Buh-bye Andrew

[Dancing Fire]

I’m not in NY so don’t pay much attention to NY politics now. I’m saddened by this as well. I too watched Cuomo everyday when he did his daily covid updates. I liked that he stepped up and kept everyone around the country updated on what was happening with covid at a time when our president did not.

What he failed to tell New Yorkers is many senior citizens he was killing each day at the nursing homes.

 

[Matata]

What he failed to tell New Yorkers is many senior citizens he was killing each day at the nursing homes.

He didn't do anything to kill them -- the State Health Department said the policy of returning cured covid patients to nursing homes did not contribute to increased deaths. He and his administration are under FBI investigation for allegedly altering the number of nursing home deaths.

 

[Slickk]

Well, he did send the sick and infected seniors back to the nursing homes who did not have the means to care for them. Those multi-million dollar field hospitals and the Comfort ship remained embarrassingly empty.
And you know, I would have more sympathy if he had just manned up and said he really shouldn’t have sent those seniors back, that he should’ve used the field hospitals, but he will never admit a mistake. If he had, it would’ve done a lot to help his public image.
I did really like and respect him last year, but IMO he is to be held to the very laws he put in place with regard to work place harassment. It really is such a disappointment.

 

[missy]

Cuomo is guilty as F in the nursing home nightmare. And he will never admit culpability. I have zero respect for him. He is, IMO, a criminal.

Yes he purposefully undercounted the deaths and is being investigated for that but he also insisted on sending those residents (who had been hospitalized and were recovering from Covid 19) back to the nursing homes...too soon. Causing other deaths that were preventable. He had other options but instead he sent them back.

IMO, he is guilty of two major things (not including the sexual harassment but just addressing what the posters above are discussing).

First, he required nursing homes to accept Covid-19-positive patients instead of utilizing other areas such as those @Slick1 wrote about above. I mean he had other options. But no, he had to send them back effectively sentencing many others to death. It could have been foreseen and it could have been prevented.

Secondly, he hid data about deaths of nursing home residents. To protect himself. What a guy.

Yeah I am not sad he is gone. He did a good job at hiding who he really was for a while there but this proves (IMO) he is a despicable human being. Who does that? Deliberately covers up data and continues to refuse to accept responsibility for his actions? Oh, yeah, and sexual harassment. What a great guy. NOT.

What We Know About Cuomo’s Nursing Home Scandal

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration has been accused of deliberately obscuring the full scope of nursing home deaths in New York. The F.B.I. is investigating.

www.nytimes.com

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By Michael Gold and Ed Shanahan
Aug. 4, 2021
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, once widely celebrated for leading New York out of the coronavirus pandemic’s darkest days, is now embroiled in crisis over how many of the state’s nursing home residents died because of the virus and an apparent effort to hide the true toll.
Beginning last spring, Mr. Cuomo was criticized over a state requirement that forced nursing homes to take back residents who had been hospitalized with Covid-19 once they recovered. Critics said the policy had increased the number of virus-related deaths among nursing home residents.
At the time, Mr. Cuomo and his aides dismissed the outcry as politically motivated, and in July, the State Health Department released a report that found the policy was not responsible for an increase. The report did, however, raise questions in some quarters about how the state was reporting deaths.
In January, New York’s attorney general said the administration had undercounted nursing home deaths by several thousand. Mr. Cuomo later acknowledged as much, blaming the lower figure on fears that the Trump administration would use the data as a political weapon.
The suggestion that the actual death count had been covered up intensified criticism of Mr. Cuomo, including from his allies in state government. The scandal deepened after reports that the governor’s aides had altered the July report to hide the true figure.
In April, The New York Times reported that Mr. Cuomo’s aides had gone to far greater lengths than previously known to obscure the death toll, repeatedly overruling state health officials over a span of at least five months.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation has been looking into whether Mr. Cuomo and his aides provided false data on resident deaths to the Justice Department, according to people with knowledge of the investigation.
The fallout over the nursing home deaths has coincided with a second scandal for Mr. Cuomo: Multiple women have accused him of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior. The attorney general, Letitia James, has opened an investigation into the matter.
Dozens of current and former employees of the governor’s office during Mr. Cuomo’s tenure have also described it more broadly as a chaotic and unprofessional workplace that was particularly toxic for young women.
Mr. Cuomo is now in the most turbulent period of his three terms in office, his political future clouded as New York continues to grapple with the virus and the economic toll it has taken.
Numerous Democratic lawmakers, including most of the state’s congressional delegation, have called for him to resign. The State Assembly, which is controlled by Democrats, has opened an impeachment inquiry.
Here’s what we know about the nursing home matter so far. (And here is a similar rundown of the sexual harassment scandal.)

