NBC NEWS
"Coming to a black market near you: Covid-19 vaccine - Reports of the rich and connected jumping the line to get vaccinated is just the beginning, experts say. "
By Adiel Kaplan and Corky Siemaszko
Jan. 10, 2021, 4:30 AM EST
The Covid-19 vaccine could wind up on the black market, experts are warning.
The much-criticized rollout by the Trump administration has laid the groundwork for a scenario in which the rich and the politically connected use their money and power to cut in line and get vaccinated before everyone else, they said.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has already threatened to impose fines of up to $1 million and revoke the licenses of doctors, nurses and others who don’t follow state and federal vaccine distribution guidelines, which currently place a priority on inoculating front-line health care workers and nursing home residents.
There have been reports in Miami of big hospital donors getting the first crack at the vaccine and in New York of tycoons flying their friends down to Florida to get inoculated with doses earmarked for a retirement home.
And in Colorado, some teachers are crying foul after nurses and educators in wealthier public school districts and private schools got inoculated first.
“It’s a little frustrating that districts who already don’t have the same wealth accumulated around them were lower on the totem pole,” said a ninth grade teacher in Aurora Public Schools, one of the poorest in the Denver area, who asked not to be identified by name.
“The districts that already were receiving a lot of support got this before districts that need more support.”
Arthur Caplan of New York University’s Grossman School of Medicine and one of the nation’s top bio-ethicists said the lament will likely be heard a lot more as the divide grows between vaccine haves and vaccine have-nots.
“We’re hearing about some politicians, some trustees of big hospitals and others getting shots ahead of health care workers and elderly people,” Caplan said.
“I’m also hearing that some [drug manufacturing and distribution] companies are saying that as soon as the government contracts are filled, they’re going to make getting vaccines for themselves a priority.”
The result will be higher prices for everybody else, Caplan said.
“Anything that’s seen as life-saving, life-preserving and that’s in short supply creates black markets,” Caplan said, echoing remarks he made in an interview last month.
Scarcity helped turn toilet paper and masks into gold early in the pandemic, and it’s likely to do the same for vaccines, making them especially attractive to thieves and foreign copycat artists, other experts said.
"The danger is there is an already existing market for unregulated drugs," said Michael Einhorn, president of medical supplier Dealmed.
"And the issue is that products will be imported from foreign countries that may not have as strict regulations as the United States — where product can be diverted, sold on the side and imported to the United States."
Jonathan Cushing of Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog organization, issued a similar warning in November.
“The vaccine is likely to have a high ‘street value’, making government supplies an attractive target for theft and diversion unless adequate safeguards are built into supply chains,” Cushing wrote.
Cushing said in an email that so far, he has not seen “any black market issues in the U.S.,” but the potential is there.
"There have been reports of substandard or falsified vaccines already being made in India, and also falsified hand-sanitizers in the U.S.A. appearing throughout the course of the pandemic," he said.
"We’ve also seen people using connections to access drugs purported to be therapeutics, such as hydroxychloroquine."
“I’d argue that much of the planning for distribution in the U.S. has been done too late in the day, and the lack of guidelines, and clear eligibility criteria for receipt of vaccines are probably the root cause of many of the issues being faced in the U.S. at the moment," he added.
"And subsequently this lack of planning gives rise to opportunities for individuals to jump the queue, and to exploit their position to get vaccines ahead of others."
Dr. Sadiya Khan, an epidemiologist at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, agreed and added that the lack of a coherent vaccine distribution plan is clear evidence the federal government did not learn from its failure to ramp up testing as a means of slowing the spread of the virus.
“The absence of any federal infrastructure across counties and states is leading to an unmitigated disaster in addition to inefficient distribution,” Khan said.
“Vaccine distribution is the Groundhog Day of what Covid-19 testing was in the beginning of the pandemic."
"These considerable delays are likely to lead to more hospitalizations and deaths that could be preventable.”
President-elect Joe Biden, who has joined the chorus of critics lambasting President Donald Trump's Operation Warp Speed for failing to meet its goal of rolling out 20 million vaccines by the end of 2020, has pledged to “move heaven and earth” to accelerate the pace of distribution.
Biden has also pledged to invoke the Defense Production Act, which allows a president to compel private companies to prioritize the manufacture of certain items for national security.
In Colorado, teachers were thrown for a loop this week after the state Department of Public Health and Environment surprised educators by suddenly announcing Wednesday that it was prioritizing first responders and older people.
That announcement came just a week after Gov. Jared Polis placed teachers on the state’s priority vaccine list.
By then, school nurses and health staffers at well-off public school districts like the Cherry Creek School District in the Denver suburbs had already been vaccinated as had several teachers at private schools like the Stanley British Primary School in Denver, NBC News learned.
When asked about two private school teachers who posted photos online of themselves holding vaccination cards after getting their shots last week at a local pharmacy, Stanley British Primary School head Sumant Bhat said in an email that it did not organize any vaccinations for its staff.
“While teachers are now in the 1B category, we have communicated internally that they are currently below the line within that category and, therefore, ‘NOT up’ for the vaccine at this time,” Bhat wrote.
“We are in frequent contact with our independent school network and our public health partners to determine when we will be able to roll out a thoughtful plan to make vaccinations available to our faculty and staff.”
With the federal government leaving it up to local authorities to distribute the vaccine, Caplan said the likelihood of a nonpriority person being offered a shot is heightened.
Caplan’s advice for resolving this ethical dilemma?
“We think the employee should accept the vaccine,” Caplan and fellow ethicist Kyle Ferguson wrote.
“What goals would be furthered by refusal?"
"Those who feel the dilemma’s force assume that their refusal would free up a scarce resource, that the liberated dose would end up in the arm of someone who needs it more urgently."
"But that is dubitable."
"It is likely that the vaccine will not leave the institution.”
Adiel Kaplan is a reporter with the NBC News Investigative Unit.
Corky Siemaszko is a senior writer for NBC News Digital.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/co ... e-n1253504
THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
Opinion editorial
"Cuomo lied and covered it up — we need a federal investigation to find the truth"
By Post Editorial Board
February 12, 2021 | 6:47pm
New York needs the truth about the Cuomo administration coverup of nursing-home deaths — and that means an independent federal investigation.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide confessed privately this week that the administration suppressed the true COVID toll in the homes.
She also offered an apology — not to the thousands of New York families who needlessly lost loved ones thanks to her boss’s mismanagement but to Democratic lawmakers put in a difficult “political position with the Republicans” by the coverup.
A federal investigation may be the only way to get the full truth of Team Cuomo’s order to nursing homes, populated by those most vulnerable to the virus, to take in COVID-positive patients.
Not just the “what” of how many lives it cost, but the “why” behind this madness, and the months and months of coverup.
Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, made the stunning statement on a video call with Democratic state lawmakers as she “explained” why the administration ignored since August their demands for nursing-home death data.
It began when then-President Donald Trump “directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us,” she said.
“And basically we froze.”
“Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” she said.
Suppressing evidence for fear of federal prosecution — what did the administration have to hide?
Another problem: The state started hiding the info months earlier, long before Trump tweeted a thing.
[Later in the call, she said the Biden Justice Department isn’t as interested in Team Cuomo’s malfeasance.
“All signs point to they are not looking at this, they’ve dropped it,” she said.
Not when she’s admitted a coverup, they can’t.
The feds must reopen a probe and subpoena Cuomo, DeRosa, and Health Commissioner Howard Zucker.
Perhaps a special counsel is needed.
Cuomo has long and strong ties to Biden, who reportedly considered him for attorney general.
Cuomo was even at the White House Friday, managing to avoid reporters as he met with the president and other governors to discuss stimulus legislation.
