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Home » NY Governor Cuomo: that’s life – and death

NY Governor Cuomo: that’s life – and death

The New Neo Posted on by

From Stephen Green at Instapundit:

See also this:

In March, as Cuomo and his braintrust were running about like beheaded chickens shouting about models and Italy, his administration issued an order that required nursing homes to accept hospital patients recovering from Wuhan virus even if those patients were still contagious. The ostensible reason was moving recovering patients to nursing homes freed up hospital beds to treat the Wuhan created carnage. The problem, of course, was that a) there was no great influx of patients, b) nursing homes, already struggling with problems related to infections, were monumentally unsuited to caring for possibly contagious patients, and c) nursing homes are packed with the most vulnerable of the vulnerable. When challenged, this is how Cuomo responded:

“They don’t have a right to object. That is the rule and that is the regulation, and they have to comply with that”…

It was not hard to have predicted the outcome. In fact, it was simplicity itself. Nursing home patients were already known to be especially vulnerable to dying from COVID.

That was then. This is Cuomo now:

…I have those conversations all day long, with people who’ve lost people, right? We lost 139 people yesterday in hospitals. Who is accountable for those 139 deaths? How do we get justice for those families who had 139 deaths? What is justice? Who can we prosecute for those deaths? Nobody. Nobody. Mother Nature? God? Where did this virus come from? People are going to die by this virus. That is the truth. Best hospital system on the globe, I believe we have. Best doctors, best nurses, who have responded like heroes. Every medication, ventilators, the health system wants for nothing. We worked it out so we always had available beds. No one was deprived of a medical bed or coverage in any way. And still people died. Still people died. Older people, vulnerable people, are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen. Despite whatever you do. Because with all of our progress as a society, we can’t keep everyone alive. Despite everything you do. And older people are more vulnerable. And that is a fact and that is not going to change…Why do people die? Who is accountable?

Party of science, folks.

Let me explain it to Governor Cuomo: Yes, some people in nursing homes would have died anyway. But your actions – yours – caused more of them to die than otherwise would have succumbed. Are you seriously saying that purposely placing COVID patients in nursing homes, forcing the nursing homes to accept them whether they felt protections were or were not adequate, did not increase the number of deaths by a significant amount? Are you stark raving mad, stupid, merely self-serving, or all of the above?

And here’s a song in honor of Cuomo, who also said: “you’re gonna lose people, that’s life…We did everything we could.” Everything you could to what? Hasten their deaths?

Comments

NY Governor Cuomo: that’s life – and death — 29 Comments

  1. Cuomo appears to be a reasonably competent politician who totally screwed up in this crisis. But because he’s a Democrat who is good at projecting the appearance of competence, he may survive this fiasco. Meanwhile, Republican governors who handled the pandemic much better will still probably be attacked over it in their next election.

    Mike

  2. MBunge (5:54 pm): “Meanwhile, Republican governors who handled the pandemic much better will still probably be attacked over it . . . .”

    “*Probably*”?? [ s m i l e ]

  3. Watching Cuomo’s performance over the past eight weeks confirms that if the media is on your team, you can be wrong and do repeated 180 degree shifts without apology. When praise is given for your every move there is never concern that you might have to admit you were wrong.

  4. My BIL, who lives on Long Island and is a Trump fan, told me a few days ago that he thought that Cuomo was doing a good job. When I brought up all the deaths at the nursing homes and Cuomo’s near criminal negligence he was shocked, he hadn’t heard about it. Yikes! Talk about the mushroom treatment. The NY media is really disgusting.

  5. Well…The governor did ask the right 4 questions.

    “Who is accountable for those 139 deaths? How do we get justice for those families who had 139 deaths? What is justice? Who can we prosecute for those deaths? “

    The answers are:
    #1. Governor Cuomo
    #2. Prosecute Governor Cuomo
    #3. Convict Governor Cuomo and send him to prison.
    #4. Start over at the top of this list.

    Sounds simple to me.

  6. New York’s, and Cuomo’s, actions in pushing COVID-19 virus patients into nursing homes without any time to prepare and without protective equipment to prevent viral spread are inexcusable.

    What I’d like to know is whether states we haven’t heard about have done similar things. Here in NC, the last I checked, about 62% of all fatalities were people living in “congregate living facilities.” In addition to nursing homes and assisted living centers, a small number of prison deaths are included. Did North Carolina fail to act to protect nursing homes, or worse? What about Minnesota, where the Power Line guys say 80% or so of deaths are from nursing homes? I read somewhere that Florida had taken active steps including providing PPE to nursing homes, and their death toll in that population is much lower than some other states. This calls for an investigative report, and it won’t come from the left.

