An unhealthy relationship

Months ago, reportedly because he had lost faith in Dr. Oxiris Barbot’s Health Department, Mayor de Blasio instead put the head of the city’s public hospital system in charge of overseeing the massive new coronavirus testing and tracing operation. That was an insult to DOH, which had developed immense expertise doing the job over the decades.

The mayor also froze Barbot out of daily COVID-19 briefings. And made her apologize in public for an impolitic remark made to a police official.

But typical of his pathetically passive-aggressive management style, he wouldn’t fire her and put someone else in her place.

Now Barbot, upon resigning, is blasting de Blasio for supposedly sidelining DOH throughout the coronavirus response.

“Our experts,” she wrote, “are world renowned for their epidemiology, surveillance and response work. The city would be well served having them at the strategic center of the response, not in the background.”

Except DOH experts are central to the testand-trace operation de Blasio set up; they’re just not in charge of it.

And though it’s true that in the early days of COVID, the mayor played down risks and tuned out prescient experts, Barbot herself was among those delivering late and bad advice.

As late as early March, she said of the coronavirus: “We know that there’s currently no indication that it’s easy to transmit by casual contact. We want New Yorkers to go about their daily lives, ride the subway, take the bus, go see your neighbors.”

There are no heroes here.