Their right but lol. Less than 15 deaths a day for a month on a 20M population...
Arguably, planning for this means that the state can ensure voting regardless of a new outbreak or not, and it means that people considered especially vulnerable to the disease can still vote. And, it's a good way to mitigate a potential outbreak by not having thousands of people spend several minutes at a single location, creating a new outbreak weeks after election day.
I think we can minimize the risks for voting with masks, cleaning surfaces, and having polling locations in outdoor spaces, or in enclosed spaces like stadiums, etc.
But, the downsides for allowing absentee ballots seem minimal, while the upside is significant.
If people really want this country to "open up," they need to wear masks now, minimize exposures, and help tamp down this disease. And for every day people refuse to do what's necessary, the longer this thing goes on, and the worse the economic damage and personal loss.
And, current New York has a rate of death to known cases of about 6 percent, with about 430,000 known cases. Extrapolate to the total population, and you get a huge casualty number. We just don't know what the total infection rate for N.Y. is, and arguably, since the state has been on a kind of rolling lockdown, we can assume that this is holding numbers down.
Just opening up the economy in full, or insisting on large-scale in-person voting could push the casualties above 1 million easily, if the trends stay the same.