What truth we now have only came despite Team Cuomo’s best efforts.
It took a damning report from Attorney General Tish James and a court order in a months-old Freedom of Information suit to get the Health Department to cough up anything.
And the lies keep getting exposed.
It turns out the number of recovering patients sent to nursing homes early in the pandemic — 9,056 — is 40 percent higher than what the DOH claimed in its whitewashing July report.
The state just released the new number in response to an Associated Press Freedom of Information request made back in May.
Upon hearing DeRosa’s admission, state Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Bay Ridge) called it a “betrayal of the public trust.”
Absolutely.
New York needs to get to the bottom of Cuomo & Co.’s pack of lies.
The public needs the full truth — and accountability.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/cuomo-lie ... the-truth/
Opinion editorial
"Cuomo lied and covered it up — we need a federal investigation to find the truth"
By Post Editorial Board
February 12, 2021 | 6:47pm
New York needs the truth about the Cuomo administration coverup of nursing-home deaths — and that means an independent federal investigation.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide confessed privately this week that the administration suppressed the true COVID toll in the homes.
She also offered an apology — not to the thousands of New York families who needlessly lost loved ones thanks to her boss’s mismanagement but to Democratic lawmakers put in a difficult “political position with the Republicans” by the coverup.
A federal investigation may be the only way to get the full truth of Team Cuomo’s order to nursing homes, populated by those most vulnerable to the virus, to take in COVID-positive patients.
Not just the “what” of how many lives it cost, but the “why” behind this madness, and the months and months of coverup.
Melissa DeRosa, secretary to the governor, made the stunning statement on a video call with Democratic state lawmakers as she “explained” why the administration ignored since August their demands for nursing-home death data.
It began when then-President Donald Trump “directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us,” she said.
“And basically we froze.”
“Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying, was going to be used against us while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” she said.
Suppressing evidence for fear of federal prosecution — what did the administration have to hide?
Another problem: The state started hiding the info months earlier, long before Trump tweeted a thing.
[Later in the call, she said the Biden Justice Department isn’t as interested in Team Cuomo’s malfeasance.
“All signs point to they are not looking at this, they’ve dropped it,” she said.
Not when she’s admitted a coverup, they can’t.
The feds must reopen a probe and subpoena Cuomo, DeRosa, and Health Commissioner Howard Zucker.
Perhaps a special counsel is needed.
Cuomo has long and strong ties to Biden, who reportedly considered him for attorney general.
Cuomo was even at the White House Friday, managing to avoid reporters as he met with the president and other governors to discuss stimulus legislation.
What truth we now have only came despite Team Cuomo’s best efforts.
It took a damning report from Attorney General Tish James and a court order in a months-old Freedom of Information suit to get the Health Department to cough up anything.
And the lies keep getting exposed.
It turns out the number of recovering patients sent to nursing homes early in the pandemic — 9,056 — is 40 percent higher than what the DOH claimed in its whitewashing July report.
The state just released the new number in response to an Associated Press Freedom of Information request made back in May.
Upon hearing DeRosa’s admission, state Sen. Andrew Gounardes (D-Bay Ridge) called it a “betrayal of the public trust.”
Absolutely.
New York needs to get to the bottom of Cuomo & Co.’s pack of lies.
The public needs the full truth — and accountability.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/cuomo-lie ... the-truth/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
"Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo aide in nursing home cover-up, is related to top fed prosecutor"
By Melissa Klein and Susan Edelman
February 13, 2021 | 9:11am
If the Department of Justice investigates the Cuomo Administration’s refusal to turn over data on nursing home deaths, a huge conflict would arise if the case were handed to the powerful Manhattan federal prosecutor.
That’s because Audrey Strauss, the US Attorney for the Southern District, is the mother-in-law of top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa, the figure at the center of the emerging scandal.
The clamor demanding a probe into the cover-up of thousands of deaths have intensified after The Post reported DeRosa’s stunning admission that the Cuomo administration withheld the information from state lawmakers over the summer because it was worried federal prosecutors would “use it against us.”
The Justice Department in late August had begun an inquiry into nursing home deaths in New York and elsewhere.
“And basically, we froze,” DeRosa, who is secretary to the governor and his closest confidante, admitted to state lawmakers on a conference call.
“We weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys and what we start saying was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” she told lawmakers on a conference call Wednesday.
DeRosa’s admission led one observer to quip “Did you freeze before or after you called your mother-in-law.”
Cuomo has been heavily criticized for his mandate early in the pandemic that ill-equipped nursing homes accept recovering coronoavirus patients discharged from hospitals even though the elderly are among the most vunerable to the deadly disease.
Among those calling for a federal probe Friday were former Gov. George Pataki, who called the cover-up “reprehensible.”
Upstate Congresswoman Elise Stefanik — a high school classmate of DeRosa — said “Governor Cuomo, the secretary to the governor, and his senior team must be prosecuted immediately – both by the Attorney General of New York State and the U.S. Department of Justice.”
Strauss, 73, became the top prosecutor in Manhattan after President Trump said he was firing Geoffrey Berman in June 2020 and Berman agreed to step down as long as Strauss, who had been his deputy, would become the acting US Attorney.
Berman called her “the smartest, most principled, and effective lawyer with whom I have ever had the privilege of working.”
DeRosa, 38, has been married to Strauss’ son, Matthew Wing, 37, a former Cuomo spokesman, since 2016.
While the Southern District prosecutes many high-profile crimes, the case could be handled by the Northern District, which covers Albany.
Contacted by The Post, Cuomo spokesman Peter Ajemian refused to comment on the potential conflict of interest, and instead issued a statement on the Cuomo administration’s eventual release of information to the feds and state lawmakers.
“We informed the legislature that we needed to pause their request for information while we prioritized a request by the federal DOJ,” he said.
“We provided the federal DOJ with the information they asked for comprehensively, after which we were able to begin attending to the state legislature’s request, which we have now responded to.”
The administration delayed for months the public release of the real count of COVID-infected nursing home residents who died in hospitals, but Ajemian texted the Post a statement from State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker saying that the Department of Health “has always publicly reported the number of fatalities within hospitals irrespective of the residence of the patient, and separately reported the number of fatalities within nursing home facilities.”
The complete data on the deaths came out only this month after the administration was forced to release it through a Freedom of Information Law request and a judge’s order.
James Margolin, spokesman for the Southern District, declined comment.
Additional reporting by Dana Kennedy
https://nypost.com/2021/02/13/cuomo-aid ... rosecutor/
"Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo aide in nursing home cover-up, is related to top fed prosecutor"
By Melissa Klein and Susan Edelman
February 13, 2021 | 9:11am
If the Department of Justice investigates the Cuomo Administration’s refusal to turn over data on nursing home deaths, a huge conflict would arise if the case were handed to the powerful Manhattan federal prosecutor.
That’s because Audrey Strauss, the US Attorney for the Southern District, is the mother-in-law of top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa, the figure at the center of the emerging scandal.
The clamor demanding a probe into the cover-up of thousands of deaths have intensified after The Post reported DeRosa’s stunning admission that the Cuomo administration withheld the information from state lawmakers over the summer because it was worried federal prosecutors would “use it against us.”
The Justice Department in late August had begun an inquiry into nursing home deaths in New York and elsewhere.
“And basically, we froze,” DeRosa, who is secretary to the governor and his closest confidante, admitted to state lawmakers on a conference call.
“We weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys and what we start saying was going to be used against us and we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation,” she told lawmakers on a conference call Wednesday.
DeRosa’s admission led one observer to quip “Did you freeze before or after you called your mother-in-law.”
