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A close and careful reading of the overall death toll and the per capita death toll from Covid-19 shows numbers much higher in the state of New York than in any of the Sun Belt states routinely subjected to media scorn, accuses James Freeman in the WSJ.
Now it appears that the horrific cost of New York’s misguided early decision to force nursing homes to accept infected patients is much larger than previously reported.
From Bernard Condon, Matt Sedensky, and Meghan Hoyer in the Associated Press:
New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount. Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.
That statistic could add thousands to the state’s official care home death toll of just over 6,600. But so far the administration of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has refused to divulge the number, leading to speculation the state is manipulating the figures to make it appear it is doing better than other states and to make a tragic situation less dire.
“That’s a problem, bro,” state Sen. Gustavo Rivera, a Democrat, told New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker during a legislative hearing on nursing homes earlier this month. “It seems, sir, that in this case you are choosing to define it differently so that you can look better.”
Governor Cuomo’s fudging of numbers is an attempt to “deflect responsibility over that directive,” Karol Markowicz points out in Spectator.US.
It also allows Cuomo to continue basking in undeserved adulation. New York has suffered the brunt of coronavirus deaths, many of them needlessly, yet the governor is treated like some kind of conquering hero.
The Left Ignores Cuomo’s Travesty
People hoping the AP story would lead to a day of reckoning for New York’s governor will be disappointed. The story made a splash on Twitter — but mostly among conservatives. It’s important for the left, wanting to unify against Trump and pin a global pandemic on him, to ignore the travesty of the Cuomo nursing home directive. But responsibility must be taken.
