There is no historical comparison for what our country is going through.
Medically? We’re rivaling the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. Economically? We’re seeing unemployment that could look like the Great Depression. Critical supplies? We need to produce more, faster, than any time since World War II.
Every domino is falling at once. And they’re falling hardest here in New York City.
On Friday we hit a painful milestone, surpassing 50,000 confirmed cases of the coronavirus. We’ve lost 1,562 New Yorkers. One of every four cases in the United States is a New York City resident.
There is only one way to get New York City and every city the medical personnel we need: The federal government should enlist every available private doctor, nurse and essential health care worker to fight in this war.
It would be a remarkable step. But these are remarkable times.
We’re already trying unimaginable things. We started this crisis with a little under 20,000 hospital beds — and want to quadruple that by the end of April. We’re gathering ventilators and equipment from every possible source, and I’ve called on President Trump to use the Defense Production Act to its fullest extent.
Our capacity and supply goals will be hard enough to reach. But even if we do, New York City won’t come close to having enough doctors and nurses to treat all of our patients.
And I’ll be blunt — if the nation’s largest city doesn’t have the help we need, other cities won’t, either.
Our city and all cities need the federal government to enlist all doctors and health workers, and mobilize them in a way we’ve never seen. Here’s how it would work.
Enlistment
We have about a million doctors and 3.8 million nurses in the United States. So many are already are working on the front lines of this crisis. But there are many who aren’t — private surgeons, podiatrists, dermatologists, retired doctors and nurses who are willing and able to come back. There are obvious exceptions — those who are vulnerable to the coronavirus because of age or a pre-existing condition.
But we could have so many more heroes on the front lines right now, fighting invaluably. Our federal government should call on them to do so.
Mobilization
We need our military to do what it does best: mobilize the troops. Think about our traditional disaster relief efforts, those that focus on a single area after a hurricane or flood. This is fundamentally different.
We’re going to have multiple cities and states in crisis at the same time. We need our military to organize the supplies and personnel each location needs. When cases surge in a different city the following week? The military can move them as needed — a traveling band of heroes who will save lives from New York to Alabama to California.
Here is the difficult truth: We’ll lose more New Yorkers. We’ll lose more Americans. But the question is: How many of those in danger can we save?
There is only one way to save as many lives as we possibly can. It is by getting every doctor, nurse and health care worker involved in this fight — and moving them, with precision, to the right place at the right time.
It cannot be done perfectly. But it can be done well.
So many of us grew up hearing stories from our parents and grandparents about America in its toughest moments. It is hard to believe our generation would face a challenge on the same scale. But that’s exactly where we are. The next days and weeks will decide how we’ll be remembered. Will we be heroes, like the Greatest Generation? Or will our legacy be a generation that could have done more, saved more lives — if only we had found a way?
There is only one way forward. We don’t have a day to waste.
Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) is mayor of New York City.
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