‘The City Has to Operate’: NYC Mayor Eric Adams Tells Morning Joe ‘It’s Time to Live With Covid’
Newly-elected New York City Mayor Eric Adams confidently told viewers of Morning Joe that it is “time to live with Covid” Monday morning while discussing plans to keep the city open until the potentially deadly contagion eventually dissipates.
Adams came off as undeterred and intentional when asked by both New York Times’s Editorial Board member Mara Gay and co-host Jonathan Lemire about plans to keep New York City public schools open amid a recent spike in infections due to the omicron variant.
Lemire noted that one of the challenges will be school staffing amid Covid concerns before asking the Mayor “whether there will be enough employees in the school to keep them open,” and asking what he’s doing to address incredibly long testing lines in New York.
Adams’ answer was less tactical than strategic, noting first that he will rely on real-time updates from his command center where they will first be able to identify any drops in staffing before drawing from a pool of employees who are waiting. “We’ll shift and adjust and the information coming from our principals,” he said, adding “we’ll deploy where is needed.”
But he hit his stride when pivoting to a more strategic theme. “We have to live with covid and modify our behavior because if another variant comes out, what are we going to do? We spent $11 trillion on covid. We don’t have another $11 trillion.”
“It’s time to live with Covid,” Adams insisted, “and build systems around Covid until it dissipates and leaves us.”
“Until then, the city has to operate,” he concluded.
Watch above via MSNBC.
