The Newsletter That Never Sleeps, Edition- Edition #14, 7/29/21
I am the CDC now. It’s…
THE NEWSLETTER THAT NEVER SLEEPS
- Your weekly five borough briefing -
This is the fourteenth edition of The Newsletter That Never Sleeps, from July 29th, 2021. Any new subscribers can read all previous editions, which include breakdowns of local races, ranked choice voting, public safety and COVID recovery here. Welcome!
Apologies for the late filing, folks. Been sidelined a bit with work. Not much on the docket this week besides some updates regarding NY’s Delta surge, which we’ll cover below. Some fun trivia about our former Presidents as well. Let’s go.
COVID RECOVERY
Newly Reported Cases (7/22–7/29): 976 avg. daily cases (+122%)
Newly Reported Hospitalizations: 481 avg. hospitalized patients (+15%)
Which wave of COVID is this again? Four? Five?
After four straight months of collapsing COVID cases, the arrival of the Delta variant in the U.S., exacerbated by stalling vaccination rates, has brought a quadrupling of COVID cases across the country with no sign of slowing down. As of today, the same number of COVID cases are being recorded daily as in the late April surge just before vaccines became widely available.
97% of those being hospitalized for COVID, nationwide, are unvaccinated. Currently, just under 51% of the country hasn’t had a single shot of the vaccine, including children illegible for any of the existing vaccines. The Delta wave has had made a differing impact across regional lines, as the highly vaccinated Northeast has seen some increase in cases- enough to raise some public health risks- but not enough to create a full on emergency.
In the South, however, the Delta variant is raging through states where less than a third of the population is vaccinated. Though deaths and hospitalizations aren’t rising as precipitously as recorded cases, states including Arkansas, Louisiana and Florida are experiencing full blown public health crises.
NYC is in a bit of a middle ground; only 54% of the city is vaccinated, and as you’ll note below, there hasn’t been much movement in vaccination rates in the past few weeks. While that’s a pretty decent vaccination rate, that still leaves a huge amount of the population of a city where tightly packed travel and commerce make up the municipality’s lifeblood vulnerable to COVID.
Deaths remain nearly flat, which is good, though there’s been a slight rise in hospitalizations, though nothing that currently poses a risk towards NYC’s medical infrastructure. Nonetheless, as vaccination rates stall, cases are driving up in zip codes with low vaccination rates: the South Shore of Staten Island, the Bronx and East Brooklyn are all experiencing the worst surges in COVID, and have the lowest vaccination rates in the city.
The CDC has revised their mask mandate, now advising everyone in high risk areas, even those vaccinated against the virus, to wear masks indoors, given the Delta variant’s transmissibility and the unknown breakthrough effects of COVID on vaccinated individuals.
Under the CDC’s guidelines, all of NYC falls into this moderate to high risk criteria. However, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio are, for now, doing as much as they can to prevent any COVID mandates from returning and taking palpable steps, for the first time, to get the rest of the city vaccinated. More on that below.
If you’re vaccinated, should you be worried about getting COVID? The CDC, and most epidemiologists, say no, but that you should be cautious and mindful. For example, I went to Sunday mass in a church on the South Shore of Staten Island last week- COVID cases are high and vaccination rates are low. If I were to get a breakthrough case, it would be here. I masked up for the hour.
Use your discretion, but I would say, based on the existing data, that it’s a smart idea to continue masking up on public transportation and crowded indoor areas. And if you haven’t gotten the vaccine yet, please get it!
I’m serious- if you haven’t been vaccinated yet and are on the fence as to whether or not you should get the jab, feel free to email me and we can talk about the advantages of getting vaccinated and why you won’t get microchipped by Bill Gates or rendered infertile.
VACCINATIONS:
Brooklyn: 48% fully vaccinated (+1), 59% adults vaccinated (+1)
The Bronx: 46% fully vaccinated (+1), 58% adults vaccinated (+1)
Manhattan: 65% fully vaccinated (-), 73% adults vaccinated (-)
Staten Island: 50% fully vaccinated (-), 62% adults vaccinated (+1)
Queens: 62% fully vaccinated (+2), 72% adults vaccinated (+1)
So, city leaders have stressed, for as long as vaccines have been available, that the city would be driving New Yorkers to get vaccinated to prevent another surge in cases, and even when vaccination rates stalled, Cuomo and de Blasio would promise another drive in vaccination efforts to drive up vaccine numbers.
