New York’s
surging death toll from the coronavirus pandemic is a “silent explosion” that’s akin to the “same evil that we saw on 9/11,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Thursday.
And as the number of people killed statewide by COVID-19 reached 7,067 overnight, Cuomo said he didn’t “have the words” to describe the devastation.
“9/11 was supposed to be the darkest day in New York for a generation. We’ve done everything we can since 9/11 to make sure 9/11 didn’t happen again,” Cuomo said during his daily news conference in Albany.
“We lost 2,753 lives on 9/11. We’ve lost over 7,000 lives to this crisis. That is so shocking and painful and breathtaking. I can’t — I don’t even have the words for it.”
Cuomo noted that while the Sept. 11 attacks were “so devastating, so tragic,” the state has lost “so many more New Yorkers to this — this silent killer.”
“There was no explosion but it was a silent explosion that just ripples through society with this same randomness, same evil that we saw on 9/11,” he said.
Cuomo also said the terror attacks were “catastrophic emotionally and physically and culturally” and “gave us a sense of vulnerability that we never had before.”
“But on the pure numbers for the economy: This has been more devastating,” he said.
“This was a complete shutdown for now over one month of everything, and on the numbers, this is much more consequential for the economy, than 9/11.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio also invoked Sept. 11 during a Thursday afternoon appearance on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports.”
“The number of people we’ve lost, the lives we’ve lost now far surpassing what we lost on 9/11, the worst day in our history,” de Blasio said.
“It’s been horrible. And people had to go through so much painful change and our lives feel so different just compared to weeks ago.”
Earlier Thursday, official statistics showed that 4,426 people have been
killed by the coronavirus in New York City and the number of confirmed cases has grown to 84,373.
Katie Yonke
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