Cuomo has been heavily criticized for his mandate early in the pandemic that ill-equipped nursing homes accept recovering coronoavirus patients discharged from hospitals even though the elderly are among the most vunerable to the deadly disease.
Among those calling for a federal probe Friday were former Gov. George Pataki, who called the cover-up “reprehensible.”
Upstate Congresswoman Elise Stefanik — a high school classmate of DeRosa — said “Governor Cuomo, the secretary to the governor, and his senior team must be prosecuted immediately – both by the Attorney General of New York State and the U.S. Department of Justice.”
Strauss, 73, became the top prosecutor in Manhattan after President Trump said he was firing Geoffrey Berman in June 2020 and Berman agreed to step down as long as Strauss, who had been his deputy, would become the acting US Attorney.
Berman called her “the smartest, most principled, and effective lawyer with whom I have ever had the privilege of working.”
DeRosa, 38, has been married to Strauss’ son, Matthew Wing, 37, a former Cuomo spokesman, since 2016.
While the Southern District prosecutes many high-profile crimes, the case could be handled by the Northern District, which covers Albany.
Contacted by The Post, Cuomo spokesman Peter Ajemian refused to comment on the potential conflict of interest, and instead issued a statement on the Cuomo administration’s eventual release of information to the feds and state lawmakers.
“We informed the legislature that we needed to pause their request for information while we prioritized a request by the federal DOJ,” he said.
“We provided the federal DOJ with the information they asked for comprehensively, after which we were able to begin attending to the state legislature’s request, which we have now responded to.”
The administration delayed for months the public release of the real count of COVID-infected nursing home residents who died in hospitals, but Ajemian texted the Post a statement from State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker saying that the Department of Health “has always publicly reported the number of fatalities within hospitals irrespective of the residence of the patient, and separately reported the number of fatalities within nursing home facilities.”
The complete data on the deaths came out only this month after the administration was forced to release it through a Freedom of Information Law request and a judge’s order.
James Margolin, spokesman for the Southern District, declined comment.
Additional reporting by Dana Kennedy
https://nypost.com/2021/02/13/cuomo-aid ... rosecutor/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
Opinion editorial
"New York’s ‘ethics watchdog’ is worthless by design"
By Post Editorial Board
February 12, 2021 | 7:19pm
New York state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics sounds like the body to look into the Cuomo nursing-home scandals, but it (sadly) is of little use in any anti-corruption efforts — especially when it comes to the governor, who basically controls it.
The panel’s chairman, a Cuomo appointee, stepped down Wednesday and is slated to be replaced by an ex-staffer to the gov.
Yes, new chief Camille Joseph Varlack is a respected attorney and consummate professional, but JCOPE is toothless by design, as the 12 political appointees that form the commission serve to block all real investigations.
In its first decade, JCOPE executive directors and top staff have routinely had ties to Gov. Cuomo as former aides, though Varlack’s appointment marks the first time that JCOPE’s chair is an alumnus of Camp Cuomo.
Last year, a group of state legislators led by Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) introduced a constitutional amendment to give JCOPE teeth by making five of its members be appointed by judges and just four by elected officials.
It may not be the best answer, but without big changes the “ethics” commission will be useless against Albany’s culture of influence peddling and corruption.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/new-yorks ... by-design/
Opinion editorial
"New York’s ‘ethics watchdog’ is worthless by design"
By Post Editorial Board
February 12, 2021 | 7:19pm
New York state’s Joint Commission on Public Ethics sounds like the body to look into the Cuomo nursing-home scandals, but it (sadly) is of little use in any anti-corruption efforts — especially when it comes to the governor, who basically controls it.
The panel’s chairman, a Cuomo appointee, stepped down Wednesday and is slated to be replaced by an ex-staffer to the gov.
Yes, new chief Camille Joseph Varlack is a respected attorney and consummate professional, but JCOPE is toothless by design, as the 12 political appointees that form the commission serve to block all real investigations.
In its first decade, JCOPE executive directors and top staff have routinely had ties to Gov. Cuomo as former aides, though Varlack’s appointment marks the first time that JCOPE’s chair is an alumnus of Camp Cuomo.
Last year, a group of state legislators led by Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan) introduced a constitutional amendment to give JCOPE teeth by making five of its members be appointed by judges and just four by elected officials.
It may not be the best answer, but without big changes the “ethics” commission will be useless against Albany’s culture of influence peddling and corruption.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/12/new-yorks ... by-design/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
"New York Democrats holding Cuomo accountable over nursing home deaths"
By Carl Campanile, Bernadette Hogan and Kate Sheehy
February 9, 2021 | 8:18pm
A group of state Senate Democrats — fed up with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic — on Tuesday advanced bills that would bolster accountability and oversight of the facilities as well as of the state Health Department.
The move by the legislative body’s Health Committee to OK the bills for a full Senate vote comes amid a state nursing-home crisis that has seen nearly 15,000 residents die of the disease and both Cuomo and Health Commissioner Howard Zucker raked over the coals for trying to keep that number from the public.
Cuomo’s critics blame his administration for causing deaths by forcing nursing-home residents hospitalized with COVID-19 to be returned to the vulnerable facilities amid a hospital-bed shortage — and then for underreporting coronavirus fatalities tied to the long-term-care centers.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), chairman of the Health Committee, accused the Democratic governor Tuesday of “stonewalling” the state legislature for months by refusing to release complete figures on the number of nursing-home residents who died from the coronavirus.
Rivera said Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker sat on the data — until state Attorney General Letitia James late last month issued a scathing report accusing the administration of misleading the public by undercounting the deaths by 50 percent.
“As we suspected and feared, the second floor had been stonewalling us,” Rivera said during a virtual public committee meeting on the bills, referring to the governor’s office on the second floor in the state Capitol building in Albany.
The Health Department, when reporting nursing-home deaths, had only been including the roughly 8,700 residents at the time who died in a long-term-care facility, not those who succumbed to the virus in hospitals.
Hours after the release of the attorney general’s report, Zucker started coming clean by revealing that at least 4,000 more nursing-home residents had died of COVID-19 in hospitals.
Last week, an Albany judge even ripped the Cuomo-Zucker Health Department in a ruling over its failure to provide nursing-home death totals to a government watchdog group.
One of the Senate bills under review Tuesday and sponsored by Rivera would require the Health Department to report on the deaths of all nursing-home residents, including those “who were transferred to a hospital and died in the hospital.’’
The bill, if signed into law, would apply retroactively to March 1, 2020, as the pandemic was starting in the US.
“For us to make good policy, you have to have good information … so we can prevent unnecessary deaths,” Rivera said.
Republican state lawmakers jumped on the Cuomo-bashing bandwagon.
“For the families of those who lost loved ones in nursing homes, please know that today is one more step toward accountability — but the path is far from over,” state Senate Majority Leader Rob Ortt of Lockport said.
He and other GOPers are pushing for a probe into the state’s actions by the federal Department of Justice.
“The legislature should hold bipartisan hearings, using subpoena power, and the Department of Justice should expand its efforts to look into what happened here,” said state Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay of Syracuse.
Cuomo spokesman Gary Holmes responded in an e-mail to The Post, “We said we would release additional data once our audit was complete and ahead of the commissioner’s budget testimony."
"We’re doing that.”
“While the AG’s report correctly pointed to the Department’s efforts to support staffing, testing, PPE and conduct inspections, it incorrectly captured the data, so we released what had been audited by that point to set the record straight.”
https://nypost.com/2021/02/09/ny-dems-h ... me-fiasco/
"New York Democrats holding Cuomo accountable over nursing home deaths"
By Carl Campanile, Bernadette Hogan and Kate Sheehy
February 9, 2021 | 8:18pm
A group of state Senate Democrats — fed up with Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic — on Tuesday advanced bills that would bolster accountability and oversight of the facilities as well as of the state Health Department.
