EVERGREEN HEADLINE: Blame Bill de Blasio.

New York City’s population density is off the charts compared with the rest of the U.S., as is its usage of mass transit. A map of COVID-19’s lethality maps fairly neatly onto the subway map, with infections increasing for the lengthiest commutes. The metropolis is especially vulnerable to infectious disease, as its epidemiologists are well aware.

Yet on March 2, de Blasio urged New Yorkers in a tweet to go out on the town. On March 10, de Blasio said on MSNBC, “If you’re under 50 and you’re healthy, which is most New Yorkers, there’s very little threat here. This disease, even if you were to get it, basically acts like a common cold or flu. And transmission is not that easy.” On March 11, the day Seattle closed its schools, de Blasio said in a press conference, “If you are not sick, if you are not in the vulnerable category, you should be going about your life.” De Blasio didn’t acknowledge until April 3 that asymptomatic transmission was taking place, claiming he had learned this in the last two days. It had been 63 days since Anthony Fauci declared that asymptomatic transmission was certainly happening. Meanwhile, governor Andrew Cuomo, who often makes a point of publicly opposing de Blasio, this time joined the mayor in lethal obliviousness. “We should relax, because that is what is dictated by the reality of the situation,” Cuomo said on March 2, promising that most of the afflicted would recover easily and that “we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”

This was mayor-from-Jaws-level happy talk, times a thousand. The two leaders’ science experts were horrified by what de Blasio and Cuomo were saying, according to the New Yorker piece. A former head of the city’s Department of Health told the magazine that there’s always a divide between political appointees and public-health professionals, “who sometimes have to make unpopular recommendations. But, with the de Blasio people, that antagonism is ten times worse. They are so much more impossible to work with than other administrations.”

Read the whole thing.

Of course, there’s plenty of blame to go around: Cuomo orders NYC subway trains sanitized every night.

That’s a headline The Hill ran today; not a month ago. It comes in the wake of Cuomo’s presser on Tuesday: NY Gov. Cuomo Calls Homeless Situation In Subways ‘Disgusting.’ Imagine If A Republican Said That.

At his daily coronavirus briefing, Cuomo was discussing the homeless people in the subways and brandishing a copy of the New York Daily News that showed pictures of the homeless, then stated, “That is disgusting, what is happening on those subway cars. It’s disrespectful to the essential workers who need to ride the subway system,” as The Gothamist reported.

Cuomo added, “We have to do better than that, and we will.”

The Gothamist noted that Transport Workers Union Local 100 President Tony Utano stated, “Mayor de Blasio has to direct the police to escort the mentally ill and the homeless out of the system. This is a life-and-death situation, not a quality of life issue.”

And then there’s Fredo: CNN host Chris Cuomo’s coronavirus quarantine timeline scrutinized.

The “Cuomo Prime Time” namesake said he was “past quarantine” on April 12, the day of the encounter with the bicyclist, but that same day his wife had blogged that he had a “100 fever in afternoon and evening.” The encounter also occurred at an unfinished construction site that Cuomo owns, miles from his posh Hamptons residence where he was quarantined.

Cuomo even told CNN viewers on April 13 that he couldn’t shake his fever.

Unfortunately, other members of Cuomo’s immediate family have said they tested positive for coronavirus following the April 12 incident.

Meanwhile, Cuomo now claims he was “past quarantine” on April 12, but over one week later he staged a dramatic “official reentry” into society after recovering from coronavirus. The video was labeled his “Brian Williams Iraq moment” after critics claimed he wasn’t being truthful because he had already admitted that the Easter Sunday altercation took place outside his second property.

Cuomo’s so-called “emergence” was extensively mocked on social media and continued to raise eyebrows when his colleague, CNN’s in-house media critic Brian Stelter, included the controversial video in his nightly media industry newsletter.

Exit question: “So when you ‘left your basement for the first time’ CNN was lying?”

Perhaps this article in Hollywood Reporter headlined “‘It’s Good TV:’ CNN’s High-Drama Coverage of the Pandemic Hits Close to Home” provides the answer: “But another current CNN employee who spoke with THR criticized Cuomo’s appearances, particularly the dramatic moment last Monday when he was filmed leaving the basement where he was quarantined to reunite with his family, as ‘reality TV.’ ‘Him coming out of the quarantine with the cameras there, that’s all Jeff Zucker reality TV, and that screams Zucker,’ the person says, referring to the network president who brought The Apprentice to NBC and helped make Trump a star.”