Statement from Michael Bloomberg spokesman - April 2, 2020
"In Mike's 12 years in office, he led New York in preparation for all kinds of disasters that had
never before been seriously contemplated - from additional devastating terrorist attacks to the
catastrophic potential loss of our main water line, which hadn't been upgraded since 1917. We
did this through two major financial crises that devastated New York and its biggest industry,
while strengthening what was already the strongest social safety net in the country and roughly
doubling spending on schools.
"Our Administration was among the first governments in the country to comprehensively plan
for a pandemic health crisis, and key parts of our program were implemented successfully and
harnessed in our effective H1N1 virus response in 2009, which itself became a national model
for public health emergency planning.
"By being a leader, we were also among the first to identify the issue of a larger shortage of
ventilators and short shelf-life of their key components that the rest of the country is now
experiencing, which is a bigger problem than even the largest city in the country can attack on its
own. That's why our team was among those leading the federal push for a better ventilator plan,
which was later sidelined, as detailed in recent days in the New York Times. "