The move by the legislative body’s Health Committee to OK the bills for a full Senate vote comes amid a state nursing-home crisis that has seen nearly 15,000 residents die of the disease and both Cuomo and Health Commissioner Howard Zucker raked over the coals for trying to keep that number from the public.
Cuomo’s critics blame his administration for causing deaths by forcing nursing-home residents hospitalized with COVID-19 to be returned to the vulnerable facilities amid a hospital-bed shortage — and then for underreporting coronavirus fatalities tied to the long-term-care centers.
State Sen. Gustavo Rivera (D-Bronx), chairman of the Health Committee, accused the Democratic governor Tuesday of “stonewalling” the state legislature for months by refusing to release complete figures on the number of nursing-home residents who died from the coronavirus.
Rivera said Cuomo and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker sat on the data — until state Attorney General Letitia James late last month issued a scathing report accusing the administration of misleading the public by undercounting the deaths by 50 percent.
“As we suspected and feared, the second floor had been stonewalling us,” Rivera said during a virtual public committee meeting on the bills, referring to the governor’s office on the second floor in the state Capitol building in Albany.
The Health Department, when reporting nursing-home deaths, had only been including the roughly 8,700 residents at the time who died in a long-term-care facility, not those who succumbed to the virus in hospitals.
Hours after the release of the attorney general’s report, Zucker started coming clean by revealing that at least 4,000 more nursing-home residents had died of COVID-19 in hospitals.
Last week, an Albany judge even ripped the Cuomo-Zucker Health Department in a ruling over its failure to provide nursing-home death totals to a government watchdog group.
One of the Senate bills under review Tuesday and sponsored by Rivera would require the Health Department to report on the deaths of all nursing-home residents, including those “who were transferred to a hospital and died in the hospital.’’
The bill, if signed into law, would apply retroactively to March 1, 2020, as the pandemic was starting in the US.
“For us to make good policy, you have to have good information … so we can prevent unnecessary deaths,” Rivera said.
Republican state lawmakers jumped on the Cuomo-bashing bandwagon.
“For the families of those who lost loved ones in nursing homes, please know that today is one more step toward accountability — but the path is far from over,” state Senate Majority Leader Rob Ortt of Lockport said.
He and other GOPers are pushing for a probe into the state’s actions by the federal Department of Justice.
“The legislature should hold bipartisan hearings, using subpoena power, and the Department of Justice should expand its efforts to look into what happened here,” said state Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay of Syracuse.
Cuomo spokesman Gary Holmes responded in an e-mail to The Post, “We said we would release additional data once our audit was complete and ahead of the commissioner’s budget testimony."
"We’re doing that.”
“While the AG’s report correctly pointed to the Department’s efforts to support staffing, testing, PPE and conduct inspections, it incorrectly captured the data, so we released what had been audited by that point to set the record straight.”
https://nypost.com/2021/02/09/ny-dems-h ... me-fiasco/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
"Gov. Cuomo’s ‘heartless’ distortions can’t hide truth: Goodwin"
By Michael Goodwin
February 15, 2021 | 9:53pm
A second Emmy would not be good enough for that performance.
Only an Oscar will do.
After all, it takes an uncommon actor to pretend to be telling the truth and nothing but the truth when you are telling everything but the truth.
Gov. Cuomo’s latest bid to tame the cascading waves of criticism over his handling of the nursing home catastrophe was so riddled with falsehoods and misinformation that it’s hard to know what he was thinking.
Does he really believe he’s viewed as a trustworthy person whose word is taken at face value in Albany and beyond?
If so, then he must stop listening to his CNN brother and the people paid to say what he wants to hear.
Because there aren’t a lot of buyers for his B.S., even among fellow Democrats, many of whom are in open revolt against him.
The most obvious takeaway from Monday’s act is that Cuomo still accepts zero responsibility for the 15,000 deaths in nursing homes and similar facilities.
His only feint toward self-criticism is that he didn’t get information out fast enough.
That “void,” he said “was filed with skepticism, cynicism and conspiracy theories which furthered confusion.”
This is a tired political trick, insisting the only issue is one of public relations and messaging.
In fact, it was Cuomo himself who created the cynicism and conspiracy theories.
Recall that he labeled all criticism of the nursing home disaster pure “politics” and blamed God, The Post, Donald Trump, federal health officials, nursing home operators, their staffs, grieving families and anybody else — except himself.
He also continues to distort the content of the infamous March 25th order that required nursing homes to take patients infected with the coronavirus.
His claim that the facilities were given the option to say no if they couldn’t care for those patients is false.
Nowhere does the order say that.
Quite the opposite, it says “all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs.”
It says the hospital makes the decision and adds: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19."
"NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”
The order took effect immediately, and home operators told The Post their efforts to delay accepting the infected patients or have them sent to the nearly-empty Javits Center or the Naval ship Comfort were denied, though the state did send them body bags.
Some if not most facilities did not have protective equipment or room to separate COVID patients from others, and very few had enough staff that could be assigned to either COVID or COVID-free patients.
It didn’t matter — the order allowed no exceptions or delays.
It was in effect from March 25th until May 10th, when Cuomo effectively rescinded it and it was soon scrubbed from state Web sites.
In total, some 9,000 infected COVID patients were sent from hospitals to nursing homes and similar facilities.
Those unshakeable facts alone undercut everything Cuomo says.
His repeated falsehoods about the order and its impact are the ultimate sign of bad faith because he had to know the danger in sending COVID-19 patients into facilities filled with the most vulnerable New Yorkers.
Yet he did it and still defends it.
Another piece of Fake News Monday was his claim that “all deaths in nursing homes were fully, publicly and accurately reported.”
Later he added, “Nothing was hidden.”
The truth is that, when Attorney General and Democratic ally Letitia James released her report in late January saying Cuomo had undercounted nursing home deaths by 50 percent, the state was reporting about 8,700 deaths in such facilities.
The number now stands at about 15,000 — because of the James report and because a judge ordered Cuomo to release the numbers in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
Many of those deaths go back months and months, and Cuomo had refused to release the totals, so ignore his claims to the contrary.
One result is that, as others have noted, his Emmy and book contract were awarded based on false and incomplete information.
Had the deaths been promptly reported, he probably would not have been feted by Hollywood or received a fat publisher’s check.
He should return both.
While much of his Monday performance was infuriating, there were also elements of tragedy and sadness because the governor comes across as cold and heartless.
The nature of nursing-home deaths was especially brutal in that loved ones had been banned from the facilities and many families couldn’t even talk to their dying parents and relatives.
Some couldn’t hold funerals.
Yet Cuomo has refused to meet with bereaved families or even respond personally by e-mail or phone with many who have tried to reach him.
Fox meteorologist Janice Dean, who lost both of her in-laws in nursing homes, challenged him to hold a town hall with bereaved families.
Cuomo ignored her and his staff insulted her.
Although the governor keeps talking about his father’s death and says, “I understand,” and “I get it” about family grief, it doesn’t come across as genuine sympathy.
Instead, it looks and feels like one more piece of armor designed to shield him from responsibility.
It’s not working.
He can run but he can’t hide from the truth.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/cuomos-he ... h-goodwin/
"Gov. Cuomo’s ‘heartless’ distortions can’t hide truth: Goodwin"
By Michael Goodwin
February 15, 2021 | 9:53pm
A second Emmy would not be good enough for that performance.
Only an Oscar will do.
After all, it takes an uncommon actor to pretend to be telling the truth and nothing but the truth when you are telling everything but the truth.
