Minority Leader Carr Q&A: Chokshi on COVID pandemic regrets
Carr asks Chokshi to reflect on COVID decisions with hindsight. Chokshi acknowledges the loss of nearly 50,000 New Yorkers and says he would have paid more attention to how variants change and communicated that more nimbly to the public.
Thank you, Chair Ong.
Doctor, good to see you.
Thank you for being here today.
I want to talk to you a little bit about the response to the COVID pandemic, during which you were a major policymaker, advisor, leader for the city of New York.
Looking back on that time now,
with the benefit of hindsight, is there anything that you would do differently or anything specifically that you regret in terms of decisions or recommendations made at that time?
Thank you, Leader Carr, for the question.
And, you know, I have to start by saying when I look back on that time, there's a lot of pain and tragedy and suffering that we have to acknowledge.
We lost almost 50,000 of our fellow New Yorkers.
Of course, not numbers.
You know, they were our neighbors, our family members, our friends.
And that's something that I think we have to acknowledge with, you know, with gravity.
There are so many ways in which I believe that the city
and everyday people rose to the occasion, you know, with respect to saving lives and preventing suffering, whether it was from, you know, the way that people made sure that older adults had what they needed, you know,
in those early weeks.