Governor Distortion

Amid the surreal, discombobulating spectacle of the first night of the Democrats’ virtual “convention,” New York governor Andrew Cuomo took a central role as the standard bearer of sober, science-based governance. Speaking sternly, gruffly, but not without care, he told America how New York, under his guidance, faced Covid-19 and beat it. “We climbed the impossible mountain,” he intoned, “and right now we are on the other side.”

Listening to Governor Cuomo, one would think that he had not in fact presided over the nation’s, and perhaps the world’s, most disastrous Covid-19 response. New York State has seen about 34,000 Covid-related deaths, out of a national total of 170,000, which means that New Yorkers have died at a rate close to four times what would be expected based on their proportion of the U.S. population.

Moreover, Cuomo bears considerable responsibility for at least 6,700 deaths of people in care facilities, and possibly many thousands more, because of his health commissioner’s mandate in March that nursing homes admit Covid patients after being discharged from the hospital. It’s widely acknowledged that this order resulted in the wildfire spread of Covid-19 through facilities underequipped to deal with the disease. When the nursing homes begged Albany for masks, Cuomo dismissively remarked that “it’s not our job” to supply private facilities with protective equipment.