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Nell Walton's avatar

I was reading/hearing about the nursing home controversy since last August at least, so this is not a new story - I heard about it AT HIS PRESS CONFERENCES where he was questioned about it over and over again. Awful, stupid mistakes were made, and his statement about whether they died in LTC facilities or hospitals, the cases were still counted as COVID deaths. Well, that is the truth, just not necessarily the truth people want to hear. I just wonder if this story is more about knocking him down off his pedestal rather than making it into a learning experience about how to deal with pandemics going forward. How did New York do in comparison with other states i.e. Florida, South Dakota? His was a breath of sanity in the Trump chaos and I for one appreciated it. The last thing I would ever want to be is a politician dealing with this pandemic, always have to choose between the least bad options and constantly changing advice from the 'experts.'

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gloriagregory's avatar

Two words: Density. Timing.

Disclaimer: I'm a New Yorker.

Judd, if you'd gone just one step further in researching, you would have discovered that CA's largest city is LA (2019 pop 4 million), while NYS's largest city, NYC, is MORE than double that (2019 pop 8.42 million.) Here's the point: LA's 4 million are spread out over 502 sq mi. NYC's pop is crammed into 305 sq mi. Density contributes to Covid spread, and spread contributes to deaths - as we all well know (or should know) by now. Stop the apples-to-oranges comparisons.

Timing: NY was first up in the Covid battle on the east coast. There are estimates now that up to 20% of New Yorkers had Covid BEFORE the first case was officially dx'd in March. And NY entered into the global pandemic AFTER China, AFTER Italy (remember watching the footage on the nightly news?) which meant when NY NEEDED supplies, there were none to be had. We (NYS) MADE our own hand sanitizer; we MADE masks (out of state friends sent me my first masks), we MADE hospital gowns (via shuttered garment shops), we set up our own in-state testing sites (because the CDC was overrun with tests waiting to be processed and we could NOT wait 3-4 weeks for test results. We/NYS MADE replacement parts for defective parts in Covid test kits. Mike Bloomberg's organization, at Cuomo's request, set up the FIRST test-and-trace corps - an operation which is still used to this day. And when we started experiencing food shortages, we/NYS TRUCKED produce and milk from upstate NY to downstate NY where the need was greatest. And Cuomo & Co put the whole thing - every single piece of it - together.

I've lived in a number of states and in other large cities, and have NEVER seen such a masterful governor in my life. NEVER.

Also, Judd, if you ratchet up your investigation just a notch, you will land squarely on the Trump Admin. Yes, Trump sent NY a ship... which was specifically designated for NON-Covid pts. (Remember all the cruise ships docked up and down the eastern seaboard with sick passengers and no state to put them? There's a reason the federal ship USS Comfort refused to accept Covid pts in NY before it ever arrived.) Other states lent us ventilators because there was a NATIONAL shortage of ventilators. Again, remember, this was back in the day (March of last year) when the medical profession (and Cuomo conferred with medical professionals around the world) thought the best treatment was to vent pts. Plus we were running out of hospital beds and personnel. At Cuomo's behest, our hospitals increased capacity to time and a half what they had been. They DID the impossible. And I will ALWAYS be grateful for the hundreds of nurses and other medical professionals who flew into NYC (the state provided housing) to work in our hospitals. It was a horrid time. It was frightening beyond belief. And the Trump Admin continued to DENY Covid was a problem. We/NYS still have not been federally funded for what we went through.

We've learned a lot in the last year, and I would put Gov Cuomo up against ANY gov if we had to do it all over again. But this is now a Republican political play. For example: FOX faux weatherperson Janice Dean (who is neither degreed nor certified in meteorology) claims that Gov Cuomo "killed" both her in-laws with his order. The fact is one of those in-laws died the DAY AFTER Gov Cuomo issued the order. He issued the order and the following day, her first in-law passed. (Don't take my word for it; it's out there; just google - I think it's on Wiki and it IS verifiable.) So Janice blames the governor. The fact is: COVID took her in-laws, not Andrew Cuomo or his nursing home order.

Here's my last comment. Nursing homes are not prisons. The families of those residents could have removed their loved ones and brought them home, or arranged for transport elsewhere AT ANY TIME. They did not. There's a factual reason why NY AG James concluded, "Cuomo's March 25 order "MAY have put residents at increased risk of harm in some facilities."

That man worked his butt off for this state, for this city, and for me, and I do not appreciate him being pummeled around like some political football.

We will NEVER know exactly how many people died of Covid in any state in this country. It is a global pandemic, and here's what Cuomo said in yesterday's briefing, and my hair stood up when he said it because he had the same measured tone as he did when he told NY'ers last March: "This is not the week to go grocery shopping or to go to the pharmacy." (At the time, I turned to my son and I said, "You can't go out anymore" and my 23 yo said, "I know." And we stayed indoors for the next 3-4 weeks.) Yesterday Gov Cuomo said there is another pandemic coming. I believe him.

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