1/7 Nearly every night the news compares the COVID-19 graphs of Europe and the US.
You know whose chart has nearly the same profile as Europe's?
Dutchess County, NY.

2/7 How? Why?
Dutchess is a mostly rural county up the Hudson Valley from NYC. We are a swing county politically, sometimes voting D, sometimes voting R. We have over 300K residents.

3/7 When the pandemic hit, we were struck hard, especially in urban neighborhoods. The hospitals filled up. At its peak, Dutchess had around 1900 active cases. 150 died.

4/7 But we benefited from good leadership both from Governor Cuomo and our Republican County Executive, Marc Molinaro. (Molinaro's father died from the coronavirus.) The county closed down. Testing sites opened up.

5/7 Dutchess is close enough to NYC that we all understood the risk was very real. Everyone personally knows someone in the City; we heard about the constant sirens and the morgue trucks running all night.

6/7 Now Dutchess is reopening slowly. When I do essential errands, every store had a mask policy and plastic barriers to protect its staff. In my experience 80-90% of the people--both in Poughkeepsie and out in rural areas--wear masks. Groceries have senior hours.

7/7 Dutchess was struck severely yet succeeded in flattening the curve. We know the virus is still smoldering so no one is letting up their guard.
If Dutchess could do this, other counties can too.
Texas, Arizona, Florida, be like Dutchess.