The former CEO and executive chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt along with his philanthropic organization Schmidt Futures will be working with New York state by leading a 15-member commission that will try to bring advanced technological tools to the state as it recovers from COVID-19 and moves into the future.
Schmidt Futures was founded in 2017 by Schmidt and his wife, Wendy. it’s a philanthropic initiative designed to promote the application of science and technology.
Schmidt joined Google and while serving as its CEO helped it expand from a Silicon Valley startup to a global giant. He served as CEO until 2011 when he became executive chairman, holding that position until 2018.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced on Wednesday that Schmidt had agreed to help the state. Schmidt spoke to reporters via video.
“The first priority of what we’re trying to do is focus on telehealth, promote learning and broadband. We can take this terrible disaster and accelerate all of those in ways that will make things much, much better,” Schmidt said. “The solutions that we have to come up with have to help the people most in need. People are in different situations throughout the state and we need to consider all of them and not pick one or the other. So, the intent is to be very inclusive.”
Schmidt said that part of the work will be to review and update systems in use by the state. Schmidt Futures has a science accelerator program that seeks new ways of conducting science through investments in groundbreaking and risky research projects that leverage the power of advanced computing techniques.
“The public-private partnerships that are possible with the intelligence of the New Yorkers is extraordinary,” Schmidt said. “It needs to be unleashed.”
Cuomo announced that Michael Dowling, president and CEO of Northwell Health, would be leading an effort to institutionalize the public health lessons learned from fighting COVID-19.
“Next time something like this happens, we can just open a book and it says here’s what we do: Step A, Step B, Step C,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo noted that May 6 was National Nurses Day and he praised the nurses for stepping up in the battle against COVID-19. He announced that JetBlue will be honoring and thanking nurses and other medical personnel. The airline will be offering a pair of round-trip flights to 100,000 medical personnel including 10,000 who work in New York. Three JetBlue planes were scheduled to honor New York’s frontline workers with a flyover of the city on May 7 at 7 p.m.
Cuomo said New York state has a virus hotspot upstate traced to an agricultural plant, Green Empire Farms. The hydroponic greenhouse operation covers 32 aces and at least 139 of the 300 workers have tested positive. The employees live in Madison and Oneida counties. Cuomo compared the situation with the mass infections at meat packing plants in the Midwest.
“It’s not really about meat or vegetables. We have a vegetable processing plant. It is about worker densities and large gatherings,” Cuomo said. “It’s when you run a facility with a large number of workers in a dense environment. We learned that already in New York when we had the New Rochelle hotspot.”
Cuomo said that the lesson from New Rochelle was that when one or two people who are infected go to a large gathering the virus takes off.
Cuomo presented new data that were collected from hospitals in an effort to understand where new cases originated. The state received 1,269 survey responses from 113 hospitals over three days and found that the majority of individuals newly admitted were: not working or traveling; predominately located downstate; predominately minorities and older individuals; predominately non-essential employees; and predominately had been sick at home.
Statewide there have been a total of 20,597 COVID-19 deaths according to statistics obtained Wednesday afternoon from the state Department of Health, with 232 new fatalities yesterday. There have been a total of 1,285 deaths in Westchester. Rockland saw 433 of its residents fall victim to the virus. There have been 56 deaths in Putnam. There were 299 Orange County residents lost to the virus and 96 deaths in Dutchess.
New York has had 323,978 people test positive for the virus. There were 30,426 cases identified in Westchester, 12,204 in Rockland, 1,040 in Putnam, 9,215 in Orange and 3,192 in Duchess.
Sure with a well over $10 Billion budget deficit we can afford to pay this guy.
But seriously what’s Cuomo cutting from the budget? To continue on as if nothing’s changed shows how inept Cuomo and the Democrats running NYS really are.