Gov. Andrew Cuomo is an “authoritative voice” on matters related to the coronavirus pandemic, according to the New York Times. Cable pundits have praised him. And with Joe Biden struggling in his campaign for the White House and facing an increasingly credible charge of sexual assault, some Democrats have even called for Cuomo to replace the doddering former vice president on their national ticket.
Cuomo has a degree of telegenic New York charm, but are we supposed to ignore that his state has made Italy look like a coronavirus success story? Why is the Left, its pundits, politicians, and newspapers, lionizing a failure? No other governor can claim to have done so badly.
Under Cuomo’s leadership, 2 to 3 times as many New Yorkers have died from COVID-19 per capita as in the worst-hit European countries, including both Italy and Spain. Why exactly is he being praised for some vague accomplishment of “rallying” the very state ravaged in no small part by his own dangerous incompetence?
In March, Cuomo shared President Trump’s braggadocio about how the virus would not be a big or long-lasting problem.
“Excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers — I speak for the mayor also on this one — we think we have the best healthcare system on the planet right here in New York,” Cuomo said on March 2. “So when you’re saying what happened in other countries versus what happened here — we don’t even think it’s going to be as bad as it was in other countries.”
That boast didn’t hold up well. Many leaders downplayed how bad things could get, and government officials’ attitudes only go so far in affecting people’s behavior.
But New York does not stand in isolation. All 50 governors have been forced to sink or swim in this crisis, and New York has sunk far worse than any state — large, small, red, blue, you name it. In most cases, it isn’t even close. What Cuomo has done to deserve praise is one of the mysteries of the pandemic. It seems likely to remain so for many years, unless one applies Occam’s razor and concludes that praise is heaped on the governor not in spite of his lamentable failure: It’s there to cover everything rather than reveal anything.
To understand how utterly undeserved the lionization of Cuomo has been, one need only look at the vastly different treatment the media gave Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The Sunshine State has a bigger population than New York and arguably is just as international. It has a disproportionately vulnerable and older population. Yet Florida’s COVID-19 deaths per capita are less than one-tenth of New York’s.
DeSantis’s state has not only avoided the fate of Italy, but it has done better than Germany, Denmark, and other European countries that have received lavish praise for limiting the human cost of the coronavirus.
Yet at every turn, DeSantis has been vilified for perfectly reasonable decisions, apparently because he is a conservative Republican. The liberal media predicted a crisis when, for weeks, he resisted closing his state’s beaches, which the chattering classes of the know-all Left have apparently not noticed are wide-open, parklike spaces where people can keep a safe distance with minimal effort. That crisis never came. Yet the same fearmongers who disparaged DeSantis have had nothing but praise for the very New York governor who disastrously failed to order that the subways be closed and cleaned at night until two months into the pandemic.
In delaying that decision, Cuomo and his staff ignored both the telltale deaths of dozens of transit workers and an April 13 study warning specifically that the subway was spreading the coronavirus. The fact is, no New Yorker needed a study to know that the subways are unsanitary. Thousands of people touch subway surfaces every day, leaving behind germs.
Amazingly, however, this is only Cuomo’s second-biggest and most easily avoided error. The worst was his policy toward nursing homes.
As in most places, a very large share of New York’s coronavirus deaths have occurred at nursing homes. The official figure of 5,300 is probably low. In many parts of the United States, nursing homes account for nearly all COVID-19 deaths.
In this light, Cuomo’s directive early on forcing nursing homes to accept contagious coronavirus patients from hospitals looks about as dumb as possible. So was his decision, in contrast to other states, not to require testing of all patients in nursing homes specifically. Cuomo has only recently admitted to this error. In late April, he was still railing against nursing homes for being too solicitous of their patients. He argued that they “don’t have a right to object” to taking dangerously contagious patients into their facilities. So the virus spread to their vulnerable patients and killed them.
The results speak for themselves. New York, with less than 6% of the nation’s population, accounts for one-third of its coronavirus deaths. Florida, with 2 million more residents, accounts for 2%. California, which has far more residents, accounts for only 3%.
Let’s not pretend this is just a question of good weather. Another governor who was absolutely vilified, South Dakota’s Kristi Noem, has presided over one of the lowest COVID-19 death rates in America despite not running a state that avoids harsh winters.
Nor is this a story of conservative or lightly populated states doing better than densely populated areas. Cuomo’s incompetence stands out against all competition. Washington, D.C., a very left-wing city with lots of visitors and international travelers, has a population 20 times as dense as New York state’s overall, and it has less than one-third of the COVID-19 deaths per capita. Illinois, home to Chicago and to an extensive mass transit system, has less than one-fifth. Minnesota and Virginia have less than one-tenth.
Wisconsin’s decision to go forward with an April 7 election had many pundits convinced that an outbreak would result. More than a month later, that hasn’t happened, and the Badger State has seen only one-twentieth of New York’s death rate. Maine, a frigid northeastern state whose population is the oldest in the U.S., has a rate one-fortieth of New York’s.
Wherever one looks, large or small, red or blue, one finds no place where the government’s response to the virus has been less effective or more counterproductive than Cuomo’s.
It isn’t Cuomo’s fault that New York City is so densely populated or that it has an even less competent man as its mayor. It was always going to be a hard case. But things didn’t have to be this bad, and Cuomo hasn’t made them better.
He is responsible for at least two grave errors in judgment that directly caused thousands of preventable deaths. It’s time for the media to ask what he is doing wrong when nearly everyone else in authority has done so much better. They should come to bury Cuomo, not praise him.
