Controlled experiment

Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio must give New York City restaurants facing near-term extinction better answers on why limited indoor dining is permitted everywhere in this state except the five boroughs. The state of coronavirus throughout Gotham has for weeks resembled that in dense suburbs, where new daily case numbers are low, and positive diagnosis rates have hovered at 1% or less for weeks. But while NYC restaurants suffer, Long Island’s have had two months of limited capacity indoor dining.

More than eight weeks later, we haven’t seen a major restaurant-related outbreak. Meanwhile, indoor dining continues in Western New York, where recent testing showed virus rates triple NYC’s.

Nobody is saying throw caution to the indoor wind. The virus spreads most easily when people unmask indoors.

But managing coronavirus is managing risk. With case numbers this low, widely available testing should enable city officials to quickly catch and contain small clusters, if and when they happen, just as they’ll do when school returns to session.

Cuomo says he’s following science, but he’s failed to explain what if any indicators, either in positivity rates, test-and-trace capacity or local enforcement capacity might yield a green light.

Why not at least allow indoor dining in NYC’s least populous borough, Staten Island, first? If no outbreak, let other boroughs follow suit. All things being equal, “one city, one standard” is a good rule of thumb, but, to name just one example, scooter share is banned by law in Manhattan.

Pilot indoor dining. Paralysis is unsustainable.