It’s personal between Andrew Cuomo and myself. His decision to send COVID patients into nursing homes probably cost my aunt her life and caused untold heartbreak and grief for many others, including a college friend who lost his mother, father, and brother all in the same week when Cuomo brought the virus to their facility.
I covered the pandemic extensively for the South Shore Press and followed this blowhard politician’s every move after the Coronavirus hit our shores. Like everyone else in his party, he refused to even consider that the virus came from the Wuhan lab in China, where they did research on this very pathogen. He subscribed to the debunked theory that COVID passed from an animal to a human, probably from a pangolin at the wet market right next to the lab. Anyone who didn’t believe this and the many other pandemic myths were called conspiracy theorists by Cuomo and attacked by his supporters.
At first, Cuomo said he thought President Trump was doing a good job with the pandemic, but soon realized he could put himself in the spotlight instead. He went before the news cameras daily to show the world how great of a job he was doing. In fact, his COVID leadership saga was supposedly so compelling that he was given a $5.1 million book deal to tell the world about it. That got him into hot water with the New York State Joint Commission on Public Ethics, which fined him for using state personnel to write the book for him when they should have been working for the people.
Trump sent the Navy ship Comfort to New York to isolate the COVID patients from the general public and give them the care they needed. Huge treatment facilities were set up at the Javits Convention Center and other locations, but Cuomo didn’t use them. Instead, he listened to his donors from the hospital industry, who didn’t make as much on COVID patients and wanted to move them out.
I’ve had the opportunity to discuss the Cuomo catastrophe with Betsy McCaughey, the former lieutenant governor who devoted her life outside of public office to stopping the spread of infectious disease and protecting people in hospitals and care facilities. When COVID hit, McCaughey said she and many experts pleaded with Cuomo not to send infected patients to nursing homes. He ignored them. One reason, she argues, is that the hospital industry was his biggest political donor, and he had a close relationship with the lobbyists who represented them.
While other elected officials and activists across the state demanded answers, Cuomo fudged the numbers concerning nursing home deaths, which we now know were about 15,000. His reputation as a COVID crusader started to crumble. If he weren’t driven from office by a landslide of sexual misconduct allegations, he probably would still be muddying the extent of his malfeasance.
Finally, the whole truth came out after the disgraced politician was hauled before Congress and grilled about his deadly performance. “Mr. Cuomo and his team were involved in the decision to issue New York’s disastrous March 25 Directive and then acted repeatedly to downplay the tragic aftermath of their decision,” the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic concluded. He was criticized for his “lack of empathy and callous remarks related to undercounted mortality rates in nursing homes.”
My suspicion is that Andrew Cuomo is circling the embattled carcass of New York Mayor Eric Adams like a vulture, scheming to replace him. I hope the primary voters have had enough of this political lifer and keep him out of public office where he can wreak more misery on the populace.