Conservative media outlets were on the forefront last year in reporting on how New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration was deliberately doing an end-run around official state reports on nursing home/assisted living facility deaths by changing the way nursing home deaths were calculated. This was done roughly a month after Cuomo signed a deadly order mandating that those same facilities accept COVID-positive patients, which raised serious concerns that it would lead to coronavirus outbreaks among the state’s most vulnerable (it did).
True to form, most national media outlets either ignored the story, sugarcoated it, or “reported” it from the perspective that it was a partisan hit job from the right designed to discredit the media’s favorite pandemic governor.
10 months later, the chickens are coming home to roost for Cuomo thanks to NY’s Democratic Attorney General Letitia James, which my colleague Nick Arama detailed yesterday. ICYMI, James announced that the number of nursing home deaths could be as much as 50% higher than had been previously reported. Instead of 8,711 deaths, the number could actually be 13,000 or higher. The undercounting, James said in so many words, was due in part to the way the state changed the way deaths were calculated.
Cuomo was asked about the report during today’s press briefing, and his response was predictably defensive and included a lot of typical blame-shifting:
.@NYGovCuomo is responding to the AG’s report on his covering up nursing home deaths in New York by … attacking Republicans & the Capitol Hill riot pic.twitter.com/pCRPySUuzW
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 29, 2021
Cuomo on the AG report: “Where this starts is, frankly, a political attack from the prior administration HHS. Their great spokesperson, @MarcACaputo, who is a Roger Stone protege, who said we have more nursing home deaths in New York b/c of something the state health dept did."
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 29, 2021
But it was this flippant response from Cuomo that gave up the game:
Cuomo on nursing home deaths: “Who cares [where they died]? They died!” pic.twitter.com/VECpQNKF2I
— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) January 29, 2021
“Who cares where they died?” Seriously? Such a despicable answer begs another question: If we’re not supposed to care where people died of COVID, then why did New York state change the way the numbers were calculated so as to make it appear that not as many died in nursing homes as actually did?
The so-called “caring governor”, as it turns out, does not care at all. Truly, the cruelty of Andrew Cuomo has been revealed once and for all.
Further, Cuomo bringing up his father’s death while discussing nursing home deaths didn’t fly very well with Fox News senior meteorologist Janice Dean, who lost her in-laws in a nursing home and assisted living facility to the coronavirus after Cuomo’s order mandating those facilities take in COVID-positive patients:
His father didn’t die in a nursing home thanks to his son ordering Covid positive patients into their facility. https://t.co/6S4jB4FdOx
— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) January 29, 2021
As disgusting as Cuomo’s answer was, no one who has paid attention to what’s gone on in New York during the pandemic at his direction should be too surprised. Last May when he was asked about the number of elderly deaths in nursing homes, he answered by callously saying that “Older people, vulnerable people, are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen. Despite whatever you do.”
Cuomo’s finally, at long last, getting his just deserts. His “what difference does it make?” answers are finally catching up to him. It’s late in coming, but it couldn’t be happening to a more deserving individual.
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