Gov. Cuomo’s latest bid to tame the cascading waves of criticism over his handling of the nursing home catastrophe was so riddled with falsehoods and misinformation that it’s hard to know what he was thinking.
Does he really believe he’s viewed as a trustworthy person whose word is taken at face value in Albany and beyond?
If so, then he must stop listening to his CNN brother and the people paid to say what he wants to hear.
Because there aren’t a lot of buyers for his B.S., even among fellow Democrats, many of whom are in open revolt against him.
The most obvious takeaway from Monday’s act is that Cuomo still accepts zero responsibility for the 15,000 deaths in nursing homes and similar facilities.
His only feint toward self-criticism is that he didn’t get information out fast enough.
That “void,” he said “was filed with skepticism, cynicism and conspiracy theories which furthered confusion.”
This is a tired political trick, insisting the only issue is one of public relations and messaging.
In fact, it was Cuomo himself who created the cynicism and conspiracy theories.
Recall that he labeled all criticism of the nursing home disaster pure “politics” and blamed God, The Post, Donald Trump, federal health officials, nursing home operators, their staffs, grieving families and anybody else — except himself.
He also continues to distort the content of the infamous March 25th order that required nursing homes to take patients infected with the coronavirus.
His claim that the facilities were given the option to say no if they couldn’t care for those patients is false.
Nowhere does the order say that.
Quite the opposite, it says “all NHs must comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs.”
It says the hospital makes the decision and adds: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19."
"NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”
The order took effect immediately, and home operators told The Post their efforts to delay accepting the infected patients or have them sent to the nearly-empty Javits Center or the Naval ship Comfort were denied, though the state did send them body bags.
Some if not most facilities did not have protective equipment or room to separate COVID patients from others, and very few had enough staff that could be assigned to either COVID or COVID-free patients.
It didn’t matter — the order allowed no exceptions or delays.
It was in effect from March 25th until May 10th, when Cuomo effectively rescinded it and it was soon scrubbed from state Web sites.
In total, some 9,000 infected COVID patients were sent from hospitals to nursing homes and similar facilities.
Those unshakeable facts alone undercut everything Cuomo says.
His repeated falsehoods about the order and its impact are the ultimate sign of bad faith because he had to know the danger in sending COVID-19 patients into facilities filled with the most vulnerable New Yorkers.
Yet he did it and still defends it.
Another piece of Fake News Monday was his claim that “all deaths in nursing homes were fully, publicly and accurately reported.”
Later he added, “Nothing was hidden.”
The truth is that, when Attorney General and Democratic ally Letitia James released her report in late January saying Cuomo had undercounted nursing home deaths by 50 percent, the state was reporting about 8,700 deaths in such facilities.
The number now stands at about 15,000 — because of the James report and because a judge ordered Cuomo to release the numbers in response to a Freedom of Information lawsuit.
Many of those deaths go back months and months, and Cuomo had refused to release the totals, so ignore his claims to the contrary.
One result is that, as others have noted, his Emmy and book contract were awarded based on false and incomplete information.
Had the deaths been promptly reported, he probably would not have been feted by Hollywood or received a fat publisher’s check.
He should return both.
While much of his Monday performance was infuriating, there were also elements of tragedy and sadness because the governor comes across as cold and heartless.
The nature of nursing-home deaths was especially brutal in that loved ones had been banned from the facilities and many families couldn’t even talk to their dying parents and relatives.
Some couldn’t hold funerals.
Yet Cuomo has refused to meet with bereaved families or even respond personally by e-mail or phone with many who have tried to reach him.
Fox meteorologist Janice Dean, who lost both of her in-laws in nursing homes, challenged him to hold a town hall with bereaved families.
Cuomo ignored her and his staff insulted her.
Although the governor keeps talking about his father’s death and says, “I understand,” and “I get it” about family grief, it doesn’t come across as genuine sympathy.
Instead, it looks and feels like one more piece of armor designed to shield him from responsibility.
It’s not working.
He can run but he can’t hide from the truth.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/cuomos-he ... h-goodwin/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
"Adoring media served as protective cloak for Cuomo’s COVID lies"
By Seth Barron
February 15, 2021 | 7:19pm
News that Gov. Cuomo’s office had radically understated the number of COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes last year deflated his media image as a straight-talking teller of home truths.
Now The Post has reported that the governor covered up the extent of the problem specifically because his office didn’t want President Trump to “turn this into a giant political football” by instructing the Department of Justice to investigate Cuomo’s handling of the situation.
In other words, Cuomo buried evidence and impeded a federal investigation, hoping a new administration would leave him alone.
Last March, Cuomo’s state health commissioner, Howard Zucker, signed a decree ordering nursing homes to admit or readmit COVID patients released from hospitals, even if they remained infectious.
The decision was made amid fears that hospital emergency rooms and intensive-care units would be overrun by the desperately sick; moving stabilized patients into care facilities appeared to be the least bad option.
Cuomo can’t in good faith be faulted for initially making this call, though it allowed the virus to spread like fire throughout the state’s nursing homes, infecting and killing the elderly and immune-compromised in droves.
But he can be held to account for not rescinding the statewide order until May 10, well after it was obvious that hospitals weren’t being swamped and that the policy was causing massive death in the nursing homes.
Cuomo ducked media demands for nursing-home mortality data throughout 2020, even as every other state made the information public.
While New York admitted to about 7,000 nursing home deaths, informed estimates put the real count at around 12,000; the state refused to confirm the figures.
Last month, state Attorney General Letitia James released a report acknowledging that the real death toll was close to 13,000.
In reaction to this news, Cuomo snapped, “Who cares?"
"33 [percent], 28 [percent]."
"Died in a hospital."
"Died in a nursing home."
"They died.”
The episode revealed Cuomo’s massive egotism.
He was elevated by a fawning national media into a preposterously salvific role last spring and summer.
Throughout the pandemic, the governor gave daily televised briefings in which he hailed his own performance as a beacon of leadership.
He delivered such apothegms as, “It’s going to be hard, there is no doubt."
"But at the same time, it is going to be OK.”
He also made a point, continuously, of calling the novel coronavirus the “European virus,” presumably in counterpoint to Trump’s calling it the “China virus,” though it is widely recognized that the virus originated in China, even if some infected people may have caught it in Italy before bringing it to America.
The media swooned.
His “competence is captivating,” gushed The New York Times.
Reporter Carl Bernstein praised Cuomo’s “real leadership,” and actor and prominent Democrat Mark Ruffalo said that “New Yorkers are lucky to have a leader like Governor Cuomo in this crisis.”
In April, Cuomo appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’ TV show to announce that he approved of the use of the word “Cuomosexual,” embraced by DeGeneres and her fellow talk-show hosts Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah, to describe people who love him.
Cuomo also appeared almost every night on his brother Chris Cuomo’s show on CNN.
The pair frequently bantered about whose nose was bigger, who was more devoted to their mother in faithfully reproducing her recipe for sauce and how well the “Luv Guv,” in Chris’s words, had done serving the Empire State.
In November, the governor won his own special Emmy for his TV appearances.
Emmy boss Bruce Paisner hailed Cuomo for taking “it upon himself to use technology to spread reliable information and tell citizens what to do."
"Governor Cuomo’s daily press conferences were a whole new dimension in public education."
"He informed, he demanded and he calmed people down.”
Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s top personal aide, now admits that Cuomo intentionally stonewalled to forestall or impede a federal probe.
Speaking to Albany Democrats, DeRosa pled for understanding and “context,” insisting that Trump was “tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes.”
In good news for Cuomo, however, it turns out Team Biden isn’t planning to pursue the matter.
