ANDREW CUOMO’S MORALLY GROTESQUE. Andrew Cuomo’s Morally Grotesque Rationale for Maintaining COVID-19 Lockdowns.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo continues to show that he cannot be trusted to properly weigh the costs and benefits of COVID-19 lockdowns. While conceding the unavoidable tradeoff between lives and livelihoods, he insists that preventing even one death is worth any amount of economic pain.

“The faster we reopen,” Cuomo told reporters this week, “the lower the economic cost, but the higher the human cost, because the more lives lost. That, my friends, is the decision we are really making.”

Cuomo misleadingly implies that the economic burden of lockdowns—lost jobs, shuttered businesses, a precipitous drop in spending and output, unemployment at a level not seen since the Great Depression, tens of millions of Americans struggling to pay their bills and feed their children—is not a “human cost.” Who is hurt by this suppression of economic activity? Robots?

Given Cuomo’s cavalier treatment of nursing home patients, it’s not clear that he’s really that interested in preventing deaths.