NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Is Blaming His City's Outbreak On Trump But Why Where The Subways Still Packed 5 Days Ago?

“For the vast majority of New Yorkers, life is going on pretty normally right now,” Bill de Blasio said on Morning Joe March 10, as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the U.S. topped 1,000. “We want to encourage that.” He added that there was a “misperception” that the disease “hangs in the air waiting to catch you. No, it takes direct person-to-person contact.”

If you love your neighborhood bar, go there now,” de Blasio advised New Yorkers before his meeting — advice that seemed focused on imminent closings as the main problem, not the health threat from keeping them open.

“I think there is just now a realization here that we are going to be dealing with this for a very long time,” said one senior City Hall official.

“He is the mayor of New York City,” said one adviser. “He isn’t trying to sell marshmallow-flavored vodka. He needs to realize that he needs to marshal a response here and set a tone for a city of 8-and-a-half million people, and there isn’t a lot of time left to do it.”