Thank the governor for another lesson in public education: Sometimes, it pays to bury evidence of your guilt.
Seth Barron is managing editor of The American Mind and author of the forthcoming book “The Last Days of New York.” Adapted from City Journal.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/media-ser ... ovid-lies/
"Adoring media served as protective cloak for Cuomo’s COVID lies"
By Seth Barron
February 15, 2021 | 7:19pm
News that Gov. Cuomo’s office had radically understated the number of COVID-19 deaths in New York nursing homes last year deflated his media image as a straight-talking teller of home truths.
Now The Post has reported that the governor covered up the extent of the problem specifically because his office didn’t want President Trump to “turn this into a giant political football” by instructing the Department of Justice to investigate Cuomo’s handling of the situation.
In other words, Cuomo buried evidence and impeded a federal investigation, hoping a new administration would leave him alone.
Last March, Cuomo’s state health commissioner, Howard Zucker, signed a decree ordering nursing homes to admit or readmit COVID patients released from hospitals, even if they remained infectious.
The decision was made amid fears that hospital emergency rooms and intensive-care units would be overrun by the desperately sick; moving stabilized patients into care facilities appeared to be the least bad option.
Cuomo can’t in good faith be faulted for initially making this call, though it allowed the virus to spread like fire throughout the state’s nursing homes, infecting and killing the elderly and immune-compromised in droves.
But he can be held to account for not rescinding the statewide order until May 10, well after it was obvious that hospitals weren’t being swamped and that the policy was causing massive death in the nursing homes.
Cuomo ducked media demands for nursing-home mortality data throughout 2020, even as every other state made the information public.
While New York admitted to about 7,000 nursing home deaths, informed estimates put the real count at around 12,000; the state refused to confirm the figures.
Last month, state Attorney General Letitia James released a report acknowledging that the real death toll was close to 13,000.
In reaction to this news, Cuomo snapped, “Who cares?"
"33 [percent], 28 [percent]."
"Died in a hospital."
"Died in a nursing home."
"They died.”
The episode revealed Cuomo’s massive egotism.
He was elevated by a fawning national media into a preposterously salvific role last spring and summer.
Throughout the pandemic, the governor gave daily televised briefings in which he hailed his own performance as a beacon of leadership.
He delivered such apothegms as, “It’s going to be hard, there is no doubt."
"But at the same time, it is going to be OK.”
He also made a point, continuously, of calling the novel coronavirus the “European virus,” presumably in counterpoint to Trump’s calling it the “China virus,” though it is widely recognized that the virus originated in China, even if some infected people may have caught it in Italy before bringing it to America.
The media swooned.
His “competence is captivating,” gushed The New York Times.
Reporter Carl Bernstein praised Cuomo’s “real leadership,” and actor and prominent Democrat Mark Ruffalo said that “New Yorkers are lucky to have a leader like Governor Cuomo in this crisis.”
In April, Cuomo appeared on Ellen DeGeneres’ TV show to announce that he approved of the use of the word “Cuomosexual,” embraced by DeGeneres and her fellow talk-show hosts Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah, to describe people who love him.
Cuomo also appeared almost every night on his brother Chris Cuomo’s show on CNN.
The pair frequently bantered about whose nose was bigger, who was more devoted to their mother in faithfully reproducing her recipe for sauce and how well the “Luv Guv,” in Chris’s words, had done serving the Empire State.
In November, the governor won his own special Emmy for his TV appearances.
Emmy boss Bruce Paisner hailed Cuomo for taking “it upon himself to use technology to spread reliable information and tell citizens what to do."
"Governor Cuomo’s daily press conferences were a whole new dimension in public education."
"He informed, he demanded and he calmed people down.”
Melissa DeRosa, the governor’s top personal aide, now admits that Cuomo intentionally stonewalled to forestall or impede a federal probe.
Speaking to Albany Democrats, DeRosa pled for understanding and “context,” insisting that Trump was “tweeting that we killed everyone in nursing homes.”
In good news for Cuomo, however, it turns out Team Biden isn’t planning to pursue the matter.
Thank the governor for another lesson in public education: Sometimes, it pays to bury evidence of your guilt.
Seth Barron is managing editor of The American Mind and author of the forthcoming book “The Last Days of New York.” Adapted from City Journal.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/media-ser ... ovid-lies/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
"Biden, Gov. Cuomo didn’t discuss COVID nursing home scandal, Psaki says"
By Steven Nelson
February 16, 2021 | 2:17pm
It was the elephant in the Oval Office, but somehow, President Biden and Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn’t discuss his COVID-19 nursing home scandal when they met last week.
The controversy “was not a focus of their conversation or a topic,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during her daily briefing Tuesday.
The governor visited the White House after an explosive Thursday night report from The Post revealed that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa admitted that the state concealed the number of nursing home deaths due to concerns that the numbers would “be used against us” by the Department of Justice.
Psaki said Tuesday that the meeting with Biden and Cuomo, which included a handful of officials from other states and cities, focused on the president’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill.
“The focus of the meeting was on the president providing an update on his plans to help get the pandemic under control, to discuss with them the American Rescue Plan and, in a large group meeting, have a discussion about what the challenges were that were facing governors and mayors — you heard some of the mayors come out here."
"So no, that was not a focus of their conversation or a topic,” Psaki said.
The usually press-courting New York governor hid from reporters during his Friday jaunt to DC, unlike fellow Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, who gave a press conference on the White House driveway.
Cuomo has attempted to walk back DeRosa’s remarks by saying his administration only was stonewalling requests for data from state legislators while continuing to work on an Oct. 27 request for data from the Justice Department.
Skeptics note that DeRosa’s remarks appear to indicate a broader stonewalling and that New York has not provided the feds with full data on nursing home deaths.
Cuomo said Monday that New York sent some information to the Justice Department on Jan. 8, but his office has not released that documentation.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/16/biden-gov ... dal-psaki/
"Biden, Gov. Cuomo didn’t discuss COVID nursing home scandal, Psaki says"
By Steven Nelson
February 16, 2021 | 2:17pm
It was the elephant in the Oval Office, but somehow, President Biden and Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn’t discuss his COVID-19 nursing home scandal when they met last week.
The controversy “was not a focus of their conversation or a topic,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters during her daily briefing Tuesday.
The governor visited the White House after an explosive Thursday night report from The Post revealed that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa admitted that the state concealed the number of nursing home deaths due to concerns that the numbers would “be used against us” by the Department of Justice.
Psaki said Tuesday that the meeting with Biden and Cuomo, which included a handful of officials from other states and cities, focused on the president’s proposed $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill.
“The focus of the meeting was on the president providing an update on his plans to help get the pandemic under control, to discuss with them the American Rescue Plan and, in a large group meeting, have a discussion about what the challenges were that were facing governors and mayors — you heard some of the mayors come out here."
"So no, that was not a focus of their conversation or a topic,” Psaki said.
The usually press-courting New York governor hid from reporters during his Friday jaunt to DC, unlike fellow Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, who gave a press conference on the White House driveway.
Cuomo has attempted to walk back DeRosa’s remarks by saying his administration only was stonewalling requests for data from state legislators while continuing to work on an Oct. 27 request for data from the Justice Department.
Skeptics note that DeRosa’s remarks appear to indicate a broader stonewalling and that New York has not provided the feds with full data on nursing home deaths.
Cuomo said Monday that New York sent some information to the Justice Department on Jan. 8, but his office has not released that documentation.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/16/biden-gov ... dal-psaki/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
"Start apologizing, Gov. Cuomo — and stop the lies"
By Post Editorial Board
February 15, 2021 | 6:25pm
Start with this, governor: Apologize.