That hasn’t happened thus far. But, facing down another surge and possible lockdown, de Blasio and Cuomo are finally taking concrete steps to mandate the vaccine as far as their jurisdiction as Governor and Mayor allow them. The state and NYC will require all municipal and government workers to get vaccinated within the next month or face weekly COVID testing.
There are roughly 300,000 city workers- about 5% of the adult population, who now have a requirement to get vaccinated. Municipal employee vaccination rates vary- healthcare workers and MTA employees are around 60% vaccinated, whereas NYPD employees are barely 40% vaccinated.
Mandating that public facing employees get vaccinated could block off a lot of roads of transmission for the Delta variant, and, frankly, I don’t really want to be in a hospital treating COVID patients where the staff isn’t vaccinated.
The city is also offering, though I don’t exactly know how, a crisp $100 to anyone willing to get vaccinated. Is this economic incentive enough to get people off the fence? Maybe. For those vaccine averse for reasons other than political persuasion, economic factors (missing work, lack of insurance, etc.) are offered as the main roadblocks to getting vaccinated. A nice Benjamin in your pocket could be enough to get you to take a day to go through the mild vaccine symptoms and buy 400 Bazooka Joe gum packs.
We’ll see if vaccination numbers, through economic and job security incentive, rise over the next few weeks, as New York City is in serious peril of having to reinstate at least some COVID mandates if cases continue to rise. However, there are a number of tools at the state and municipal level to coerce the unvaccinated to get the shot and avoid another lockdown altogether.
As of July 29th, 2021, courtesy of the New York Times
EVICTIONS LOOMING- MORATORIUM ON EVICTIONS TO EXPIRE AT END OF AUGUST, CUOMO OVERHAULS FAULTY RELIEF SYSTEM
“Tenant relief now. No more delay.”
A national moratorium on evictions, protecting tenants unable to pay rent because of unemployment due to the pandemic, is set to expire across the country at the end of August, and tenants and landlords alike are wondering what happened to relief promised to them by the state.
In New York, Cuomo’s relief program has only approved 5,000 applications for relief and given out a little over $1 million to tenants and landlords with nearly a year of back rent. The website, which has been replaced by a new portal on the Governor’s website, was glitchy, didn’t work on cellphones, and was nearly impossible to navigate.
Tenants were unable to secure funding from the state to pay up to a year in rent to their landlords, and landlords hardly got a dime to pay their mortgages and keep up with their banks. As the moratorium is set to expire, and eviction cases are piling up in state courts, tenants and landlords are anxiously awaiting intervention to prevent a complete housing disaster in the midst of a period of economic insecurity.
The existing program was disastrous, and left millions of New Yorkers vulnerable to eviction or bankruptcy. The unemployment rate in NYC is still slightly higher than the nation as a whole, and those who’ve applied for rent aid are largely unable to make up the months of rent they missed during the pandemic.
Cuomo, with disaster on the horizon, overhauled the system and gave a contract to Guidehouse, an Illinois based firm to handle rental aid claims, promising to streamline the system and provide immediate relief to renters and landlords. As of July 29th, less than a million dollars has been given out through the new system, and even that money was just part of a test program.
Conversely, hundreds of millions in rental aid have been doled out in San Antonio, Philadelphia and other large cities across the country. NYC isn’t just lagging behind the national standard for rent relief, it hasn’t even left the starting line- and there isn’t much time before the race is called.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has kept his eye on Cuomo’s negotiations to streamline the rental aid program, and forced Cuomo’s hand to scrap together $150 million to immediately be sent out to tenants and small landlords.
It’s unknown exactly how much money will be necessary to fully support renters and landlords in New York City; though only 5,000 claims have been processed, the state received 160,000 claims since June. One estimate from National Equity Atlas puts the renter debt in New York City at around $3.2 billion. Not all of that will be covered by rental relief, but it’s worrying that only a fraction of that has been given out to New Yorkers.
Cuomo promised to dispense all rent relief by August 31st, but he’s essentially starting from scratch, and an eviction crisis is slowly building as more and more cases are dumped at the doors of closed courthouses. The disaster can be mitigated, but it’s been a very messy process thus far and would require a sea change in operation to mitigate the chaos.
