In news that will only shock Andrew Cuomo stans, the cover-up of Cuomo’s policy that essentially sentenced thousands of New York State grandmas and grandpas to a tortuous and lonely death-by-COVID is far worse than previously known.

🚨Breaking from the NY Times: The Cuomo nursing homes scandal and cover-up was worse than known. pic.twitter.com/nsGLY0oKUm

— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) April 28, 2021

As our Townhall colleague Guy Benson writes, the New York Times is reporting that according to interviews they conducted and “newly unearthed documents,” Cuomo and his senior aides were actively engaged in an extensive operation designed to cover up what was happening and even blocking state health officials from doing their jobs:

Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aides engaged in a sustained effort to prevent the state’s own health officials, including the commissioner, Howard Zucker, from releasing the true death toll to the public or sharing it with state lawmakers, these interviews and documents showed.

A scientific paper, which incorporated the data, was never published. An audit of the numbers by a top Cuomo aide was finished months before it became publicly known. Two letters, drafted by the Health Department and meant for state legislators, were never sent.

Now, obviously, Cuomo didn’t want the truth to get out because it would highlight his incompetence and because people usually get really upset when bureaucrats kill their parents or grandparents (or aunts/uncles, brothers/sisters) — regardless of how much they otherwise agree with you politically. Oh, and there are the vainest and most terrible reasons, as well:

The actions coincided with the period in which Mr. Cuomo was pitching and then writing a book on the pandemic, with the assistance of his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, and others.

Ah yes, the book and adulation from vapid celebrities and pundits. And Cuomo’s raging case of Trump Derangement Syndrome also played a role:

And they came as the governor’s approach to nursing homes was receiving intensifying scrutiny from critics and Republicans, including former President Donald J. Trump, whose administration made a public show of requesting nursing home death data from four states with Democratic governors, including New York.

As you’ll recall, Cuomo instituted a policy in March 2020 that prevented nursing homes from turning away people who had been discharged from the hospital following a Wuhan Flu battle. Unsurprisingly, COVID deaths in nursing homes spiked; Cuomo’s administration then estimated the total number of deaths at 6,000. But, people who succumbed to COVID in a hospital after being transferred there from a nursing home weren’t being counted as nursing home deaths, making it seem that there were far fewer nursing home deaths than there were.

The full data on nursing home deaths wasn’t released until January 2021, while Cuomo’s administration was aware of the actual numbers since Spring 2020. Cuomo is now facing an impeachment inquiry and multiple ethical investigations, including an investigation into sexual harassment/misconduct allegations, and allegations that he used state resources while writing his book.