As Dems Hammer Trump on Coronavirus, De Blasio Directly Contradicts CDC Advice
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is a big-picture guy.
During his seven very long years running the Big Apple, the unpopular and often smug civic leader has managed to turn off a large portion of his electorate.
Notoriously out of touch with details and people, he promised Democrats during his short, failed campaign for president that he’d solve the issues surrounding income inequality, immigration and gun control, without offering much in the way of further explanation.
It’s partially why he dropped out of the race last December, months before Democrats had cast a single primary vote.
As liberal Vox’s Emily Stewart wrote last July, de Blasio “can be perceived as caring more about big-picture symbolism than the day-to-day grind of city policy, and he’s not particularly charismatic.”
So, it’s no surprise de Blasio fumbled the ball on how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic, directly contradicting advice from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention when speaking with a woman in New York City who had recently returned to the U.S. from Italy.
According to the New York Post, someone had the bright idea to put de Blasio on the answering end of the city’s 3-1-1 non-emergency phone line Wednesday.
The results were disastrous.
De Blasio spoke with a concerned woman who had just returned from Italy — where more than 1,000 people have now died after being infected with the coronavirus, according to Yahoo — and indicated that she did not yet need to quarantine herself.
“No symptoms of any kind?” he asked the woman.
The mayor added, “If you experience any symptoms at any moment, at that time adjust your approach.”
“The important thing is to really be sensitive that if anything changes at all stay home immediately,” he said.
You’d think that for all the complaining coming from Democrats about President Donald Trump’s response to the now-global pandemic, a high-profile Democrat such as de Blasio would at least brush up on the details of how to deal with potential exposure to the serious respiratory infection.
Of course, as the CDC states in regard to Americans returning from Italy, “Travelers returning from the specified countries in Europe must stay home for 14 days after returning from travel, monitor their health, and practice social distancing.”
Trump described criticism of his response to the virus from Democrats as a “hoax” and was practically dragged across concrete en route to being falsely accused of describing the entire pandemic as a hoax.
Now, we have a Democrat in command of the infrastructure of America’s most populous city advising a woman potentially infected with the coronavirus to go out and put others at risk.
Perhaps de Blasio was too busy politicizing the virus with his fellow Democrats to acquaint himself with the minor details of the infection.
Thankfully, the Post reported that it contacted public officials about the mayor’s potentially dangerous advice.
“The mayor misspoke,” Freddi Goldstein, a spokeswoman for de Blasio, said.
“If you return from Italy you should self-quarantine regardless of symptoms.”
New York officials intervened by contacting the concerned woman and offering her the correct information,” she said.
Truth and Accuracy
We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.
Advertise with The Western Journal and reach millions of highly engaged readers, while supporting our work. Advertise Today.
