Despite presiding over the single worst coronavirus hot spot outside of China, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been lionized as the media’s hero of the crisis. His plaudits stem from his diplomatic handling of an ordinarily fraught relationship with President Trump, and his daily briefings on the pandemic have provided a necessary sort of transparency sorely missing in other states.
But pressed with even the mildest pressure from journalists, Cuomo has shown signs of cracking. Wednesday provided the clearest example yet. In trying to justify a continuation of his state’s draconian shutdown, Cuomo not only dismissed the economic hardships of those 26 million people who lost their jobs in the past month, but also shared an outright falsehood about domestic violence.
“Domestic violence on the increase?” Cuomo said. “Very bad, not death. And the death of someone else. See, that’s what we have to factor into this equation. Yeah, it’s your life, do whatever you want. But you’re now responsible for my life; you have a responsibility to me. It’s not just about you — you have a responsibility to me, right?”
Like the coronavirus itself, domestic violence exacerbated by a national shutdown doesn’t result in a definite chance of death, but it absolutely renders it highly probable. That Cuomo can’t comprehend this is concerning.
Already, half of all women who die of murder are killed at the hands of an intimate partner. In some cases, these are ex-partners who resort to stalking, but a significant portion is due to continuing and cyclical domestic violence. And coronavirus shutdowns around the country have only increased the odds of death.
An analysis of 53 different law enforcement agencies found that despite crime falling across the board, calls for domestic violence and disturbances have increased by 10%. But with legally enforced lockdowns enabling abusers to control the communications of their victims even more tightly, that figure likely underestimates the real increase of the severity and prevalence of domestic violence. In the United Kingdom, the number of murders as a result of domestic violence has doubled, not only because lockdowns have made it harder for victims to escape, but also because the very cycle of violence that increases in intensity is expedited.
None of this is an argument against social distancing and stay-at-home guidelines as a general rule, but there are trade-offs. Domestic violence could be as risky (if not more so) than the coronavirus, especially for young women. Any decision to prolong this quarantine must take that reality into account, unless governors want women’s blood on their hands.