POLLING WATCH
Morning Consult National Tracking Poll (7/6–7/10)
Favorability of current and past Presidents of the United States:
Joe Biden: 52% favorable, 44% unfavorable (+8)
Donald Trump: 44% favorable, 52% unfavorable (-8)
Barack Obama: 57% favorable, 39% unfavorable (+18)
George W. Bush: 57% favorable, 33% unfavorable (+24)
Bill Clinton: 47% favorable, 43% unfavorable (+4)
George H.W. Bush: 58% favorable, 30% unfavorable (+28)
Ronald Reagan: 65% favorable, 23% unfavorable (+42)
Jimmy Carter: 48% favorable, 29% unfavorable (+19)
Gerald Ford: 50% favorable, 23% unfavorable (+27)
Richard Nixon: 31% favorable, 51% unfavorable (-20)
Lyndon B. Johnson: 39% favorable, 30% unfavorable (+9)
John F. Kennedy: 78% favorable, 10% unfavorable (+68)
Dwight Eisenhower: 58% favorable, 12% unfavorable (+46)
Harry S. Truman: 50% favorable, 15% unfavorable (+35)
Franklin D. Roosevelt: 60% favorable, 15% unfavorable (+45)
Time heals all wounds. This was an interesting tidbit from Morning Consult’s monthly national tracking poll, a behemoth of a survey which tracks national satisfaction (or lack thereof) on the direction of the country, Congress, the President, specific issues for voters, the two parties and a litany of civil and political issues.
Given that the U.S. is one of only a few democracies where our head of state is also our head of government, the men who’ve occupied the office of the Presidency are revered through the lens of a civic American religion. It’s important to note that “favorability” is much different from “job approval”. Just because 57% of registered voters have favorable views of Barack Obama doesn’t mean that they necessarily approve of the job he did as President. In fact, Biden’s job approval is slightly higher (+10) than his favorability rating (+8).
That being said, it’s striking to see that all but two Presidents (Donald Trump, the most recent President, and a President who lost reelection and Richard Nixon, the only President to resign from office) have negative approval ratings, and that even George W. Bush, who left office with an approval rating reaching -60% now has a favorability rating of +18.
It’s also interesting to see who exactly registered voters have lionized as the greatest Presidents in modern history, though not entirely surprising. John F. Kennedy, who only served a bit more than two years in office, is the most popular President in modern history. Would those who responded favorably to Kennedy in this survey be able to pinpoint a particular policy position of Kennedy’s, or how he handled the job of the Presidency? Probably not, but the image of JFK as a young, charismatic warrior shot down in his prime allows Americans to view Kennedy as a martyr in the battle for American Democracy and decency. The more time passes, the broader the political projection is imposable upon Kennedy, as even QAnon devotees praise JFK.
You’ll probably note that Biden and Trump’s favor abilities are exact mirrors of each other. If anything, this speaks to how polarized the electorate is in 2021; Biden is, according to RCP, the only active national American politician (including Donald Trump and Mike Pence) with a positive approval rating. No one else, McCarthy, McConnell, Schumer, Pelosi, etc., are above water, and even Biden only captures the heart of a bit more than half of the electorate. That’s probably about as good as you can get in today’s political climate, as 40–44% of the population will automatically disapprove of Democrats, 50–55% of country will disapprove of Republicans, and there’s very little space in-between for fluidity.
CITY READS
NYC Board of Elections slammed by voters, advocates at hearing, by Denis Slattery
If you want some schaudenfraude, watch the Board of Elections get roasted by voting rights advocates for their incompetence in the first of many hearings to be held regarding the BOE’s conduct during this June’s primaries.
N.Y.P.D Officer Fired After Trial Finds He Raped 15 Year Old Girl, by Troy Closson
A horrifying story about abuse of power by two NYPD officers, who targeted a 15 year old girl with whom they had developed a personal relationship. At least one officer was fired but no criminal charges have been brought against them, yet.
Staten Island GOP Recount Pits Trump Fan Against Moderate Party Favorite, by Clifford Michel
“I honestly feel like I’m in Communist Albania.” A look into the funniest and most absurd recount in New York City, and the battle for the 50th Congressional District between an established GOP politico and a retired marine veteran accusing the political machine of anti-Albanian oppression.
