Top aides to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) rewrote a report written by state health officials removing a figure that reflected how many nursing home residents in New York had died in the pandemic by June.
Cuomo is an asshole. Everybody knows that, and has for a long, long time.
He is also a bully and a liar. You donât get elected Governor of New York State without being both.
What I want to know is: When is the National Press (MSM) going to start ârending their clothingâ about what Ron DeSantis has been doing in Florida?
He has not only hidden ALL COVID-19 death numbers for over a year, he has used those âmissing numbersâ to justify declaring his state âOPENâ and removing all Mask Mandates. He also sent a SWAT TEAM to ARREST the former Florida State COVID web site operator (whom he had earlier FIRED because she would not âfudgeâ the death numbers to be much smaller than they actually were) on trumped-up charges of using a publicly available password to access a Florida Web Site. She was the only person who was publicizing the ACTUAL death numbers in Florida on her own web site.
But, this is apparently of no interest to the New York Press because they smell blood in the water, and predatory Senators like Kirsten Gillibrand, who has not gotten much press lately, are now jumping in to the fray to get some free publicity.
Cuomo has got to go. He never deserved his reputation early in the pandemic. I liked watching him fight Trump too, but in reality heâs just another empty suit playing for the camera. Behind the scenes, he had the same bad instincts as Trump. A sleaze and sexual harasser to boot.
Enough with the legacies.
You forgot to mention his efforts to steer vaccination sites towards his donors.
I disagree. He needs to finish his term. Then we need a great replacement to run for his seat. A woman would be great.
data control
I read the explanation by the governorâs office, and the heavy insinuation that the data control was for malevolent ends. What malevolent end?
Cuomo was begging for supplies. He was begging a million people to take things seriously. He had every reason to inflate the numbers.
I havenât been following this very closely, but wasnât there something in the news about Cuomo requiring nursing homes to take patients in who tested positive for Covid? That would certainly be a reason to hide the number of nursing home deaths, if true.
Itâs unfortunate for Cuomo heâs a Democratic Governor in a blue state. Were he a GOPer in a red state this level of lying, fraud, ineptitude and self aggrandizement would see him becoming a political force to be reckoned with in the party. Presidential timber.
Everyone loved Cuomo when he was a very public foil to Trump (while ignoring that his state was hardest hit by the pandemic because they didnât respond and close down as quickly as CA). They loved his grandstanding and daily lovemaking with media cameras (while he was padding numbers to make himself look better). But now theyâre shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that heâs a guy with an ego that makes him think sexually harassing his subordinates is âplayfulâ.
Now that we have more details, this doesnât sound nearly so sexy and juicy as it appeared.
Data analysts argue all the time about little details and nuances in the data.
So one set of analysts was arguing to include deaths away from facilities if they were normally a resident of the facility, the other group was saying that you donât include that number.
Both sets of data add up to the same number of dead, itâs just how the data are parsed.
Unlike DeSantis, who by all accounts was undercounting cases and deaths for the total, all Cuomoâs folks did was have a legitimate data debate about where the numbers should fall in the total.
So maybe letâs look at floridaâs numbers, see how things shake out in comparison.
After finally releasing the missing data, Cuomo claimed he had been concerned that the Trump administration would launch a politically-driven inquiry into the stateâs handling of the pandemic in nursing homes.
But according to the Timesâ reporting that included a review of documents and interviews with six people with direct knowledge of the closed-door discussions, Cuomo and his aides actually began concealing the data well before the arrival of data requests from federal authorities.
Thatâs not how âbutâ works. That second thing doesnât contradict the first. Cuomo could, and should, reasonably have expected that releasing those figures would result in the Trump administration launching âa politically-driven inquiry into the stateâs handling of the pandemic in nursing homes.â That they hadnât yet received any data requests from the feds is only barely relevant, and doesnât undercut their claim about their motive.
I expect theyâre telling the truth about their motive for concealing the data. More importantly: Their excuse is bad. Their entirely reasonable fears about a politically-motivated investigation do not justify deceiving the public. They had an obligation to report the facts, as best they understood them, and then manage the political fallout without crossing ethical lines. Attempting to hide the data was not a reasonable response.
Smell that smoke coming from the grinding brain-gears of the MAGAts?
They want to piss on Cuomo, but if they do, then they have to admit the deaths were higher than reported.
What to doâŚWhat. To. Do?
Disagree. Let the voters decide in the next election. This is the way.
Right now it is a certainty that Cuomo would never issue a pardon to Donald Trump for crimes committed in NYS.
A replacement governor at this time has no such guarantee. .
This all plays into GOP/Talking Points and Fox News. âLook at the Dem Governor doing all the things that no less than (2) GOP Governors have done and continue to do:â
Where was he supposed to put the nursing home residents when hospitals would not or could not take them? on the street? in tents? In hotels across the City? All this is just piling on Cuomo to tarnish him if he were to run for another term or the presidency. I donât think its going to work.
Thatâs an interesting question, but not relevant to the question of whether it was appropriate to conceal the data from the public.
If he had a strong argument to make that their performance was reasonably good under the circumstances, the appropriate thing to do was release the data, and make the case.
Letâs be honest here. NY was hit hard because there was no publicity about the Italian/European link. There was still open travel with Eurpoe long after we were wary of China. Thatâs why the East Coast was hit hard.
Cuomoâs opponents say conceal, he says not release unverified data. The way it looks all depends on oneâs agenda.
Okay, then. My agenda is âspeak the truth, as clearly as you can see it.â And the way this all looks to me is, they made a crooked attempt to hide the truth.
They admit as much. In claiming that they hid the numbers to avoid a politically motivated hack job from the Trumpies, they admit that they were hiding the numbers.
Take your âshape of earth, views differâ stuff elsewhere. Nobodyâs buying it here.
And Iâm betting weâre going to find that NY was not at all the only state playing this game. I know for fact thatâs exactly what was going on at my fatherâs facility. I had to learn to do a lot of reading between the lines. Theyâd say things like, âWe currently have no active cases in the facility at this time.â Iâd then ask if they have any residents who are hospitalized or in rehabilitation care with Covid. The answer was always super enlightening just as when theyâd say they had no Covid deaths in the facility. Of course not, because you took them to the hospital when they get gravely ill. Lots of states and entities were playing that game.
Turns out itâs not really concealing. Concealing would be if 10,000 people die, and you report 5,000 people died.
Here, they reported 10k deaths (numbers made up for illustration here), with 5k reported died in hospitals, 5k died in nursing homes.
Which is true. What McKinnsey, the contractor, wanted to do was add in how many of the people who died in the hospital but who were normally a resident of a nursing home to the nursing home deaths.
So maybe youâd report 3k deaths in the hospital, 7k nursing home.
The overall deaths are still the same, youâre just playing with data. Should you report a given death (which did happen in the hospital, possibly after a long stay) under the nursing home column when itâs not âtheir faultâ?
Itâs a much more nuanced argument than is being presented here.
