The good news: “The cavalry is coming,” Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday, as he announced New York City will receive nearly half a million doses of Covid-19 vaccine from Pfizer and Moderna this month.

The complication: It may not be as simple as making the vaccine available and waiting for New Yorkers to snap it up. While many are clamoring to be at the front of the line, plenty are reluctant, even among health care workers, who are supposed to be some of the first to be vaccinated. “Thus far it’s been a unanimous 'hell no,'” said Peggy Desiderio, an emergency room nurse at Mount Sinai Morningside, of the conversations she’s had with other nurses. “Why are we going to be guinea pigs? We’re the suicide squad. Isn't it enough we were stuck on the front-lines?” And about 20 percent of the 920 physicians polled by the Medical Society of the State of New York said they had reservations about getting the vaccine once it becomes widely available.

There are also worries about distributing the vaccine in Black and Latino neighborhoods hardest hit by the pandemic, where the city plans to prioritize its efforts. “There is tremendous distrust,” de Blasio acknowledged. “This is a very real issue, and I’m not going to be surprised at all [if] anyone is hesitant at first, but we have to prove by our actions that this is an equitable distribution of the vaccine.”

Emmy award-winning Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, for his part, is attempting to demystify the process with a little unboxing theater. On Thursday, he unpacked a mock-up of a vaccine shipment for Albany reporters — fake vial, GPS tracking, dry ice, thermal monitor and all. Cuomo also says he’ll be first in line to take the vaccine. But even as an essential worker, this interactive from the New York Times suggests there could be about 7.6 million New York residents in line before him.

IT’S FRIDAY. Got tips, suggestions or thoughts? Let us know ... By email: [email protected] and [email protected], or on Twitter: @erinmdurkin and @annagronewold

WHERE’S ANDREW? In Albany with no public events scheduled.

WHERE’S BILL? No public schedule available by press time.

“SHE WEARS A RED WIG and a black dress she sewed herself. It hugs her body as she moves about the stage, lip-syncing love songs in Spanish to a room filled mostly with absence. It is late on March 9, and Yimel Alvarado is at her regular Monday gig, a nightclub above a Mexican restaurant in the Corona section of Queens. This is where she feels at home, where the usually robust crowds of gay and transgender patrons applaud her teasing banter. Drink up, she often says, as fans toss money at her feet. The night is getting away. But Yimel is not herself tonight; hasn’t been for days. Her Cleopatra-like eyeliner only accentuates the exhaustion in her gaze. Just a cold, she says... The same denial and dread hover over the densely populated neighborhoods beyond the restaurant’s door, inside apartments subdivided by drywall and need, up and down the bustle of Roosevelt Avenue...At Elmhurst Hospital a short walk away, an emergency-room doctor has noticed a surge of patients with flulike symptoms. Now there is confirmation of what she and her colleagues knew was inevitable: the hospital’s first case of Covid-19, the life-threatening illness caused by the coronavirus.” New York Times’ Dan Barry and Annie Correal

“NEW YORK CITY is nearing a second wave of coronavirus infections, Mayor Bill de Blasio warned Thursday, as new Health Department data showed Gotham’s infection rate and caseload are surging. The city’s rolling average for new daily cases soared to 1,962 and hospitals saw another 174 admissions, nearly half of whom tested positive for the virus. Meanwhile, the percentage of all tests that came back positive over the last seven days leaped to 5.19 percent, up from 4.8 percent reported Wednesday. That’s the highest reading for the metric since May 27, when the pandemic initially began to recede after officials imposed a series of stringent shutdown measures to contain its spread. ‘It’s quite clear at this point that this second wave, unfortunately, is right upon us,’ Hizzoner told reporters during his daily press briefing Thursday.” New York Post’s Nolan Hicks

— “A Queens hospital that was overwhelmed with coronavirus patients in the spring has put out an urgent plea to recruit more nurses to handle an anticipated second wave of the illness this winter. The 402-bed Jamaica Hospital Medical Center issued a job posting saying that ‘once again’ it will need staff reinforcements to avoid getting caught short-handed with a surge of sick patients.” New York Post’s Carl Campanile

— The city plans to launch a new pandemic research institute.

— Confirmed Covid-19 cases have skyrocketed at Brooklyn’s federal jail, with 55 new cases confirmed between Tuesday and Thursday, making a total of 80.

— The NYPD will begin allowing civilian members to work from home due to the virus surge.

— The New York Young Republican Club appears to have held their semi-secret, in-person, maskless gala in Jersey City.

