There’s nothing to celebrate about Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s woefully botched rollout of the new coronavirus vaccine in his state. But his repeated failures deserve extra scrutiny given his own attempts to portray himself, with help from a fawning media, as a hero of the pandemic.
For the second time in as many days, Cuomo’s administration has relaxed its rules dictating who was eligible to receive the first dose of the vaccine. The adjustments came in response to reports that healthcare providers were left in the sad position of discarding expired doses of the fragile medicine when not enough patients could be found who fit the state’s overly specific criteria. Providers could have administered the unused vaccines to volunteers of any demographic rather than let the surplus supply go to waste, but Cuomo’s government made clear that exorbitant fines would be imposed on those who did not strictly adhere to the governor’s rules. As a result, perfectly good doses of a vaccine in high demand were simply thrown away.
That shocking development came as New York, like other states, continued into its fourth month of surging infections. As of Monday, Cuomo’s state was averaging more than 16,000 new cases per day. As we have seen, increases in new cases are almost inevitably followed by a steady increase in deaths.
Cuomo has since done the right thing in loosening the limits on who can receive a dose of vaccine, ensuring that less of the precious medicine goes to waste. But that any of it was ever needlessly wasted at all is yet another stain on Cuomo’s appalling mishandling of the pandemic.
The most logical thing for governments to do when rolling out their vaccine supply, as we have said previously, was to inoculate healthcare providers first, as to ensure that they could minimize their own risk while caring for the sick. Priority should have then shifted to the most vulnerable patients — those 65 years and older, who often have underlying health issues that leave them more susceptible to severe illness and who have accounted for 8 in 10 deaths from COVID-19.
Cuomo didn’t do any of that. Instead, he imposed inflexible directives, which, among other things, ensured that drug addicts in rehabilitation facilities would get the vaccine before independent-living 70-year-olds. And if there happened to be an extra dose left over, too bad for that elderly person, the rules dictated that it be destroyed rather than given to the “wrong” people. This was all part of Cuomo’s attempts to micromanage eligibility.
Don’t get us started on Cuomo’s handling of the economy. He has governed as though the health of his state’s commerce deserved no consideration at all, imposing harsh, indefinite lockdowns that have shuttered stores and restaurants. Many of them, if not most of them, will never reopen. The once-vibrant Manhattan is now a ghost town, yet Cuomo had the gall to post a tweet, in earnest, saying that his state “simply cannot stay closed until the vaccine hits critical mass” because “the cost is too high … We must reopen the economy.” So, after months of his obtuse behavior, he is now gaslighting the citizens of his own state, pretending to be the lone voice of sanity in an otherwise crazy world.
We’re glad he finally came around to what Republicans around the country had been saying for months, often to great criticism from the hysterical press — that the lockdowns were harmful and cannot be maintained indefinitely.
It is truly remarkable to recall that just seven months ago, Cuomo declared that his state was “controlling the virus better than any state in the country, any nation in the globe.” That was in June last year, when New York was averaging around 700 new infections per day. Now, it’s averaging nearly 23 times that number and has the highest death rate in the country, save for neighboring New Jersey.
And, of course, we’ll never forget Cuomo’s unthinkable action in the early days of the pandemic, forcing nursing homes in New York to admit patients who were known to have tested positive for the virus. The only thing more confounding than this lethal policy was Cuomo’s brazen denials that he had himself issued the order.
The governor has not been an effective manager during our health crisis. That is bad enough, but it’s made more absurd by the fact that he released a book mid-pandemic purporting to offer lessons on how he beat the coronavirus. He even declared in a speech to the Democratic National Convention in August that “we climbed the impossible mountain, and right now, we are on the other side.”
But credit where it’s due. Cuomo may have more blood on his hands than any governor in the nation, but at least he gives a soothing press conference.
