This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Solvable.

I'm Ronald Young, Jr.

Friday the 13th, which is, you know, ominous of itself.

That was the last normal day in the office.

As Americans, as we begin the process of safely sinking back into our regular lives,

there are a ton of things to consider about our social interactions.

Should I wear my mask into this grocery store?

Can I grab a coffee with my

friend? Is this restaurant too crowded for me to sit inside? And in a massively crowded city,

inside of a large state, there are countless details like these to consider when it comes to

keeping entire populations safe. Jason DGiotti works for the state of New York and has been

mulling over those details since

day one of the pandemic.

As we were dealing with these emergencies and even closing down the economy, putting

these restrictions in place, the immediate thought was we're going to have to reopen.

We're going to have to turn this whole thing back on.

New Yorkers are no strangers

to catastrophic challenges. They emerged from 9-11, from the blackouts in 2003, and made impressive

recoveries after both hurricanes, Irene and Sandy. Those were events. Those are things that

happened, and then they stopped, and we looked around and said, what do we need to do to fix? How are we going to clean this up?

COVID started and just kept going. And we're still going. Even as COVID continues, Jason DeGiani's team is actively trying out ideas to encourage New York residents to re-engage with social activities safely.

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