At the March briefing, the governor further assured his constituents, “When you’re saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”

Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the Times, “If the state and city had adopted widespread social-distancing measures a week or two earlier, including closing schools, stores and restaurants, then the estimated death toll from the outbreak might have been reduced by 50 to 80 percent.”

But they didn’t.

Cuomo also made some unimaginable goofs, like allowing infected patients to enter nursing homes, the most vulnerable of accommodations.