Cuomo unveils a giant foam mountain depicting COVID-19 climb in NY. Social media took over.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly likened his state's battle with COVID-19 to climbing a mountain.
On Monday, he brought the mountain to life.
Cuomo displayed a large plastic foam mountain at his coronavirus briefing in Manhattan, calling it a visualization of the state's efforts to flatten and bend the COVID-19 curve after getting hit harder by the virus than any other state.
It was a dramatic unveiling.
The foam sculpture was hidden at the start of Cuomo's briefing.
At the end of his presentation, the governor and his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, stood and pulled away a blue curtain to reveal the mountain, which Cuomo said is proportionate to the state's actual COVID-19 curve.
The top of the mountain had a sign marked "42," representing the 42 days it took for cases to peak after the first COVID-19 case was discovered in New York on March 1.
New York went from as many as 800 coronavirus deaths a day to just five on Saturday.
"We paid the price and we dealt with that spike and we climbed right up the mountain," Cuomo said.
"We got smart. New Yorkers stepped up. We wore masks. We socially distanced. We closed down. And we stopped the curve. We plateaued."
The sculpture quickly became a joke on social media. Some said it looked like something a elementary school class would make.
Others liked it to a scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind or to Jabba the Hutt
"Your jedi mind tricks do not work on me governor," the Twitter account @darth posted with the mountain Photoshopped in the Star Wars menace.
The mountain was made in house by Cuomo's staff, according to Dani Lever, the governor's communications director. The paint and materials cost $185; Cuomo's political campaign reimbursed the state for the costs, according to Lever.
"We are happy to support businesses in New York," she said.
Asked about the sculpture, Cuomo first deadpanned that he made it in his garage. Then he smiled and admitted it wasn't his handiwork.
"Before I would just do drawings and some light paintings," he laughed. "Now I’ve added sculpting."
Cuomo has long been fond of visual metaphors.
His political campaign has previously commissioned an artist to create three posters depicting the governor's agenda.
The most recent poster, which Cuomo unveiled in January before the COVID-19 crisis, showed a sailboat navigating treacherous waters and avoiding various cartoonish sea monsters strewn throughout.
Cuomo has orchestrated at least three "unveilings" during his more than 100 COVID-19 briefings, which he held on a daily basis until earlier this month.
In March, his staff pulled the curtain to unveil New York's own brand of hand sanitizer, which prison laborers have been bottling throughout the coronavirus crisis.
Cuomo followed that up in April, when he unveiled a mural of masks sent to his office from people around the country.
Like the other unveilings, the mask mural was obscured by a curtain prior to the big reveal.
More:Andrew Cuomo commissioned this poster to depict New York in 2020
More:8 more states, including California, could be added to New York quarantine order
Jon Campbell is a New York state government reporter for the USA TODAY Network. He can be reached at JCAMPBELL1@Gannett.com or on Twitter at @JonCampbellGAN.
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