  7. In my state, Pennsylvania, Health Secretary Levine’s mother was removed from her assisted living facility right before the Health Department required that nursing homes accept COVID-19-infected patients. Levine insists that this was the mother’s own decision. Nothing to see here. Move along.
    At least, that’s what my local newspaper and the local TV stations say.

  8. That first exec order is hard to get to. Neos link did not get it, and the ny health site pointed to a doc on vacation rules instead.
    Searching the ny health site for “admission” produced a link to apparently the right doc ( going by the url) dated 3/25 but it too does not link to the actual doc.
    Anyone have the pdf?

  9. Kate:

    It’s a good question – how many states protected nursing home residents, and what happened in those states compared to those that didn’t, and compare both to those that actively forced COVID patients to such facilities (for example, NY). And how common was that latter policy in other states?

    However, let’s not confuse three different statistics. The first is the percentage of COVID deaths in each state that are among long-term care patient or residents. The second is the death toll per capita among COVID patients in each state who live in long-term facilities. And the third is the death toll per capita in each state, period. A state can have a very small number of deaths from COVID per capita generally, but a large percentage of those can be in long-term care facilities. Each statistic means something different.

  10. Kate,

    Regardless of whether infected patients were returned to nursing homes deaths were inevitable unless staff were also quarantined. Looking back on it a smart plan would have been:

    1. Locate temporary housing (local College dormitories, recreational vehicles…)
    2. Give staff 48 hours notice to decide if they want to continue to work. If they choose to work they must return within two days with a few suitcases (books, personal items whatever), and they will not be allowed to leave or receive visitors for 1 month, possibly more.
    3. Give them hazardous duty pay.
    4. For the gaps left by staff unwilling or unable put out word in the community facilities could likely find enough good Samaritans willing to take on the challenge. Pay them well also.
    5. Lockdown the facility and the staff housing and keep it under tight control. Test staff and residents as much as possible and remove anyone testing positive.

  11. We’ve written a lot here about Sweden’s approach, but it it hard to believe no U.S. state seemed to consider a modified approach that focused a majority of resources on those already known to be vulnerable. Hopefully these lessons will not be forgotten.

  13. Paul – Obamagate is obviously not the only thing the Media is hiding.
    I remember seeing similar stories about other events where something is finally forced onto the pages of the NYT or WaPo and people are seriously confused and get all “where did this come from??” because they had no prior information.

    If we actually had a working, ethical, nonpartisan media, the history of this country from DAY ONE would be different.

    “Are you [Cuomo] stark raving mad, stupid, merely self-serving, or all of the above?” – Neo
    I’ll take D-all of the above.

    On this post by Turley, the commenters got started arguing over Cuomo and the Death Order; one of his trolls kept arguing that the order wasn’t mandatory (it was) and the nursing homes were the best place for the continued long-term care of the patients (maybe so, but that was not the issue).
    https://jonathanturley.org/2020/05/18/bobo-the-clowns-revenge-how-the-media-is-reelecting-donald-trump/

    Here’s a sample, because I suspect it may represent the rhetoric used to persuade the “mushroom people,” who are not getting any actual factual news, into believing Cuomo was doing the right thing — bizarre as that seems.

    Roy Coffee says:May 18, 2020 at 5:40 PM
    Young, tell us where New York was ‘supposed’ to send those elderly residents. ‘To hotels’..??
    Are hotel Housekeeping staffs trained to care for the elderly?? Are Room Service staffs??
    Here you present this indignation bomb without no alternate solutions.
    * * *
    Roy Coffee says:May 18, 2020 at 7:14 PM
    Honest Lawyer, you seem halfway credible, tell us what the Federal Policy is for discharging elderly patients during this pandemic.
    * * *
    Roy Coffee says:May 18, 2020 at 6:32 PM
    Young, tell us how many beds were on that ship and field hospital. Then tell us how many elderly people needed care.

    One might point out that the ship, and tent in Central Park, were intended as only emergency hospitals. They weren’t designed to accomodate seniors for longterm care. One could also point out that the seniors in question lived all over the New York Metro region. Therefore transporting them all to the ship or tent may not have been practical.

    Young, tell us what the Federal Guidelines are regarding seniors recovering from Covid 19. Has the Trump administration issued any guidelines?

    I’m adding one more commenter who is shading the timeline — we know Cuomo’s order mandated placement because of the pushback by the home operators who spoke up; and we know that his rescinding of the order (why do that if everything was okey-dokey?) included a liability get-out-of-jail-free-card.

    Anonymous says:May 18, 2020 at 8:38 PM
    He could have used the ship and only he can tell us why he didn’t but, to his credit, he reversed the policy. It’s my understanding that even before the reversal that nursing homes were told that they shouldn’t accept patients unless they had “a safe facility with proper staffing and protective equipment.”

