EDITORIAL ROUNDUP

May 17 New York Post Still in denial on COVID

How long will it take for New York’s leaders to catch up with evolving COVID reality?

The state is spending taxpayer cash to distribute 16.5 million tests, which at this point are utterly pointless as any sort of population-wide effort to limit the spread.

Testing makes sense in limited circumstances, e.g. as a condition of visiting a nursing home full of higher-risk seniors. But more generally, by the time someone tests positive, they’ve most likely interacted with others; slightly broader testing (which is all a few million extra tests allows) won’t limit the spread.

Yes, statewide hospitalizations with COVID are up from their March 31 low of 817 to 2,497 on Sunday, but roughly half (or a bit more) of those are people hospitalized for something else who simply test positive. And deaths with COVID hit 30 that day, in a state of over 19 million.

If you have symptoms, stay home; the rest of the household should get tested; that’s about it. The crisis is over.

That’s clearly true even in the city, though health czar Dr. Ashwin Vasan put Gotham on “high COVID alert” Tuesday, urging everyone (especially the most vulnerable) to mask up indoors, etc.

Huh? Per his own Health Department’s COVID-tracking site, New York City saw 3,674 “confirmed and probable” cases on Saturday, down from a clear peak of 4,240 four days before.

The seven-day average of new COVID hospitalizations was 61, up from Friday’s 58 but down from a peak of 94 on May 5 (and, again, half of those are just people testing positive after hitting the hospital for another reason).

The city’s moving average of “confirmed and probable” coronavirus deaths has been hovering in a flatline range of four to seven a day for weeks. And the vast majority of those are older, have multiple comorbidities and/or are unvaccinated. The now locally dominant BA.2.12.1 strain of Omicron is proving more infectious but (plainly) even less deadly (both of which are how viruses evolve).

Mayor Eric Adams is dutifully masking up himself, but at least is sensible enough to hold off on mandating anything. We hope that’s a sign that he’s getting closer to being done with Vasan’s alarmism: These ridiculous, baseless alerts do nothing but spread needless fear.