Jim has already hit on this, but the New York Times has a good piece on how New York fumbled its coronavirus response.

In the response to the virus around the Western world, I’ve been reminded of wars of insurgency. A near-universal feature of these wars is that the governments fighting them initially deny that there is an insurgency, and then underestimate how serious it is. Governments always want to appear in control and don’t want to admit they are involved in a costly, grinding conflict. With the virus, most governments didn’t want to contemplate extremely costly measures — the various lockdowns — until it seemed absolutely necessary, and often that was too late.

Anyway, the Times sets out the basic issue of timing:

. . . New York mandated those measures after localities in states including California and Washington had done so.
San Francisco, for example, closed schools on March 12 when that city had 18 confirmed cases; Ohio also closed its schools the same day, with five confirmed cases. Mr. de Blasio ordered schools in New York to close three days later when the city had 329 cases.
Then seven Bay Area counties imposed stay-at-home rules on March 17. Two days later, the entire state of California ordered the same. New York State’s stay-at-home order came on the 20th, and went into effect on March 22.
“New York City as a whole was late in social measures,” said Isaac B. Weisfuse, a former New York City deputy health commissioner. “Any after-action review of the pandemic in New York City will focus on that issue. It has become the major issue in the transmission of the virus.”

Then, there’s this vignette:

. . . Dr. Barbot — who at the start of the outbreak had insisted that “New Yorkers remain at low risk” — gave a far scarier assessment to a closed-door meeting of business executives in City Hall on March 12: Up to 70 percent of city residents could become infected.
The time for containment was over, she added. Mr. de Blasio, seated beside her at the meeting, stared daggers as she spoke.
“Why don’t you shut down restaurants now?” a chief executive who attended the meeting recalled someone asking the mayor.
“I’m really concerned about restaurateurs; I’m really concerned about jobs,” the mayor responded, the executive recalled. Mr. de Blasio had urged New Yorkers to start social distancing and work from home where possible.
The following weekend, even though Mr. de Blasio and Mr. Cuomo had ordered occupancy limits for restaurants and bars, much of the city’s nightlife appeared to continue apace.