Second only to New Jersey in deaths per capita from the coronavirus, New York has suffered more than 32,000 deaths from the pandemic overall, roughly 20,000 more than any other state in the union.

And unlike other states, New York’s horrific death toll can be attributed to two specific decisions: first, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s refusal to shut down the New York City subway system, which functioned as a petri dish of the pandemic and became a main vector of its spread, and second, his disastrous nursing home directive which forced facilities to readmit patients who tested positive for the virus, forcing the city’s most vulnerable to contract a disease that is disproportionately deadly for the elderly. To date, roughly a third of New York’s coronavirus deaths came from nursing homes.