Council Member Wong on mayor's absence and public outreach concerns

Okay, thank you.

Councilmember Wong?

Thank you, Chair.

This is not my first encounter Legionnaires outbreaks.

This is, in my memory, the third one.

And during the previous Legionnaires outbreaks, I've seen Mayor de Blasio, I've seen Mayor Adams personally went into the affected communities, held multiple in-person press conferences and spoke directly to residents.

And that's one thing I have not seen doing.

I remember Mayor Adams even drank the tap water on camera in Harlem to reassure people that the water is safe.

Is there anything being done to assure the public that the water is safe, or from you or from the mayor's office?

Can you talk about that?

First, thank you for the question, Councilmember Wong.

When it comes to building investigations, where there again is a potential Legionella contamination in the potable water supply, it is safe to drink the water.

So I want to set that record straight, absolutely.

If there are other areas that you have specifically in mind, we're happy to talk about those.

Yeah, okay.

I think public outreach is important because if a tower is contaminated, I think it's the Department of Health's job to inform the people working there or the people visiting there.

That may be exposed to Legionnaires.

And if you are in the risk group, you should be tested or you should go see a doctor.

Because they may treat this as a regular summer cold or whatever it is, and then they may just stay home and rest rather than, oh, this is serious, I need to get myself tested.

So I've been hearing since 10 a.m.

That, oh, you're testing the water towers, you're testing your Patriot dish.

But where is the outreach?

To the office workers in this tower that you tested positive.

You know, we tested the AC towers.

You know, I don't see any, I've been searching.

I haven't seen any social media postings.

I haven't seen any videos.

I found videos of the mayor talking about the World Cup.

We're talking about the gold cards, talking about Netanyahu, but nothing about Legionnaire's disease.

Has anything been done?

Is there any videos, social media postings on that?

Because we cannot just keep testing water towers and then not telling the public you have to get tested.

I disagree with your assertion, Council Member.

We have been putting communications at the core of our response.

To talk about social media for a second, 2.2 million impressions for this cluster with the social media content that we put out.

15 in total community presentations, three town halls.

I myself was in the community doing the canvassing.

Let me tell you my experience, okay?

Please.

As a visitor to the Met Museum, I've been there twice, one for the Raphael exhibit in May and one for the Revolution exhibit in July.

I went there with my wife.

She came back sick.

And I have not got a single notice from the Met Museums that we've been tested for Legionnaires.

Please get yourself tested.

And those are the concerns that I have because we could potentially, a lot of people may get sick if they visit the Met Museum and the cooling towers are infected.

I'm sorry to hear about your wife, and I hope she's feeling better.

She was sick two weeks.

And how's she doing now?

She's doing okay now, but she's young.

But these are the concerns I have that you've got to tell the public that if you are this group of people and you have these symptoms, go.

Councilmember Wong, if you have a question, that's fine, but this is not a back and forth.

I'll save it for round two.

Let me just respond to that.

We have been doing that messaging.

We did that messaging throughout the cluster.

Again, radio ads throughout the region, over 180, two tabling events, 10 canvassing events.

Our job was to get the message out, and we delivered on that job, Councilmember.

Okay.