National Review Online
Friday, January 29, 2021
‘We were ambushed like no other state,” New York governor
Andrew Cuomo contended to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on January 26. “Again, it was
from federal incompetence. They thought the virus was in China, it left China,
it had left China, it had gone to Europe and it came here for three months
before they ever knew. Incompetent government kills people.”
Two days later Letitia James, the state’s attorney general,
who is a liberal Democrat like Cuomo and who enjoyed Cuomo’s backing when she
sought her current office, released a cautiously worded yet infuriating 76-page
report suggesting that Cuomo’s incompetence cost lives.
Extrapolating from a survey of about 10 percent of state
nursing homes, James estimated that the actual number of COVID deaths related
to such facilities was about 50 percent higher than the official figure, which
was about 8,700. Within hours, the state Department of Health scrambled to add
to its nursing-home total 3,800 souls who had died in hospitals after becoming
infected in nursing homes, bringing the official number up to 12,473.
As New York City mayor Bill de Blasio put it with
uncharacteristic eloquence, “These are our loved ones we lost, you know, it’s
someone’s grandma, someone’s mother or father, aunts or uncles, this is
families missing someone dear to them.”
The coronavirus has represented a once-in-a-hundred-years
public-health crisis that has not discriminated between red and blue states.
Everyone should have some humility about criticizing anyone in authority during
the pandemic, when many decisions were made with imperfect information and when
most choices had agonizing trade-offs. Yet Cuomo’s Department of Health’s March
25 order directing nursing homes to accept incoming residents known to have the
coronavirus, an order he did not rescind until May 10, stands out as foolish
and disastrous — especially because New
York was warned of the danger. Cuomo still refuses to say whose idea the
order was.
So more than 12 percent of New York nursing-home
residents have succumbed to the virus. In New Jersey, where a policy similar to
Cuomo’s was enacted, the death toll was similar: 12 percent of nursing-home
residents felled by the virus. In Florida, where nursing homes were forbidden
to accept people with coronavirus, that figure
is 1.6 percent.
Neutral observers, as opposed to Cuomo’s many unpaid
publicists in the news media, were unsurprised by the new development, widely
if mistakenly labeled “shocking” in the press. New York, which has suffered by
far the worst COVID death toll of any state and is among the hardest-hit
regions on the planet, has lost
34,742 to the disease, or 43,093 if you include suspected as well as
confirmed cases, as does the Johns Hopkins University
tracker.
Throughout this crisis the media have praised Cuomo’s
supposed forthrightness and respect for facts. Last summer the New York Post, one of the few media
outlets to show any interest in finding the true nursing-home figures, began
calling for an independent investigation. Cuomo called that paper’s questions
partisan attacks and invited New Yorkers to direct their anger toward President
Trump; the rest of the media largely shrugged. Cuomo also resisted inquiries
from fellow Democratic members of the state legislature and the U.S. Congress,
insisting there was no need for anyone to check his numbers.
On March 2, the day after the first New Yorker tested positive for the novel coronavirus, when, as we now know, the virus was tearing through the Empire State, Cuomo explained at length why New Yorkers need not be worried, via empty slogans and macho posturing: “The facts defeat fear.” “The reality is reassuring.” “It is deep breath time.” “This is not our first rodeo.” He averred, “We should relax because that’s what’s dictated by the reality of the situation.” Incompetent government kills people indeed. More to the point, Cuomo said correctly on March 29, “Coronavirus in a nursing home is like fire in dry grass.” His mistakes played a role in fanning the flames.
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