    Azzopardi reiterated prior statements from the governor that the nursing homes can only accept coronavirus patients if they have a safe facility with proper staffing and protective equipment.

    https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/Churchill-New-York-s-tragic-nursing-home-mistake-15273400.php

    ‘If there’s a silver lining to all this, it’s that the deaths have focused attention on an industry that should have been spotlighted long ago. Some lawmakers, including Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, a Democrat from Manhattan, are even calling for an independent probe of the state’s nursing-home policies.

    ‘”The problems in nursing homes have been there for decades,” Gottfried told me Friday. “COVID-19 made them worse — and made them much more obvious.”‘

    Rufus thinks the GOP is feckless, but Democrats are ruthless.
    ruth
    n. Compassion or pity for another.
    n. Sorrow or misery about one’s own misdeeds or flaws.
    n. Sorrow; misery; grief.

  14. It looks to me that Texas had fewer deaths state-wide than NY had in its nursing homes.

    https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/bryan-preston/2020/05/18/texas-reopens-whats-really-happening-with-its-covid-19-numbers-n401968

    The first thing you may notice is that the overall numbers just are not that large. Texas is a gigantic state of about 268,000 square miles and 29 million people. It includes three of the nation’s top ten cities by population — Houston (#4), San Antonio (#7), and Dallas (#9). Austin, Fort Worth, and El Paso are also up in the top 25. And Texas has vast rural areas larger than many whole states.

    You may also notice from the map that the COVID clusters tend to be in the bigger and denser cities, which happen to have international airports, and along I-35 and the other highways that connect the state’s cities and towns. None of that is terribly surprising, as in the early days this was very much a traveling disease.
    …
    The Texas COVID-19 numbers are not large given the state’s size and population.

    Total cases to date: 48,693

    Total deaths to date: 1,347

  15. Lengthy because it pulls in lots of other background, graphs, and pix of Prof Ferguson’s quarantine-breaking lover.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8327641/Coronavirus-modelling-Professor-Neil-Ferguson-branded-mess-experts.html

    …
    But critics have today described the coding used by Imperial as ‘totally unreliable’.

    John Carmack, an American developer who helped refine the code before the paper was published online, said some parts of the code looked like they were machine translated from Fortran’, an old coding language.

    After growing pressure, the Imperial team released their code, which simulates homes, offices, schools and people movement, and sceptics were quick to point out it was 13 years old.

    Furthermore, when analysing the validity of the staggering death estimates, scientists have claimed that it is almost impossible to reproduce the same results from the same data, using the same code as Imperial, The Telegraph reported.

    University of Edinburgh researchers reportedly found bugs when running the model, getting different results when they used different machines, or even the same machines in some cases.

    The team reported a ‘bug’ in the system which was fixed – but specialists in the field remain staggered at how inadequate it is.

    Four experienced modellers previously noted the code is ‘deeply riddled with bugs’, has ‘huge blocks of code – bad practice’ and is ‘quite possibly the worst production code I have ever seen’.
    …

  16. Paul in Boston on May 18, 2020 at 6:52 pm said:
    My BIL, who lives on Long Island and is a Trump fan, told me a few days ago that he thought that Cuomo was doing a good job. When I brought up all the deaths at the nursing homes and Cuomo’s near criminal negligence he was shocked, he hadn’t heard about it. Yikes! Talk about the mushroom treatment. The NY media is really disgusting.
    * * *
    Rich Lowry at NR wrote a post today that I’m sure your ‘shroomies didn’t hear either.

    https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/05/the-massive-trump-coronavirus-supply-effort-that-the-media-loves-to-hate/

    about Journalists Ever Made

    MEDIA
    The Massive Trump Coronavirus Supply Effort that the Media Loves to Hate
    By RICH LOWRY
    May 18, 2020 2:36 PM
    The administration has used deft improvisation to secure huge supplies of PPE.

    There is a new cardinal rule in journalism — never write anything favorable about the Trump administration’s coronavirus response, even about its successes.

    It’s why the story of how the administration handled the potential ventilator crisis has gone almost entirely untold, and why its effort to secure supplies of personal protective equipment, or PPE, has been gotten largely skeptical or hostile coverage.

    Any government response to a once-in-a-generation crisis is going to be subject to legitimate criticism, and there’s no question that almost every major government in the Western world, including ours, should have acted sooner. But to read the press, there is basically nothing good that the Trump administration has done over the last three months.

    This is manifestly false. In a briefing for reporters last week on FEMA’s work securing PPE, FEMA administrator Peter Gaynor laid out the raw numbers: FEMA, HHS, and the private sector have shipped or are currently shipping 92.7 million N95 respirators, 133 million surgical masks, 10.5 million face shields, 42.4 million surgical gowns, and 989 million gloves.

