“We Can’t Go On With Business As Usual”: NYC Comptroller Calls For ‘Citywide Shutdown’ As Virus Hits City Schools

After NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said during an interview on CNN earlier that he “all options are on the table” when asked if he was considering closing city schools and shutting down restaurants and other non-essential businesses, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer, the former Manhattan Borough President who defeated Elliot Spitzer in his primary for for the comptroller job a few years back, called on the Mayor’s Office to move ahead with the shut down.

During a series of tweets, Stringer said the city must “act logically and strategically” and that “out of an abundance of caution, I am calling for a city shutdown.”

Only essential services should remain open. No bars, restaurants, or movie theaters.

And I am again calling for NYC schools to be shut down.

We cannot go on with business as usual.

— Scott M. Stringer (@NYCComptroller) March 15, 2020

Stringer called for a city-wide shutdown on Sunday, including closing bars and restaurants, while only essential services should remain open.

He also repeated his call for the city schools to be shut down, despite the pressures on millions of parents to find child care and figure out how to react.

“We cannot go on with business as usual…This is about all of us. This is about protecting our most vulnerable. Lives are at stake and there’s no time to waste. We have to flatten the curve.”

One would hope that, seeing the dangers of young healthy people spreading the virus to the elderly and the vulnerable, most would stay home. But so many people packed into bars in New York over the weekend that Congresswoman AOC tweeted a plea for them to stop going out and obey the state’s request that healthy people avoid large gatherings.

To everyone in NYC but ESPECIALLY healthy people & people under 40 (bc from what I’m observing that’s who needs to hear this again):

PLEASE stop crowding bars, restaurants, and public spaces right now. Eat your meals at home.

If you are healthy, you could be spreading COVID.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 14, 2020

And as CNBC’s Becky Quick just showed…

Asshole https://t.co/zuPv3Awypk

— Becky Quick (@BeckyQuick) March 15, 2020

…not all liberal young people have been as considerate as their support for idealists like Bernie Sanders would suggest. In Queens, the borough president asked city families to keep their kids at home.

The informal schools and subway policy are (for now) the same: keep them open, hope most people won’t come. https://t.co/TqqOs4SRzH

— Nicole of Hell’s Kitchen (@nicolegelinas) March 15, 2020

The decision came after a student at a Queens school was confirmed to have the virus.

P.S. 306 in Queens (27Q306) is undergoing cleaning and disinfection due to a confirmed case of coronavirus in the school community.

— NYC Public Schools (@NYCSchools) March 15, 2020

That school is undergoing a deep clean.