New York has been by far the worst center of
Wuhan virus infection in the U.S., and it seems clear that New York’s governor,
Andy Cuomo, has
done a terrible job. Among other things, he went out of his
way to force New York’s nursing homes to accept residents who had tested
positive for COVID-19, an absolutely irrational act that killed thousands, which
he has since rescinded.
Nevertheless, even as his incompetence cost thousands of
lives, Cuomo has adopted a pose of moral superiority, aided and abetted by
the press: “If it saves just one life,” Cuomo notoriously
said, damaging and, in many cases, destroying the lives of millions of New
Yorkers was worth it.
But facts are inexorable, and Cuomo has now changed his
tune. In a press
conference today, he urged universal forgiveness:
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on Sunday addressed the
state’s early response to the coronavirus outbreak and said “nobody” should
be prosecuted for the those who died, noting that “older people” were most
vulnerable. The governor has been criticized for a decision in March, which
has since been reversed, to send patients back to nursing homes after they
tested positive for COVID-19.
More than 4,800 people died from COVID-19 in
nursing homes in the state between March 1 and May 1,
according to a tally released by the Cuomo administration on May 1. Cuomo has
called nursing homes a “feeding frenzy” for the coronavirus.
“Despite whatever you do, because with all our progress
as a society, we can’t keep everyone alive,” Cuomo said.
Huh. Interesting that Andy “If it saves one life” Cuomo
should finally figure that out.
“How do we get justice for those families of those 139
deaths?” Cuomo said. “Who can we prosecute for those 139 deaths? Nobody. Mother
Nature, God, where did this virus come from? People are going to die by this
virus, that is the truth.”
Of course it is, but today’s fatalism is a far cry from
Cuomo’s early claim that even though his shutdown might devastate the lives of
millions, it would be worth it because not a single life would be sacrificed to
the Wuhan flu.
When pressed further about how some people thought their loved
ones would be safe because of Matilda’s Law, Cuomo continued to stress the
point that older and more vulnerable people were “always going to die from this
virus.” He said when talking [about] who is accountable for deaths, the most
important thing was to make sure “you can have a situation where everyone did
the right thing and everyone tried their best.”
Whether Cuomo “tried his best” is debatable; many would
say that his policies intentionally imposed unacceptable risks on elderly
people in nursing homes. A reader writes:
“If we can save one life”…
Does he have blood on his hands? When does he apologize
to Trump?
So we killed grandma anyway. We never had a real risk of
swamping the hospitals, had a “lockdown” that his brother proved was bogus,
but just bad enough to destroy the economy…and still had 20,000 deaths, highest
per capita in the world. Heckuva job!
Oh, and nice
haircut, governor!
Hypocrisy, thy name is Democratic Party Governor.
