I admired Gov. Mario Cuomo so much that I actually bought an old CD of his speeches some years ago, and I actually listened to them. So I am educated in the successes and rhetorical and political skills of the Cuomo boys. But what to say about Gov. Andrew Cuomo in light of recent headlines? As a longtime supporter who watched his rise through the razor wire of New York politics, I have to say, Governor, you let us down.
According to The New York Times, the Cuomo administration did not fully disclose the staggering numbers of Covid-19 nursing home deaths in New York City last spring. The allegation is that the horrific death toll — 15,000 and counting — was, in part, the result of the governor’s order to move Covid patients who had been hospitalized back to nursing homes and long-term care facilities. The nursing homes weren’t equipped to handle pandemic disease, and they didn’t have sufficient protective gear for their staff. A cascading series of flawed policy and thinking led to increased infections and deaths.
Remember: Last March 5, Cuomo announced that cases of Covid-19 had doubled overnight from 11 to 22 statewide. By April 1, there were 83,000 reported cases. By May 1, New York state was nearing 375,000 cases.
By late spring, Covid patients were swamping New York hospitals. Refrigerator trucks converted to mobile morgues stood outside some medical centers. The search for more personal protective equipment and ventilators was desperate, and in that context, Cuomo made the decision to move Covid patients from hospitals back to nursing homes. There were many possible reasons for that decision, from suggested political advantage to the prospect of hospitals having to triage care for all the incoming patients, to conflicting advice from medical experts on how to move forward.
The result was that many thousands of nursing home residents died, almost always alone, almost always without saying goodbye to their loved ones whose grief is now compounded by anger. The people who took care of them, from the nurses to the aides to the custodians who washed the floors, also died from the virus as it surged through the facilities.
Copyright 2021 Randi Kreiss. Randi can be reached at randik3@aol.com.