On March 24 Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo appeared at the Jacob K. Javits Center in Manhattan and, as soldiers scrambled to transform it into a hospital, he offered the public a dire assessment.
Sophisticated scientists, Mr. Cuomo said, had studied the coming coronavirus outbreak and their projections were alarming. Infections were doubling nearly every three days and the state would soon require an unthinkable expansion of its health care system. To stave off a catastrophe, New York might need up to 140,000 hospital beds and as many as 40,000 intensive care units with ventilators.
“One of the forecasters said to me we were looking at a freight train coming across the country,” Mr. Cuomo said.
Two weeks later, however, with an unprecedented shutdown of public schools, countless businesses and most of outdoor life, New York has managed to avoid the apocalyptic vision that some of the forecasters predicted.
The daily death toll has still been staggering, approaching 800 for a third straight day on Friday, and some hospitals continue to teeter on the brink of chaos.
But the number of intensive care beds being used declined for the first time in the crisis, to 4,908, according to daily figures released on Friday. And the total number hospitalized with the virus, 18,569, was far lower than the darkest expectations.
In yet another sign that the worst of the predictions had not yet come to pass, the Javits Center, the convention center where Mr. Cuomo offered his worrisome assessment, was treating only 300 patients. The rest of its roughly 2,500 beds were empty.