    According to Admiral John Polowczyk, head of the supply-chain task force at FEMA, we manufactured roughly 30 million N95 respirators domestically a month before the COVID-19 crisis. He says we are on a path now to ramp up to 180 million N95 respirators a month.

    None of this happened by accident. At a time of unprecedented stress on the supply chain and a yawning gap between supply and demand in the market, it required considerable clever improvisation and determined hustle. This was not your average bureaucratic response. It was a partnership between the public and private sector to get supplies to the United States on an urgent basis and ship them to the places that needed them most, and then begin to ramp up manufacturing here at home.
    …
    How the administration worked through this and got to a better place would seem an interesting story, if the press weren’t too vehemently opposed to Trump to even consider occasionally giving some credit where it’s due.

    Rich includes lots of interesting and detailed stories, the kind of things that would awe readers if he was writing about, say, WWII or some natural disaster.
    Now imagine the Democrats under Hillary or Biden trying to get the job done.

  18. I wonder if Andrew Cuomo’s actions regarding nursing home patients meets the definition of depraved indifference.

  19. How a nursing home in France stopped coronavirus from killing elderly in its care https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/france-vilanova-nursing-home-1.5554296

    As the coronavirus scythed through nursing homes, cutting a deadly path, Valerie Martin vowed to herself that the story would be different in the home she runs in France.

    The action she took to stop the novel coronavirus, which causes COVID-19, from infecting and killing the vulnerable older adults in her care was both drastic and effective: Martin and her staff locked themselves in with the 106 residents.

    For 47 days and nights, staff and residents of the Vilanova nursing home on the outskirts of the east central city of Lyon waited out the coronavirus storm together, while COVID-19 killed tens of thousands of people in other homes across Europe, including more than 9,000 in France.

    “I said, ‘No, not mine. My residents still have so much to live for,'” Martin said in an interview. “I don’t want this virus to kill them when they have been through so much.”

  22. Each day I watch Andrew do his Don Corleone meets Mr. Rogers schtick on TV. Outside of NYC it’s way overtime in NY state to end the lockdown – but this drama queen can’t let it go.

  24. Here is another scandal about to hit the air…

    -=-=-=-=-

    POROSHENKO: Yesterday I met with General Prosecutor Shokin, And despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I specially asked him – no, it was day before yesterday – I specially asked him to resign. In, uh, as his, uh, position as a state person. And despite of the fact that he has a support in the power. And as a finish of my meeting with him, he promised to give me the statement on resignation. And one hour ago he bring me the written statement of his resignation. And this is my second step for keeping my promises.“

    BIDEN: I agree.

    Four weeks later on March 22, 2016:

    BIDEN: Tell me that there is a new government and a new Prosecutor General. I am prepared to do a public signing of the commitment for the billion dollars.

    Poroshenko then tells Biden that one of the leading candidates is the man who replaced Shokin, Yuriy Lutsenko who later said in a deposition that Hunter Biden and his business partners were receiving millions of dollars in compensation from Burisma.

    May 13, 2016, Biden congratulates Poroshenko on “getting the new Prosecutor General,” saying that it will be “critical for him to work quickly to repair the damage Shokin did.”

    “And I’m a man of my word,” Biden adds. “And now that the new Prosecutor General is in place, we’re ready to move forward to signing that one billion dollar loan guarantee.”

    UPDATE 12:17pm EST: The press conference also detailed corruption by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich…

  25. Well, I had commented to a relative some weeks ago that I had thought Cuomo was doing a decent job with the whole thing, but since then a few of the things he’s said in the meantime, along with this whole situation with the nursing homes, has changed my opinion. Since I still think Cuomo is the ultimate heir apparent after Biden, Bernie and refurbished Hillary – who else have the Democrats got, really? – I’ve begun to refer to him as His Royal Highness. It’s in keeping with the spirit of the lockdown around here, too. He does indeed strike me at this point as someone who, in the classic manner, wants the credit for when things go right and when things go bad, we get the whole song and dance.

    I still hope he runs for the presidency – it seems to be the only chance Albany has to get rid of him at this point.

  26. I sure hope for class action lawsuits by the families of those who died in homes where infected elderly were wrongly sent.

    These kinds of mistakes by gov’t will happen less often when the gov’t pays, millions, to the victims of its gross negligence.

    Whenever the gov’t ORDERS others to do things, the gov’t should be liable for excess damages.

    Cuomo does have an important point – those who die were mostly likely to die soon(er) from their unhealthy co-morbidities. Is that “sooner” meaning days, weeks, months? Or years?

    I’m pretty sure for many of Cuomo’s victims, there would have been years of life left.

  28. “…another scandal…”
    Rhetorical question (sigh): When is a scandal not a scandal?

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