No corner of hell is fiery enough to give former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo the roasting he deserves. Engineering thousands of deaths from COVID-19 was not enough. Now the disgraced Democrat deceptively blames his lethal sins on someone who offered help: President Donald J. Trump.
Cuomo, who resigned in August 2021 after sexually harassing 13 women, slithered out of his well-earned oblivion with an op-ed in Sunday’s New York Daily News.
“The United States lost 1.2 million people” to COVID, Cuomo writes.
Why?
“Trump recklessly and negligently politicized COVID,” Cuomo claims. “It was a complete failure of Trump’s leadership.”
The COVID-19 deaths of nearly 13,000 residents of Empire State nursing homes were the predictable consequences of Cuomo’s decisions as governor, not Trump’s as president.
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives should grill Cuomo about the following epic fails when he testifies at 2 p.m. Tuesday before the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.
On March 25, 2020, Cuomo’s Health Department ordered: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”
Cuomo forbade evaluating seniors for COVID-19.
His directive went on to state that nursing homes “are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”
Physicians immediately warned that Cuomo’s imperative would kill New York residents.
The American Medical Directors Association declared March 26, 2020: “Unsafe transfers will increase the risk of transmission in post-acute and long-term care facilities which will ultimately only serve to increase the return flow back to hospitals, overwhelming capacity, endangering more health care personnel, and escalating the death rate.”
Team Cuomo replied: “Obey!”
The New York Post detailed the aftermath: Local hospitals steered 70 COVID-19 sufferers into Harlem’s Terence Cardinal Cooke Health Care Center in April 2020. By May 8, COVID-19 had killed 32 tenants. Hospitals delivered 19 COVID-19 survivors to Staten Island’s Carmel Richmond nursing home. By May 8, the virus had killed 56 inhabitants.
“The state forced us to bring in these sick people,” a nurse at Long Island’s Luxor Nursing and Rehabilitation told the Post. “We had no choice, but we’re not happy about it here.”
Cuomo denied rest homes’ requests for protective gear. “Not our job,” the governor snapped.
Until April 30—Day 48 of the crisis—Cuomo allowed staffers who had tested positive for COVID-19 to work inside elder centers.
By Jan. 19, 2021—coincidentally, Trump’s last full day in the White House—Cuomo’s edicts had killed 12,743 assisted-living dwellers. This amounted to 46.3% more fatalities than the 8,711 reported to have perished in the New York Health Department’s cooked books.
In contrast to Cuomo’s stupid, unnecessary, and fatal judgments, Trump had offered the governor three lifesaving options:
First, Trump sped the 1,000-bed floating hospital USNS Comfort to Manhattan’s Pier 90 on March 30, 2020—five days after Cuomo’s decree. Cuomo could have quarantined COVID-positive seniors in Comfort’s 500 pandemic-grade berths until they tested negative, and then sent them to elder institutions.
Alas, Cuomo neglected the vessel. Only 182 checked in before Comfortsteamed back to Norfolk, Virginia, that April 30.
Second, 12 blocks south, Trump transformed the Javits Center into a 3,000-bed pop-up hospital. Only 1,094 people arrived before it closed that May 1.
Donny Tuchman, CEO of Cobble Hill Health Center, begged to send COVID-positive individuals to Comfort or the Javits Center that April 9. Cuomo’s Health Department said, “Nyet.”
“I was told those facilities were only for hospitals” to refer patients, Tuchman told the Post. Never mind that only 62 of Comfort’s berths were full that day, as were just 134 of Javits’ 1,000 COVID-ready beds.
Third, Trump’s close coordination with private industry yielded much of the masks, gowns, gloves, and other protective gear that Cuomo complained it was “not our job” to supply.
Cuomo should beg forgiveness for his toxic boneheadedness. Instead, he takes zero responsibility for policy blunders that killed the elderly.
Now, as Election Day looms, Cuomo slams Trump, the man who tried to avoid this mayhem and keep older Americans alive long enough to enjoy another Christmas or Hanukkah. Conversely, Cuomo bullied seniors into premature graves.
Andrew Cuomo should beg the families of his victims for forgiveness and hope that this spares him from an eternity of damnation.
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