Say sorry to the thousands of New York families that lost a loved one in a nursing home in the wake of your deadly March 25 order that forced homes to accept contagious COVID patients.
Say sorry to the 20 million people of New York state, whom you’ve been deceiving for nearly a year about the nursing-home horrors.
Say sorry to all those you’ve blamed to distract from your own guilt, from the staffers at the homes to all the federal officials you’ve claimed are actually responsible for that order and/or your coverup.
Apologize, and quit trying to duck responsibility by promoting a pack of lies.
That’s what the governor was doing again Monday, in his first press conference since The Post broke the news that his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitted to Democratic legislators that the gov and his people intentionally covered up the truth for months.
Gov. Cuomo is sticking to his “Blame Trump” cover story, pretending that the coverup was motivated by fear that the then-president would somehow use the truth in a politicized federal investigation.
Then again, he’s spent months trying to blame the Trumpies for the original, deadly March order to nursing homes to accept COVID-contagious patients that hospitals wanted to dump on them, without question.
Never mind that other states didn’t read the federal directive as requiring anything like that.
Monday, he even added a perverse twist: State lawmakers should have known the coverup was all about Trump, because The Post reported in August that a federal probe had begun.
Set aside the fact that then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department was not taking improper orders from the White House (Barr is a complete straight-shooter, though many Democrats convinced themselves otherwise).
The bigger problem is that the coverup started months before that.
Indeed, it seems to have started as soon as The Post’s Bernadette Hogan first revealed the existence of the deadly March 25 order by asking about it at a press conference weeks later.
At that April 20 presser, the gov pretended he’d never heard of the order before.
(And never mind that he is tight as a bug with the state hospital lobby, which plainly requested the order if only to clear beds for more urgent COVID cases. Nor that Cuomo is a notorious micromanager unlikely to let such a deadly mandate be issued without his personal signoff.)
It’s at about this point that the state Department of Health suddenly started reporting “nursing home COVID deaths” in a way unique to New York — leaving out residents who died only after transfer to a hospital.
This, even as the DOH continued to record the full truth but refused to share it.
Indeed, the Cuomoites stonewalled Freedom of Information Law requests from the Empire Center and the Associated Press for most of the next year — again, starting long before the feds showed any interest.
The state only finally started releasing that info after 1) Attorney General Tish James’ report outlined the basic fact that the nursing-home death toll was 50 percent higher than Cuomo or Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had been admitting, and 2) a judge outright ordered the DOH to comply with the Empire Center FOIL request.
Oh, and none of this explains why Zucker didn’t effectively rescind the deadly order until May — long after it had become clear that hospitals didn’t need to dump infectious patients on nursing homes unprepared for the challenge, because the hospitals weren’t actually running out of bed space.
“Blame Trump” is far from the only lie the governor persists in pitching.
On Monday he returned to blaming nursing-home staff for willfully accepting the infectious patients in the first place — something the James report said there was no evidence of.
More: If the coverup were really just about Trump, why did Cuomo and Zucker spend months claiming New York’s nursing-home COVID death rate was below the national average, when they knew the real figures showed it wasn’t?
Even if Trump were after them, that didn’t require them to actively deceive the public.
Many regular New Yorkers lost loved ones because of the March 25 order, and they won’t stay silent.
Many legislators (some of whom also lost family) are also furious at the Team Cuomo stonewalling and lies.
Will that be enough to get the Legislature’s Democratic leadership to stop protecting Cuomo and allow serious hearings into this horror?
At minimum, they should agree with Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay’s call for a special session to rescind the pandemic emergency powers that the governor has so abused.
And will President Biden’s Justice Department do the right thing and open a major independent investigation?
The need for some special counsel to oversee it now seems obvious, since DeRosa has family ties to the top Justice official, while Cuomo was a close Biden ally through the 2020 campaign.
It’s up to the governor’s fellow Democrats to hold him to account.
If they don’t, they’re part of the coverup too.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/start-apo ... -the-lies/
"Start apologizing, Gov. Cuomo — and stop the lies"
By Post Editorial Board
February 15, 2021 | 6:25pm
Start with this, governor: Apologize.
Say sorry to the thousands of New York families that lost a loved one in a nursing home in the wake of your deadly March 25 order that forced homes to accept contagious COVID patients.
Say sorry to the 20 million people of New York state, whom you’ve been deceiving for nearly a year about the nursing-home horrors.
Say sorry to all those you’ve blamed to distract from your own guilt, from the staffers at the homes to all the federal officials you’ve claimed are actually responsible for that order and/or your coverup.
Apologize, and quit trying to duck responsibility by promoting a pack of lies.
That’s what the governor was doing again Monday, in his first press conference since The Post broke the news that his top aide, Melissa DeRosa, admitted to Democratic legislators that the gov and his people intentionally covered up the truth for months.
Gov. Cuomo is sticking to his “Blame Trump” cover story, pretending that the coverup was motivated by fear that the then-president would somehow use the truth in a politicized federal investigation.
Then again, he’s spent months trying to blame the Trumpies for the original, deadly March order to nursing homes to accept COVID-contagious patients that hospitals wanted to dump on them, without question.
Never mind that other states didn’t read the federal directive as requiring anything like that.
Monday, he even added a perverse twist: State lawmakers should have known the coverup was all about Trump, because The Post reported in August that a federal probe had begun.
Set aside the fact that then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s Justice Department was not taking improper orders from the White House (Barr is a complete straight-shooter, though many Democrats convinced themselves otherwise).
The bigger problem is that the coverup started months before that.
Indeed, it seems to have started as soon as The Post’s Bernadette Hogan first revealed the existence of the deadly March 25 order by asking about it at a press conference weeks later.
At that April 20 presser, the gov pretended he’d never heard of the order before.
(And never mind that he is tight as a bug with the state hospital lobby, which plainly requested the order if only to clear beds for more urgent COVID cases. Nor that Cuomo is a notorious micromanager unlikely to let such a deadly mandate be issued without his personal signoff.)
It’s at about this point that the state Department of Health suddenly started reporting “nursing home COVID deaths” in a way unique to New York — leaving out residents who died only after transfer to a hospital.
This, even as the DOH continued to record the full truth but refused to share it.
Indeed, the Cuomoites stonewalled Freedom of Information Law requests from the Empire Center and the Associated Press for most of the next year — again, starting long before the feds showed any interest.
The state only finally started releasing that info after 1) Attorney General Tish James’ report outlined the basic fact that the nursing-home death toll was 50 percent higher than Cuomo or Health Commissioner Howard Zucker had been admitting, and 2) a judge outright ordered the DOH to comply with the Empire Center FOIL request.
Oh, and none of this explains why Zucker didn’t effectively rescind the deadly order until May — long after it had become clear that hospitals didn’t need to dump infectious patients on nursing homes unprepared for the challenge, because the hospitals weren’t actually running out of bed space.
“Blame Trump” is far from the only lie the governor persists in pitching.
On Monday he returned to blaming nursing-home staff for willfully accepting the infectious patients in the first place — something the James report said there was no evidence of.
More: If the coverup were really just about Trump, why did Cuomo and Zucker spend months claiming New York’s nursing-home COVID death rate was below the national average, when they knew the real figures showed it wasn’t?
Even if Trump were after them, that didn’t require them to actively deceive the public.
Many regular New Yorkers lost loved ones because of the March 25 order, and they won’t stay silent.
Many legislators (some of whom also lost family) are also furious at the Team Cuomo stonewalling and lies.
Will that be enough to get the Legislature’s Democratic leadership to stop protecting Cuomo and allow serious hearings into this horror?
