The data is in, and by every possible objective measure, no state handled the coronavirus worse than New York. It isn’t particularly close, either.
We’ve long known that if New York were its own country, it would have the worst death rate due to deaths explicitly from COVID-19. But data measuring total excess deaths reveals that the Empire State fared even worse than once thought when tallying up the additional deaths of despair and domestic violence incurred by Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s draconian lockdowns.
According to data aggregated by Hamilton Place Strategies, New York had the worst pandemic outcome both in terms of overall excess deaths per capita and total job losses per capita. Its unemployment rate, 8.5% for last month, is significantly higher than the national average of 6% and much worse than states such as Idaho and Utah. Interestingly enough, those two states performed the best on both measures of excess deaths and job losses.
Which states have done well saving lives *and* saving jobs?
BEST: Idaho, Utah & West Virginia.
WORST: New York.https://t.co/zmbq6tJXN8 pic.twitter.com/FAP6JPZ3WW
— Michael Hendrix (@michael_hendrix) April 19, 2021
Despite professional COVIDiot Anthony Fauci’s claim that Cuomo and company “did it correctly,” Cuomo did just about everything regarding the pandemic incorrectly. Cuomo failed to take the pandemic seriously at the start, waiting to institute a stay-at-home order until March 22 of last year, long after governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom did. Epidemiologists estimate that 50% to 90% of those New Yorkers killed by the virus could have been spared had Cuomo declared an order just two weeks earlier. He also failed to halt the MTA, which falls under his control rather than New York City’s. As a result, the subway became a main vector of transmission.
Then, instead of protecting the most vulnerable, Cuomo granted his nursing home donors legal immunity for the pandemic and signed an order mandating that they accept COVID-positive patients. While young and healthy people were locked in apartments as rioters reigned over the streets, Cuomo and his team split their time between covering up more than 10,000 preventable nursing home deaths and writing a book about conquering the pandemic, likely in violation of state law and to the tune of a $4 million advance.
Now, even as Mayor Bozo de Blasio tries to get the teachers union to reopen New York City’s schools for real, Cuomo refuses to back him. He’s currently in hiding as he faces multiple investigations not just into his nursing home cover-up, but also his apparent tendency to sexually harass his staff.
Few states did everything perfectly, but none did everything as badly as New York. Despite California’s shortcomings in handling the pandemic, especially with the outdoor dining ban that could have caused half of the state’s total coronavirus deaths, the state with the second-densest city in the country managed to keep an unemployment rate slightly better than New York’s and a coronavirus death rate only half as bad. Florida kept both unemployment and death rates on par with the national average, despite its disproportionately high population of seniors. Then, there are states like Utah and Idaho, which managed to succeed all around.
Cuomo, by contrast, failed on every front. One in every 377 New Yorkers died directly from the virus, and now, we know even more died from his disastrous lockdown policies.