“AFTER DOROTHY Widman died alone in her apartment in a Bronx public housing development in May as the pandemic’s first wave ebbed, her family wanted to know whether COVID-19 was to blame. They never got an answer. City medical examiner officials rejected their request to perform a post-mortem test on the 84-year-old Bronx River Houses resident, saying they didn’t do that for people who died alone at home. The family now believes Widman may be one of the uncounted victims of the pandemic — particularly after THE CITY reported that the public housing development where their matriarch lived and died had a COVID infection rate higher than the then-citywide average. Widman’s case raises new questions about whether more New York City residents may have succumbed to the coronavirus — and been left out of the city’s official tally, which stood at 24,305 as of Thursday afternoon.” The City’s Greg B. Smith

“AS THE COVID-19 positivity rate rises across the five boroughs, city scientists are working to get the lowdown on the virus, straight from New Yorkers’ poop. Unlike many municipalities, New York is testing wastewater for the coronavirus in an effort to trace — and stop — the spread. But experts on sewage monitoring say the city could be using the technology to do more to contain the virus. Microbiologists working for the city’s Department of Environmental Protection test samples taken twice a week by DEP staff at 14 wastewater treatment plants. At the plant at Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, the largest facility by volume in the city, sampling means walking down four stories to large concrete basins that open to a river of raw sewage. From there, a worker lowers two empty bottles — held securely inside a contraption made of cut PVC pipe, heavy bolts and a long rope — into the smelly stream, waits for them to fill and hoists them back out to deliver to the DEP’s on-site laboratory.” The City’s Rachel Holliday Smith

“ONE NIGHT two years ago, Thomas Caputo, a senior track worker for the Long Island Rail Road, put in for 15 hours of overtime for work he said he had done at the West Side Yard in Manhattan. His shift began at 4 p.m. and ended at 7 o’clock the next morning. But, the authorities say, Mr. Caputo was somewhere else that evening: at a bowling alley in Patchogue, N.Y., more than 55 miles away, where he bowled three games, averaging a score of 196. He took home an overtime payment of $1,217, the government said. Mr. Caputo was one of five current and former employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority charged on Thursday with participating in an overtime fraud scheme that allowed them to become among the highest-paid employees at the agency, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said.” New York Times’ Benjamin Weiser

“LISA MISTRETTA hadn’t missed a rent payment in 32 years before the coronavirus pandemic left her unemployed. When COVID-19 spread across the state, Mistretta, a hospice nurse who has emphysema and an inflammatory lung disease, stopped working. The Hudson Valley resident now receives $276 each week from the New York Department of Labor and said she is struggling to keep up with bills while taking care of her two teenage daughters. At the end of this month, her Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) is slated to stop. Mistretta is one of an estimated 1.1 million New Yorkers whose unemployment benefits will expire at the end of December, when one of the enhanced aid programs authorized by the CARES Act is cut off, according to a report from The Century Foundation...‘People right now are in a mode of panic,’ said Thahitun Mariam, who founded the Bronx Mutual Aid Network in early April. The community organization has provided food deliveries for up to 300 families each week in recent months. Demand for assistance had diminished in August, but surged again in the past two weeks. ‘It’s a disaster, what we’re about to experience,’ Mariam said.” New York Focus’s Daniel Moritz-Rabson

WITH NEW YORKERS shutting in for a long, bleak winter, building experts are increasingly sounding the alarm about the challenges of improving ventilation indoors to reduce the risks of coronavirus spread while maintaining energy efficiency. Schools across the state cracked windows to improve air flow, New York City building owners boosted outside air coming in or installed better filters and public housing stock has long had issues with proper ventilation. The coronavirus pandemic adds a new dimension to planning for building owners, developers, remodelers and contractors — and with a near-term focus on winter ventilation, the long term focus on energy efficiency is taking a back seat. POLITICO’s Marie J. French

CALL BACK: “Two months ago, the state launched the NY COVID Alert app, which Governor Andrew Cuomo told New Yorkers could have a big impact in slowing the spread of the virus. 'It’s taken a lot, and it’s really creative and smart, and I think it can make a big difference,' Cuomo said at his October 1st press briefing. But since then, Cuomo hasn’t mentioned the app in more than a dozen briefings, and in the last two months just 800 people have been notified of a potential COVID-19 exposure through the app. There have been more than 180,000 new COVID infections in that time, according to the state. Around 1.1 million New Yorkers have downloaded the app, about 5% of the state’s population, a far cry from the 60% adoption rate researchers say is preferable, though subsequent research has suggested any level of adoption can curb COVID cases. 2,700 New Yorkers diagnosed with COVID-19 had the app on their phones at the time, according to state officials.” WNYC’s Gwynne Hogan

