On Monday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo made an admission that is rare to hear from America’s top leaders – he got it wrong. Speaking at a news briefing on the coronavirus pandemic at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in New York City on Memorial Day, Cuomo addressed questions about when New York would more fully reopen. When asked about whether there was a specific timeline for the next phase of reopening, the governor of the Empire State had a surprisingly candid response.
“Now, people can speculate. People can guess. I think next week, I think two weeks, I think a month,” the New York governor said. “I’m out of that business because we all failed at that business. Right? All the early national experts. Here’s my projection model. Here’s my projection model. They were all wrong. They were all wrong.”
Cuomo continued: “There are a lot of variables. I understand that. We didn’t know what the social distancing would actually amount to. I get it, but we were all wrong. So, I’m sort of out of the guessing business, right?”
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 21: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo arrives with a face mask at a news … [+] conference on May 21, 2020 in New York City. While the governor continued to say that New York City is seeing a steady decline in coronavirus cases, he also mentioned that the number of countries reporting a mysterious illness in children believed to be connected to COVID-19 has nearly doubled in just one week. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
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Cuomo’s comments were, in part, an echo of many American’s frustrations with s the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) model. The widely regarded Covid-19 model has informed the decision of many state and local leaders, and has had shifting projections of infections and death rates as the country instituted a range of interventions intended to stop the spread of the disease. There have also been ongoing concerns about the effectiveness of the nation’s testing regimes, as well as wariness at some of the guidance of the nation’s top health experts.
Yet in being so candid with his own assessment of the models, as well as his unwillingness to continue guessing at the future, the governor of the hardest hit state in the country acknowledged what Americans have come to appreciate – that pandemic projections are not certainties, and they are often flawed. Yet they also provide they best guess of how the pandemic might evolve depending on a variety of factors.
While New York continues to rebound from its peak – on Saturday it reported that daily deaths fell below 100 for the first time in two months – it nonetheless has suffered substantially in the early days of the pandemic. The state has reported over 362,000 Covid-19 cases and over 23,000 deaths from the highly contagious virus. All of this comes as the nation nears 100,000 deaths from across the country.
Amidst a pandemic that has rapidly spread across the country, Governor Cuomo earned high praise for his high-profile response, and his televised news conferences have rivaled those of President Trump’s as must-see-TV. Much of the praise for Cuomo has been a result of both his decisive actions early in the outbreak, as well as his candid assessments of the challenges facing New Yorkers. He also didn’t hesitate to criticize the federal government and its leaders when making the case for medical resources he felt New York desperately needed.
But in his comments on Monday, Cuomo may have elevated his leadership even further. While many of his critics may seize on his comments as an illustration of the New York Governor’s shortcomings, his confession of failure was actually a striking act of leadership at a time when many political leaders refuse to admit miscalculations. By acknowledging that both the pandemic projections and some subsequent guesswork of how to respond to them were wrong, Cuomo showed a remarkable amount of humility that is all too rare in today’s ‘gotcaha’ political environment.
In order for America to successfully navigate what will undoubtedly be a long fight against the deadly coronavirus, it will need to embrace a more nuanced appreciation of how its leaders, and all of us, are doing to make the best-informed decisions possible. By having the courage to admit that mistakes were made, Governor Cuomo set an important example of what reflective leadership can look like on the national stage. And in doing so, he may have also helped give America one more reason to feel optimistic about the way our leaders can respond to this crisis.
Yes, in the early days of this pandemic many of us have made mistakes — and even failed — but learning from our mistakes quickly could be our greatest success of all.
