It’s a state with a gigantic government and a $175 billion budget. The state health department is robust, they have a lot of people on staff and they are able to react forcefully, whereas other states might not have the resources.

Also, keep in mind, New York is home to the nation’s largest city, with some of the best universities, scientists and hospitals in the world. It’s also a global travel hub that tends to be on the front lines of things like Ebola and SARS coming from overseas, so you need to have a robust medical infrastructure to handle these things.

Governor Cuomo is getting out ahead of the federal government’s response. Why is that?

Well, there’s an old nickname for Cuomo around Albany: Governor Windbreaker. He loves jumping into a helicopter and flying to a hurricane disaster site, or stopping on the side of the road to pull someone out of a car that had flipped on an icy stretch of highway. He portrays himself as a very proactive dude, and that’s not without justification.

Economic harm is spreading with the virus

No doubt about it now: The coronavirus outbreak, and the escalating efforts to fight it, are badly undercutting economies around the world.

The latest and strongest trouble sign: the oil price war that broke out over the weekend. Russia had refused to join Saudi Arabia in cutting production of oil as the virus slowed demand around the globe; in retaliation, Saudi Arabia slashed its export oil prices.

That sent the already jittery financial markets stampeding downward. It got so bad at one point that a rarely used “circuit breaker” in the U.S. markets was tripped, halting trading for 15 minutes. By the end of the day, the S&P 500 had fallen 7 percent, its worst day in more than a decade.