No government official has received more unjustifiable praise for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic than New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo. And no government official has done more to worsen this public health crisis than Cuomo.
As positive cases and hospitalizations continue to rise across his state, Cuomo signed an executive order this weekend ensuring that thousands more will contract the virus before all is said and done. In the order, Cuomo increased penalties for COVID-19 vaccine providers that disregard his prioritization and mandated eligibility certification for New Yorkers who wish to receive the vaccine.
In other words, Cuomo is needlessly dragging out the vaccination process. Cuomo should be doing everything he can to make sure as many COVID-19 vaccine doses are administered as possible in the coming weeks. Instead, he is doubling down on an insane prioritization strategy that puts young “front-line” workers ahead of elderly citizens while also creating additional barriers for vaccine distributors.
It should come as no surprise, then, that New York has administered only 32% of the vaccine doses given to the state. Cuomo’s prioritization requires vaccine distributors to track down front-line workers across a variety of professions and age groups before administering vaccines to anyone else. Even worse, distributors must now also certify these workers’ eligibility through a certification process that could take weeks.
Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses are beginning to expire. Cuomo doesn’t seem to care. He’s too busy preaching about coronavirus-related inequality and the need for fairness in the state’s vaccine distribution to realize that he is impeding vaccine distribution, which will cost lives.
If Cuomo were smart, he’d quit harping about social justice and instead look to the success in Israel, Britain, and Canada. Israel is vaccinating 1% of its population every day and has already inoculated almost everyone over the age of 60. Britain and Canada are administering all of their current vaccine supply immediately, instead of holding on to half of it in cold storage. Even Washington, D.C., has urged providers to give the vaccine to anyone who wants it if they have thawed doses that are about to expire.
There are many strategies Cuomo could adopt to make sure New York’s vaccine distribution is efficient, so long as the goal is the same: to vaccinate as many people as possible, and to do so quickly. But Cuomo decided instead to take an approach that defies both medical and common sense. In doing so, he has ensured that New York’s coronavirus crisis ends the same way it started: as a disaster.
