can handle the apex of cases expected in late April.
“This all comes down to at the apex, can your hospital system manage the volume of people coming into the hospital system? That’s all this is about at the final analysis,” he said.
He presented one model that showed a need of 110,000 “COVID beds” and 37,000 ventilators by the end of April, if there is minimal impact from social distancing. Those numbers drop to 75,000 and 25,000 respectively based on higher compliance with social distancing.
The governor said that 391 New Yorkers died within the past 24 hours, bringing the total to 1,941 deaths and 83,000 cases.
He also showed a projection that predicts a total of 16,000 will die in the state before the population achieves “herd immunity.”
“We’re still looking for the curve to straighten, we’re still looking at where we see a plateau,” Cuomo said. “The line is still going up.”
State hospitals will begin to coordinate more, Cuomo said, by sharing supplies, medical personnel, and eventually moving patients from hard-hit areas to less-burdened hospitals.
Cuomo made official an earlier warning that he’d close playgrounds and public sports facilities in New York City if people didn’t voluntarily avoid them.
“I warned people that if they didn’t stop the density and the games in the playgrounds — you can’t play basketball, you can’t come in contact with each other — that we would close the playgrounds,” he said.
The governor noted that he is still open to people returning to work before the virus has completely run its course, assuming widespread testing is available to ensure status.
“My opinion is that the best way to do that is to come up with a rapid testing procedure,” he said.
Biotechnology company Regeneron is providing 500,000 testing kits to New Yorkers free of charge, according to Cuomo.
The airline industry says it is contending with staff shortages that threaten to hamper operations amid the COVID resurgence, andDelta Airlines CEO Ed Bastian called on the CDC to revise its guidance for vaccinated workers who test positive from a 10-day quarantine to just five. Chuck Liberman, chief investment officer and managing partner at Advisors Capital Management LLC, joined Cheddar to talk about the current guidance on isolation and why he believes the omicron variant calls for more relaxed guidance given its reportedly mild symptoms.
Schools are shutting down in droves as the highly contagious omicron variant surges across the country. Denisha Merriweather, director of public relations and content marketing at the American Federation for Children, an advocacy organization for vouchers and tax credits for school choice, joined Cheddar's "Opening Bell" to discuss the impact of remote learning on children. She argued that school districts have to be more proactive about the steps they are taking to engage students, and if they are unable to form better teaching methods, parents should be able to find alternative schools.
The boys discuss President Biden's plans to send out free rapid tests as the testing supply chain starts to buckle ahead of the holidays. Also, why aren't Americans having more babies, and The Matrix returns.
With the Build Back Better plan essentially out of the picture, economists are highlighting what the country might lose without the provisions designed to strengthen it. Among other things, this includes no more monthly payments for tens of millions of families, no universal Pre-K for 6 million children a year, and no billions of dollars in tax incentives for climate initiatives. Grace Segers, staff writer for The New Republic, joined Cheddar to discuss the various impacts on the economy without President Biden's spending bill.
Electric vehicle companies took a tumble Monday after Senator Joe Manchin killed Biden's 'Build Back Better' plan. Shares of Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian all fell rapidly as the plan had included significant incentives for the growing EV sector. Rich Steinberg, former executive at Nissan, BMW and Electrify America joined Cheddar's Opening Bell to discuss.
Michael Robinson, Chief Technology Strategist at Money Map Press, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he explains why small and mid-cap stocks heating up during Tuesday's session is a very good sign for a stock market that ended the day's session sharply higher.
Coming off a 2021 campaign where the prices of Bitcoin, Ether, and other cryptocurrencies reached unpreceded levels, Bitwise Asset Management CIO Matt Hougan and OpenNode Co-Founder & CTO João Almeida join Cheddar News' Crypto Craze: The Year of the Token to discuss the ways the crypto market can soar even higher in 2022.