Cuomo calls on N.Y. businesses to bring workers into the office by Labor Day, deny unvaccinated patrons, by Denis Slattery
Cuomo, like de Blasio, is starting to put his fist down when it comes to unvaccinated New Yorkers, but remains weary over allowing the economy to further stall after worrying reports on national inflation. The balance of maintaining a robust economy while avoiding another surge will be a test of Cuomo’s governing skills in the country’s largest city.
STRIKING THE BALANCE- ERIC ADAMS AND PROGRESSIVES TRY TO FORCE COMMON GROUND
Finally, let’s see how Mayor-apparent Eric Adams, who recently donned himself “the face of the Democratic Party”, is doing.
“I’m no longer running against candidates. I’m running against a movement. All across the country, the DSA socialists are mobilizing to stop Eric Adams… They realize that if I’m successful, we’re going to start the process of regaining control of our cities.”
Awesome!
Though Eric Adams is running against a candidate (Curtis Sliwa of the Republican Party, to be exact), Adams has taken his first few weeks on the national stage to stress that the future of the Democratic party, and the process of holding together a successful coalition, is by coalescing around and molding candidates such as himself and President Joe Biden: attentive to the Black electorate, socially moderate and aesthetically working class.
While he’s not technically wrong, he’s really gone on the defensive (as he has his whole career) over the left wing of the Democratic party who did not support Adams in his Mayoral bid, which is what happened when Adams spoke to a group of donors who included Libertarian and Republican big wigs this week:
“We’re not going to let parties get in the way of this party called New York City.”
Whatever that means, it certainly resonated with more liberal voices in the New York City Democratic party, who, to their chagrin, do have to work with Eric Adams in the coming years. Rep. Nydia Velazquez, who’s worked as a median between the left wing and moderate wing of the NYC Democrats, responded to Adams’ comments about how the DSA is out to get him, hoping to taper over divides between the two factions of NYC Dems:
“I said I wanted to remind him that in the age of social media and communications, that we needed to be careful as to what we say and that it is important that we treated everyone with respect.”
The debacle is a brief glimpse into the legislative future of Democratic politics in New York City, where the executive branch, headed by Eric Adams, an outspoken opponent of left leaning forces within the party, will have to work with most left leaning City Council in decades to draft vital policy and yearly budgets.
It certainly isn’t helpful for the governing party in New York to come in 2022 picking fights within the coalition, even though Adams has, for his entire career, seen left-bashing as a crucial part of his governing philosophy. Even though progressives have filled whatever seat he’s vacated as he’s climbed up the political totem pole, he’s fiercely advocated for either members of the IDC or moderate insiders to take his place as the future of the party.
Members of NYC’s congressional delegation, including Ritchie Torres and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at whom Adams’ comments were almost certainly aimed, all chimed in to remind Adams that though there’s a considerable fissure between the old and new guard of New York Democrats, campaigning against factions within your own party bodes poorly for a successful legislative future:
“He essentially said that he cannot succeed without the delegation,” said Mr. Torres outside the event. “The delegation is united in enabling him to govern New York as effectively as possible. Everything else is secondary.”
While New York’s political leaders will need to cede some political power and standing to Adams as NYC’s Mayors, it’ll be interesting to see how Adams fits into a city that, at the local and national level, are shifting ever so slightly to the left.
Though the DSA certainly isn’t a friend of Adams’, they nominate candidates to the same party line and, ostensibly, will be governing as part of the same coalition. Adams’ month long national tirade against the progressive wing of his own party, of which he has claimed the mantle, is a worrying signal of Adams’ potential inability to negotiate with a legislative body that is political anathema to Adams’ own philosophy.
It’ll be interesting to see if Adams makes any attempt, at all, to campaign against Sliwa in the coming months- Sliwa isn’t a serious competitor for the mayoralty, but they are technically running against each other, and Adams should be advocating for his own party during the general election.
Thus far, Adams and Sliwa have been trading blows on the same punching bag. Sliwa will sometimes take a jab at Adams, but Adams remains laser focused on coalescing power in the center of the party he believes he now represents- not just in New York, but at the national level.
Thanks for reading this edition of The Newsletter That Never Sleeps. If you have any feedback, leads, stories, or just want to reach out, feel free to email me at kigraulich@gmail.com or @kieranian_ on Twitter.
