YOU’RE GONNA NEED A BIGGER BLOG: Andrew Cuomo’s deadly failures.

The major story of the coronavirus epidemic in New York is how the governor’s policies toward long-term care facilities enabled the virus to run rampant among our most vulnerable population. In late April, it came to light that the previous month, the state ordered long-term care facilities to readmit residents who had been treated for the coronavirus. New residents who were “medically stable” were to be admitted as well. Thus did Cuomo’s New York guarantee that the most vulnerable population would be widely exposed to COVID-19 in environments that enabled its quick and deadly spread.

The official tally has about 20% of New York coronavirus deaths attributed to nursing homes, but we actually can’t be certain of how many people died because of this negligence. If someone from one of these mass-infected nursing homes died in a hospital, it’s not counted as a nursing home death. There’s also evidence that many of those who died at nursing homes weren’t tested for COVID-19, so the official statistic remains a question mark, but it’s almost certainly higher, perhaps much higher, than the state admits.

The count matters because it otherwise obscures the real picture. On May 9, the New York Times reported that nursing home residents and workers accounted for one-third of the nation’s COVID-19 deaths but that only 11% of cases actually occurred inside those facilities. According to a new Associated Press count, at least 4,500 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York nursing homes.

Cuomo, for his part, is mostly satisfied with how his government handled events.

Earlier: Where Does Ron Desantis Go To Get His Apology? “As the health officials put it, succinctly, ‘We wanted people out [of the nursing homes], not in.’”