LOCAL BUDGETS SHOWING ECONOMIC HITS:

— “The Erie County Legislature approved a $1.7 billion 2021 budget Thursday that would lay off about 19 employees, abolish more than 200 vacant positions, limit property tax growth and allocate $20 million for Covid-related efforts.” Buffalo News’ Sandra Tan

— "On the heels of a grueling but successful election season marked by seven-day work weeks amid a pandemic, Onondaga County’s two elections commissioners today were rewarded with a … pay cut. In a last-minute amendment to the 2021 county budget approved today [Thursday], Republican legislators voted in a bloc to cut the pay of the two commissioners, a Republican and a Democrat, by $7,000 each.” Syracuse.com’s Tim Knauss

“AT A MEETING on Thursday, members of the bipartisan commission charged with redrawing state legislative and congressional district lines complained — again — that they still haven’t received funding from the Cuomo administration. The reasons for the months-long holdup of $1 million appropriated for the commission’s work were not entirely clear to the commissioners. At the end of September, a Division of Budget spokesman told the Times Union that the agency intended to 'release them as soon as possible in consultation with the Department of State.' More than two months later, that apparently has still not occurred. Commissioner Elaine Frazier, an appointee of Democratic Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, suggested the commissioners engage in a 'blitz of phone calls' to the Division of Budget and Department of State over the lack of funding. ‘I think it’s more than reasonable to say, “This is unacceptable people,”’ Frazier said.” Times Union’s Chris Bragg

#UpstateAmerica: Looking to spice up your next Adirondack trek? Nigerian Dwarf goats apparently do pretty well in the peaks.

“ATTORNEYS for the two candidates in a still-unresolved House race in upstate New York recently found themselves battling over what appeared to be an extra mark on a challenged paper ballot. At issue was whether the marking was a bloodstain or a bit of chocolate, a crucial distinction. With roughly a dozen votes separating winner from loser, blood — an identifying marker — could mean tossing out the ballot because it is supposed to be secret. And with roughly a dozen votes separating incumbent Democrat Anthony Brindisi and Republican challenger Claudia Tenney, literally every vote was crucial.“Your Honor, I respectfully suggest that blood itself is not identifying without a DNA test,” Brindisi's attorney told the judge last week, arguing in favor of counting the ballot. The blood-chocolate imbroglio is hardly the only odd take in the rematch between Brindisi and Tenney, and observers are likely to be biting their nails for the foreseeable future as the saga — facilitated by a chimera of 2020-specific circumstances — plays out.” POLITICO’s Anna Gronewold

“POLICIES favoring secrecy over transparency have meant that New Yorkers will be among the last Americans to learn the final vote tallies in the 2020 election, with results in a few races still unknown one month after Election Day. Several of the locally run elections boards responsible for processing a record 2 million absentee ballots cast in the state decided not to release any rolling updates on how their count of those mail-in votes was progressing until the very last vote was tallied. While elections officials in battleground states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada updated the public daily on how their count of the mail-in vote was going, their counterparts in some parts of New York maintained radio silence, and refused all media requests for information as to how the vote was unfolding.” Associated Press’ Marina Villeneuve

“PRESIDENT TRUMP will face a raft of potential legal challenges when he leaves office — from, among others, the Manhattan district attorney, the New York attorney general and perhaps the United States Justice Department. Now add to that Leonie Green of the Westminster Apartments in Brooklyn. Ms. Green is among a group of tenants in rent-regulated apartments once owned by Mr. Trump’s father who have filed a lawsuit against the president and his siblings, accusing the Trumps of a decade-long fraud to win artificially high rent increases through an invoice-padding scheme. The scheme, first revealed in a 2018 investigation by The New York Times, involved tacking at least 20 percent onto the cost of materials purchased for the apartments, with Mr. Trump, his siblings and a cousin splitting the extra proceeds.” New York Times’ Russ Buettner

“REP. MAX ROSE (D-N.Y.) may have gotten hammered in his losing re-election bid for marching in a Black Lives Matter protest, but his farewell message to his soon-to-be former Democratic colleagues in Congress remained: Don’t back down. Rose lost to Republican N.Y. Assemb. Nicole Malliotakis by more than 6 percentage points, according to results certified Monday, swept away by voters in Staten Island and southwestern Brooklyn who favored President Trump. Malliotakis and other Republicans pummeled Rose for attending a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and falsely accused him of wanting to defund the police.” New York Daily News’ Michael McAuliff

