I talk about perspective a lot. It's very hard to see the number of deaths we're having. It's frightening, it's disturbing, that amount of loss. I'm the governor of New York. I see my job as preventing that kind of disturbance and negativity and loss for the people of the state. We like to think that we can control everything. We can't. We like to think that we can fix everything and fix all the problems for people. We can't. The undeniable truth here is that this virus is a deadly enemy and we will lose and we are losing people who are vulnerable to the virus. That can't be controlled, that can't be fixed. Why? That's Mother Nature, that's a question God can only answer. But, control what you can. Do what you can.
The challenge is to make sure that we don't lose anyone who could've been saved if our healthcare system was operating fully. That is a legitimate, ambitious goal of government. And that we have done so far. Have we saved everyone? No. But have we lost anyone because we didn't have a bed or we didn't have a ventilator or we didn't have healthcare staff? No. The people we lost are the people we couldn't save. Not for lack of trying and not for lack of doing everything that we could do as a society, not only as a government and as a healthcare system. So, to the extent we can find peace in that, it helps me. We are still New York tough. New York tough means tough, but tough in a New York sense also means compassionate. It means that we are unified, it means that we are loving, because if you're really tough, the really tough guys, they're tough enough to show love. And because we're smart. And that's how we're going to get through this.
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