Trump's theory, and that of many Republican governors, according to Cuomo, was this: "We can reopen quickly and we can handle the virus because it will go away, or we will have a vaccine."

Cuomo's theory? No matter the political pressure, keep the state closed until the virus had demonstrably receded as measured by widely available testing, lowered hospitalization rates and decreased deaths.

"We tested both theories," Cuomo told me. "We have the evidence. It's numbers. It's irrefutable. Why don't we pause and recognize the undeniable reality of the situation?"

On the numbers, it's hard to disagree. On April 9, New York had almost 10,000 coronavirus cases in a single day, according to a tally from Johns Hopkins University . On Friday, it had just 673 cases statewide. (Overall New York accounts for almost 400,000 of the 2.5 million cases nationally and for one quarter of the 125,039 deaths from the virus.)

Source: CNN

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