New York State Governor Cuomo is surprised

"New York State has been shut down for six weeks. Social distancing has become the norm. Face masks are everywhere.

And yet more than 20,000 people a week in the state are still testing positive for the coronavirus. In the past week, more than 5,000 virus patients entered hospitals. Who are they?
Officials have surveyed hospitals to find out, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said that he was surprised by the results he was reporting on Wednesday.

More than four in five patients were retired or unemployed. Only 17 percent were working.

“We were thinking that maybe we were going to find a higher percentage of essential employees who were getting sick because they were going to work, that these may be nurses, doctors, transit workers,” Mr. Cuomo said. “That’s not the case.”

 The answer to the Mr.Cuomo question is very simple. Most essential employees are working low paid jobs in transportation, cleaning hospitals, selling food. They are mostly African Americans and Latinos [1]. They cannot afford to be sick. When they get coronavirus they just keep working. They bring the virus to their retired and jobless family members who after getting sick deteriorate quickly, and end up in the hospital.



These are family members of essential workers, Mr. Cuomo.

1. "57 percent of hospitalized people were from New York City. In the city, 45 percent of hospitalized patients were African-American or Latino."