“REP. SEAN PATRICK MALONEY was elected Thursday to lead the House Democrats’ campaign arm, charged with steering the caucus through an exceedingly perilous midterm with their control of the chamber on the line. Maloney, who represents a New York battleground district, defeated Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) in a hard-fought — and closely watched — contest to lead the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. He will take on the task of shielding a slim majority in the first two years of a new Democratic president and under a new set of district lines drawn in large part by Republicans.” POLITICO's Sarah Ferris and Ally Mutnick

“REP. GREGORY MEEKS (D-N.Y.) Thursday won the chairmanship of the powerful House Foreign Relations Committee. The Queens lawmaker beat Rep. Joaquim Castro (D-Texas) by about a 2-1 vote of fellow Democrats to become the first African-American lawmaker to wield the Foreign Relations gavel. Meeks is a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus and is considered an establishment figure who boasts strong ties with members of President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming administration.” New York Daily News’ Dave Goldiner

— State police wrote 1,779 tickets between July and November under the state’s “Operation Hard Hat,” — nearly a 70-percent increase compared to 2019.

— Federal prosecutors charged six people with running a “birth tourism” ring on Long Island.

— De Blasio came out against a controversial project to build a natural gas pipeline in northern Brooklyn.

— A report found that 111,000 city public school students were homeless or in doubled-up housing during last academic year, but the number could surge because of the pandemic.

— “The facial recognition security system used in Lockport public schools is accurate more than 99 percent of the time, but when it makes a mistake, it's most likely to do so when scanning the face of a Black person."

— Museums are using their facades for outdoor exhibits during the pandemic.

— Jazz Standard closes — the first major jazz club to shut down due to the pandemic, as music venues throughout the city say they are hanging by a thread.

— Cuomo signed a measure banning food packaging containing toxic chemicals that have been linked to health problems and found in water supplies in New York.

— The governor also authorized a study to examine alternatives to the 300 million pounds of road salt dumped in the Adirondacks each year.

— Randy Levine, president of the Yankees, has "pragmatic ideas" for New York City’s fiscal crisis.

— Why the city has so few public bathrooms.

— Four appellate judges are suing the state for age discrimination.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY: Jackie Kucinich, Washington bureau chief of The Daily Beast and a CNN political analyst … Al Hunt, columnist and co-host of the “2020 Politics War Room” podcast, is 78 … CNN’s Suzanne Malveaux … CNBC’s Whitney Ksiazek … Andrew Shult, digital director at the American Investment Council, is 33 … Ashley (Nerz) Levey of LinkedIn comms … McDermott Will & Emery’s Sarah Schanz (h/t husband Jeremy Iloulian) … Jennifer Taub … Bain’s Matthew Bevens ... Josh Brooks ... Austin M. Stonebraker

IN MEMORIAM — “Betsy Wade, First Woman to Edit News at The Times, Dies at 91,” by NYT’s Robert McFadden: “In a 45-year Times career, Ms. Wade also became the first woman to lead the Newspaper Guild of New York, the largest local in the national journalism union … She was revered among peers for her role in the 1974 class-action suit against The Times, one of the industry’s earliest fights over women’s rights to equal treatment in hiring, promotion, pay and workplace protections under federal antidiscrimination laws.”

MAKING MOVES — Alex Bolton will be CoS for Rep.-elect Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.). He previously was field finance director at the NRCC.

“A NEW YORK State Appellate Court has issued a temporary stay that allows around 200 homeless men to remain in a hotel on the Upper West Side for another two weeks. The decision reverses a lower court decision from last week that permitted the city to move the men to another hotel in downtown Manhattan. The men will be able to stay at the Lucerne Hotel on Amsterdam and West 79th Street at least until mid-December, when a five-judge panel will take up the case.” Gothamist’s Mirela Iverac

“CITY PLANNERS have heard it all before — how new housing would overwhelm local schools, sewer pipes and subways. Now they are trying to remove that arrow from Gowanus rezoning opponents’ quiver. The de Blasio administration on Wednesday released a plan that aims to accommodate the population growth triggered by the new apartment buildings it wants to allow in the transitioning Brooklyn community surrounding the Gowanus Canal.” Real Deal’s Erik Engquist