While he conceded that remaining shutdown will become untenable, New York Gov Andrew Cuomo (D) said that the process of reopening more difficult than that of the closedown.

Like much of the United States, New York has been largely shuttered for weeks in an attempt to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus and COVID-19 pandemic.

This has been particularly critical in New York, which has taken much of the brunt of the pandemic in the United States. The state has logged as astounding 319,000 reported cases of the illness, including a tragic 19,415 deaths.

“People are all talking about reopening, which we should be talking about. This is not a sustainable situation, close down everything, close down the economy, lock yourself in the home. You can do for a short period of time, but you can’t do it forever. But reopening is more difficult than the closedown,” Cuomo said Monday during his daily briefing. “The closedown was relatively simple, right? You go to the basement you throw the big power switch and everything just goes down. Close the businesses, stay at home. It was a blunt operation. And that was done all across the country, just stop everything now.”

Cuomo’s comments come as protesters, some armed, are staging demonstrations, in Michigan and elsewhere, against state stay-at-home orders.

“When you go to restart the reopening, now knowing what we know, it’s more nuanced, you have to be more careful,” Cuomo added. “And, again, no one has done this before, no one has been here before.

“So first, start by learning the lessons that we did learn through this experience. And second, let’s be smart about what we do. And I get the emotion, and I get the impatience, I get the anxiety, we all feel it. When I say it’s unsustainable, it’s unsustainable on many levels. It’s unsustainable economically, it’s unsustainable personally. A lot of anxiety is now all through all of our community. We see it in increased alcoholism, increased substance abuse, increased domestic violence. So this is a very, very difficult period and people want to move on. Yes, but let’s be smart about what we do and let’s learn the lessons. One of the lessons is we have never been here before, and we didn’t really know what was going on.”

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