At minimum, they should agree with Assembly Minority Leader Will Barclay’s call for a special session to rescind the pandemic emergency powers that the governor has so abused.
And will President Biden’s Justice Department do the right thing and open a major independent investigation?
The need for some special counsel to oversee it now seems obvious, since DeRosa has family ties to the top Justice official, while Cuomo was a close Biden ally through the 2020 campaign.
It’s up to the governor’s fellow Democrats to hold him to account.
If they don’t, they’re part of the coverup too.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/15/start-apo ... -the-lies/
Re: THE YOUNG ANDY CUOMO CHRONICLES
The New York Post
"55 percent of voters flunk Cuomo’s disclosure of COVID nursing home deaths"
By Carl Campanile
February 16, 2021 | 6:50am
A majority of New York voters ripped Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reporting of nursing home residents killed by the coronavirus, a new survey released Tuesday reveals.
The Siena College poll asked respondents whether Cuomo is “making public all data about COVID-related deaths of nursing home patients.”
Fifty five percent of registered voters rated Cuomo negatively — fair or poor — on the disclosure of nursing home fatality data.
Only 39 percent of respondents gave him a positive grade of good or excellent.
About two-thirds of suburbanites and six in 10 upstate residents gave Cuomo poor grades on nursing home reporting.
New York City voters were split.
As for political affiliation, 84 percent of Republicans and two-thirds of independents/unaffiliated voters disapproved the governor’s handling of the nursing home death toll.
Only fellow Democrats gave him a positive grade, with 54 percent supporting him on the reporting issue.
Cuomo has come under withering criticism for withholding for months the full count of nursing home resident deaths from COVID-19.
The survey was taken after state Attorney General Letitia James issued a damning report last month concluding that the Cuomo administration low-balled COVID-19 nursing home deaths by 50 percent.
It also came after a state judge issued a Feb. 3 ruling slamming Cuomo for illegally blocking the release of information in response to a legal request submitted by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a government watchdog group.
Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor ordered team Cuomo to turn over the death data.
Only after the court ruling and the AG’s report did team Cuomo starting disclosing the more extensive count, which includes nursing home residents who died in hospitals as well as in nursing facilities.
As of Saturday, official figures show, 13,407 nursing home residents died of COVID-19, including 4,181 — more than 31 percent — in hospitals.
Last week, The Post reported that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa apologized to state lawmakers for withholding the extent of the state’s COVID-19 death toll, telling them during a private meeting that “we froze” out of fear that the true numbers would “be used against us” by former President Trump and federal prosecutors.
The Post obtained an audio recording of her remarks during the meeting.
The nursing home controversy has been Cuomo’s political achilles heel in terms of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to DeRosa’s comments, Cuomo on Monday blamed the delay in releasing nursing home data on the need to cooperate with a federal inquiry — an excuse slammed as a lie by fellow Democratic lawmakers.
“When it comes to making public the data about the deaths of nursing home patients – the issue on which voters most harshly grade Cuomo – he only gets approval from 54 percent of Democrats, while 81 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of independents give him negative grades,” said Siena pollster Steven Greenber.
“New York City voters are closely divided but downstate suburbanites and upstaters give Cuomo negative grades.”
Overall, 61 percent of voters approved of Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic, while 34 percent disapproved.
Two-thirds of respondents approved of his communicating with the people during the pandemic, while 61 percent rated him positively for giving out accurate information.
But voters were split on his management of the vaccine rollout, with 48 percent rating him good or excellent compared to 49 percent who gave him fair or poor grades.
They were also split on his reopening plans — with 48 percent giving him a thumbs up and 50 percent a thumbs down.
A majority of voters oppose a bid by legislators to strip Cuomo of his broad emergency executive powers.
The Legislature passed a law giving the governor emergency authority last year to help New York respond to the pandemic, which expires April 30.
Meanwhile 46 percent of voters say they are prepared to re-elect Cuomo if he runs for re-election to a fourth term in 2022 while 45 percent say they would “prefer someone else.”
The survey of 804 voters was taken from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 and has a 4.3 percentage point margin of error.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/16/majority- ... me-deaths/
"55 percent of voters flunk Cuomo’s disclosure of COVID nursing home deaths"
By Carl Campanile
February 16, 2021 | 6:50am
A majority of New York voters ripped Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reporting of nursing home residents killed by the coronavirus, a new survey released Tuesday reveals.
The Siena College poll asked respondents whether Cuomo is “making public all data about COVID-related deaths of nursing home patients.”
Fifty five percent of registered voters rated Cuomo negatively — fair or poor — on the disclosure of nursing home fatality data.
Only 39 percent of respondents gave him a positive grade of good or excellent.
About two-thirds of suburbanites and six in 10 upstate residents gave Cuomo poor grades on nursing home reporting.
New York City voters were split.
As for political affiliation, 84 percent of Republicans and two-thirds of independents/unaffiliated voters disapproved the governor’s handling of the nursing home death toll.
Only fellow Democrats gave him a positive grade, with 54 percent supporting him on the reporting issue.
Cuomo has come under withering criticism for withholding for months the full count of nursing home resident deaths from COVID-19.
The survey was taken after state Attorney General Letitia James issued a damning report last month concluding that the Cuomo administration low-balled COVID-19 nursing home deaths by 50 percent.
It also came after a state judge issued a Feb. 3 ruling slamming Cuomo for illegally blocking the release of information in response to a legal request submitted by the Empire Center for Public Policy, a government watchdog group.
Albany Supreme Court Justice Kimberly O’Connor ordered team Cuomo to turn over the death data.
Only after the court ruling and the AG’s report did team Cuomo starting disclosing the more extensive count, which includes nursing home residents who died in hospitals as well as in nursing facilities.
As of Saturday, official figures show, 13,407 nursing home residents died of COVID-19, including 4,181 — more than 31 percent — in hospitals.
Last week, The Post reported that top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa apologized to state lawmakers for withholding the extent of the state’s COVID-19 death toll, telling them during a private meeting that “we froze” out of fear that the true numbers would “be used against us” by former President Trump and federal prosecutors.
The Post obtained an audio recording of her remarks during the meeting.
The nursing home controversy has been Cuomo’s political achilles heel in terms of his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In response to DeRosa’s comments, Cuomo on Monday blamed the delay in releasing nursing home data on the need to cooperate with a federal inquiry — an excuse slammed as a lie by fellow Democratic lawmakers.
“When it comes to making public the data about the deaths of nursing home patients – the issue on which voters most harshly grade Cuomo – he only gets approval from 54 percent of Democrats, while 81 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of independents give him negative grades,” said Siena pollster Steven Greenber.
“New York City voters are closely divided but downstate suburbanites and upstaters give Cuomo negative grades.”
Overall, 61 percent of voters approved of Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic, while 34 percent disapproved.
Two-thirds of respondents approved of his communicating with the people during the pandemic, while 61 percent rated him positively for giving out accurate information.
But voters were split on his management of the vaccine rollout, with 48 percent rating him good or excellent compared to 49 percent who gave him fair or poor grades.
They were also split on his reopening plans — with 48 percent giving him a thumbs up and 50 percent a thumbs down.
A majority of voters oppose a bid by legislators to strip Cuomo of his broad emergency executive powers.
The Legislature passed a law giving the governor emergency authority last year to help New York respond to the pandemic, which expires April 30.
Meanwhile 46 percent of voters say they are prepared to re-elect Cuomo if he runs for re-election to a fourth term in 2022 while 45 percent say they would “prefer someone else.”
The survey of 804 voters was taken from Feb. 7 to Feb. 11 and has a 4.3 percentage point margin of error.
https://nypost.com/2021/02/16/majority- ... me-deaths/