Governor Andrew Cuomo has a very faulty memory. Perhaps it’s age. We old folks can be quite forgetful at times.
But this is recent history. Cuomo’s order to place coronavirus patients in nursing homes cost the lives of at least 6,500 people. But for the life of him, he doesn’t remember it that way.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo denied this week that his state Health Department’s controversial March 25 order saying nursing homes could not bar admission or readmission to a resident based on a positive COVID-19 test had anything to do with the over 6,500 deaths in those facilities related to the virus.
“That’s not why they lost a loved one in a nursing home. Your question — the premise of your question is just actually wrong. People were lost in nursing homes, were lost because that’s where the virus preys.”
Here’s a question for you, Andy. How did the virus get in nursing homes in the first place? Is the virus a thinking predator that knows vulnerable seniors live in nursing homes and “preys” on them there?
Blame it on staffers whose infections magically transported from nursing home to nursing home.
“The virus preys on senior citizens,” insisted Cuomo, reprimanding a Finger Lakes News Radio reporter during a phone conference call with other members of the media on Wednesday.
“There’s a whole report done with data. The way the virus got into nursing homes was from two possible carriers — before we even knew about it,” continued the governor, ignoring the seeming impossibility of infected staffers at one nursing home having any impact on all the others.
You’d think at this point Cuomo would stop digging and fess up. Instead, the hole he started got considerably deeper.
“The staff, working staff, at the nursing home brought in the virus, or potentially family members before we stopped family visits brought in the virus and this happened at a time back in February when we didn’t even know the virus was circulating in New York State, that’s how the virus got into the nursing home,” he added.
Oh, really? The COVID-19 virus has an incubation period of about two weeks. Were thousands of old folks showing symptoms in February? No, they weren’t.
And recall that Cuomo gave as his reason for admitting positive patients was he didn’t want them to feel “discriminated against.” Yikes!
Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) wasn’t buying the governor’s malarkey.
“The governor and his administration are stuck trying to figure out which lies they need to defend and how best to gaslight the public to believe that they did everything to save nursing home lives,” he said.
“We need the governor to tell the truth and own up to his mistakes.”
Cuomo was endlessly praised for his “realistic” response to the pandemic and was compared unfavorably with Donald Trump. Some were even recommending that Cuomo replace Biden as the Democrats’ presidential candidate.
We haven’t heard too much of that lately.
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