New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) managed to seal a book deal that offered him more than $4 million to detail his pandemic leadership, while his administration worked to revise a potentially damaging Health Department report that would expose staggering COVID-19 nursing home deaths, The New York Times reported late Wednesday.
I’m gonna fault the publisher here. They made the offer.
Cuomo didn’t hide deaths. This is about characterizing deaths as either ‘hospital deaths’ or ‘nursing home deaths’. If a person died in a hospital, they said that was a ‘hospital death’. Others believe that if the person got sick at a nursing home and later died at a hospital that should be a ‘nursing home death’. I think Cuomo has a justifiable argument for his characterization, but even if he’s ‘wrong’, it makes no difference on the overall death toll and it certainly isn’t criminal or even impeachable.
I would note that Cuomo was actually the first Governor (along with Murphy in NJ) to INCLUDE excess deaths in the NY totals. Until he did, the COVID death count in the nation was undercounted. As you may recall, Trump was doing everything possible to undercount deaths and CDC took a tepid position on the matter because the Trump apparatchiks like Michael Caputo were acting like overlords and the CDC just rolled over for them.
I would also note that Cuomo was really the only major national public figure who was telling people to wear masks before it was cool. He did it at virtually every one of his daily pressers once he got data back indicating their effectiveness. In that sense, I think it’s fair to credit Cuomo in part with saving thousands if not millions of American lives.
Yes, Cuomo is a self promoter. That’s not a crime. The allegations of inappropriate conduct are and should be treated as wholly separate from his management of COVID.
Everyone so damn smug and judgemental about this. Like you have never miscategorized a death count while inking a $4,000,000 deal to write a book! Did our fallen soldiers in wars abroad die of “environmental conditions?” Yes it is probably not prosecutable (false business records?) but with all that the Dems are doing right, this is a unnecessary GOP talking point. Unforced error. Stee-rike!
Of all the accusations against Governor Cuomo, this one bothers me the most.
I did wonder when and how he had time to write a book. As much as I was glued to Cuomo’s daily COVID press briefings, I thought that it was much too soon and too arrogant to write a book about it.
He’s a criminal who killed thousands of people through his negligence and then tried to make money off how he didn’t kill them. It’s in the article. Please read it. Also, it is illegal for a government official to use public resources for personal gain. Once he was caught with his $4 million book deal, having used public funds to 1) help with the publishing of the book, and 2) having tried to cover up the number of people who died through his mismanagement of NY state citizen health over the past year, you some how have concluded that he’s your best friend (or relative)?
How about the failures in the first place? It was patently obvious back in March of last year but somehow folks forgot… because Cuomo talks a good game… after the fact. He’s in power for so long because he’s good at covering up his messes basically.
Right. And it was also the fault of the nursing homes that they were forced to take in Covid patients that lead to all the deaths. How could we assume otherwise with all of Cuomo’s handprints all over the death sheets?
I can’t and won’t lay that on Cuomo. Every state was caught off guard, mainly because of the failures of the federal response - the Trump response.
I agree with you about this.
I’m not trying to absolve Cuomo but the publisher decided he had done $4 million worth of fixing the pandemic based on what? News conferences?
@khyber900 " Trump was doing everything possible to undercount deaths…" The whataboutism doesn’t add up. If you want to draw attention to the magnitude of the covid pandemic, the tendency would be to count every death that could reasonably be attributed to covid.
Further, if you want to differentiate between your leadership and Tr…mp’s lack of leadership, you don’t pull the same scam of undercounting or miscatagorizing. My opinion is that Cuomo got positive attention for his early handling of covid. Then he wanted more. Cuomo a bad person? Not necessarily, I think there’s a little narcissist in most people. The human continuum is far more varied than being either “hero” or “bum.” From what little I know, Cuomo was trying to make himself look good by the decision to categorize the deaths as he did. That said, I am sure that there’s a lot we don’t know. The investigation has already started.
You might be surprised how little non-fiction material with any given author’s name on it is actually written by them.
It has not been alleged that Cuomo undercounted overall deaths. That’s not part of the investigation. This is about how they were characterized. Cuomo’s aides probably thought that putting deaths in the ‘hospital’ v ‘nursing home’ category helped him politically b/c people had questioned him sending discharged folks whose permanent address was a nursing home back to said nursing home. That’s a political decision but it is not criminal.
With everything going on last year, I’m surprised that he even had time to consult with a ghost writer.
He’s got a team of folks. Between them and the publisher’s good, he’d have not had much to do except sign off on drafts.
The article is bullshit, sorry. Cuomo is no criminal (on this matter). He saved lives.
No one is alleging that the book deal was illegal.
About nursing home deaths, no one has ever answered this fundamental question: where exactly was Cuomo supposed to send folks whose permanent residence was a nursing home when he desperately needed to create hospital capacity to deal with those who were suffering the most severe COVID symptoms? All I ever hear is crickets when I pose this question. Did the Federal Govt, which has actual legal authority over nursing homes, have any responsibility? Did they provide PPE, medical professionals, testing, treatments? At that time, the Feds did nothing. What Cuomo did is not illegal, and it’s not clear to me that he had a better option at the time given what NY was facing at the time, basically alone.
And that’s the problem. He was using his tax-payer funded staff for a very lucrative personal project.
Well, sure, but:
The governor’s secretary Melissa DeRosa and another aide, Linda Lacewell, had shown concern about the higher death toll which had appeared in the second sentence of the report and was deleted from the final version.
Maybe the nursing home patients should have been moved to closets in the hospital basements before moving them to Hart Island
That’s moving boxes around. There isn’t a business or gov’t agency around that doesn’t try to characterize data in the most positive context possible. That’s not criminal. They didn’t hide overall deaths.