Mr. Cuomo has faced criticism over his policies on nursing homes​

More than 172,000 residents and employees of nursing homes and long-term care facilities have died of complications from Covid-19 in the United States, according to a Times analysis. New York leads all states in such deaths, with more than 15,000 so far.
By the time the Health Department issued its July report, Mr. Cuomo had been under fire over nursing homes for months. The criticism came mostly from Republican lawmakers, who suggested his administration was directly responsible for the high death toll.
At issue was a policy issued in March 2020 that effectively ordered nursing homes to take back residents who had been discharged from hospitals after being treated for Covid-19. The goal was to keep virus patients from overwhelming hospitals, a step other states also took.
Mr. Cuomo’s critics said the order had fueled the spread of the virus in nursing homes. He disputed the accusation.
The Health Department report revived questions about how New York was counting such deaths. At the time, the state’s tally only included residents who had died inside a nursing home; it excluded those who died at a hospital or other facility.

The policy, which differed from those followed in other states, effectively hid the total number of nursing home residents who had died of the virus. State lawmakers called for hearings and requested complete data. Public health officials criticized the administration’s approach. Eventually, the Justice Department opened an inquiry.
Throughout the summer and fall, Mr. Cuomo dismissed the criticism by citing to the Health Department report. Around the same time, he was celebrating the state’s initial success in controlling the virus’s spread after a devastating spring during which tens of thousands of people died.
After his televised briefings catapulted him into the national spotlight, Mr. Cuomo wrote a book about what he viewed as his achievements during the still-raging pandemic. In light of the recent controversies, the book’s publisher has said it would no longer promote the title and that it would not issue a paperback version.

Aides rewrote a report to hide a higher death toll​

Behind the scenes, some of Mr. Cuomo’s advisers were battling top state health officials over the nursing home death count in the Health Department report, according to interviews and documents reviewed by The Times.
As the report was being written, the department’s data put the number of fatalities about 50 percent higher than the figure the Cuomo administration was citing publicly at the time. (The difference was estimated to be as much as 3,000 deaths.)
State health officials could see from the data that a significant number of nursing home residents had died after being transferred to hospitals. Some of them thought those deaths should be included in the overall tally. But when Mr. Cuomo’s most senior aides saw the report, they rewrote it to eliminate the higher count.
The governor’s office said the number of deaths that occurred outside homes was omitted because the Health Department “could not confirm it had been adequately verified.” A department spokesman added that the figures had not been ready in time to be included in the report.
Lawmakers from both parties called for complete data after the report’s release, with some suggesting the information was being withheld to improve the governor’s image. In August, the state health commissioner, Dr. Howard Zucker, said the department was still auditing the data and could not release it.

The Path to Governor Cuomo’s Resignation​

Card 1 of 6
Plans to resign. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York said Tuesday that he would resign from office amid a sexual harassment scandal. Lt. Gov. Kathy Hochul will be sworn in to replace him.
Multiple claims of sexual harassment. Eleven women, including current and former members of his administration, have accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior. An independent inquiry, overseen by the New York State attorney general, corroborated their accounts. The report also found that he and aides retaliated against at least one woman who made her complaints public.
Nursing home Covid-19 controversy. The Cuomo administration is also under fire for undercounting the number of nursing-home deaths caused by Covid-19 in the first half of 2020, a scandal that deepened after a Times investigation found that aides rewrote a health department report to hide the real number.
Efforts to obscure the death toll. Interviews and unearthed documents revealed in April that aides repeatedly overruled state health officials in releasing the true nursing home death toll for months. Several senior health officials have resigned in response to the governor’s overall handling of the pandemic, including the vaccine rollout.
Will Cuomo still be impeached? The State Assembly opened an impeachment investigation in March. But after Mr. Cuomo announced his resignation, it was unclear whether the Assembly would move forward with its impeachment process. If Mr. Cuomo were impeached and convicted, he could be barred from holding state office again.
Looking to the future. Mr. Cuomo said on Tuesday that his resignation would take effect in 14 days, and that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, would be sworn in to replace him. She will be the first woman in New York history to occupy the state’s top office.

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But, according to two people with knowledge of the discussions over the July report who were interviewed by The Times, Dr. Zucker was aware as early as June that officials in his department believed the data was solid enough to include in the report.
The Times subsequently reported on the more sustained effort to hide the death toll among nursing home residents. That effort included the burying of a scientific paper that incorporated the death data, the delayed release of a top Cuomo aide’s audit of the figures, and a failure to send two letters drafted by the Health Department that were meant for state legislators.

The administration has been accused of covering up deaths​

As politicians, health experts and federal investigators called for complete figures for the deaths of nursing home residents, the Cuomo administration continued to delay the data’s release, saying more time was need to compile and verify it.
Then in January, Ms. James reported that the administration had undercounted virus-related deaths of nursing home residents by several thousand. Hours later, the Health Department added more than 3,800 such deaths to its tally.
Lawmakers again demanded answers about the delay in releasing the figures, with many theorizing that the administration had deliberately stalled to avoid blame for the higher toll.
On a private conference call in February, Melissa DeRosa, a top aide to Mr. Cuomo, told Democratic lawmakers that the state had withheld the data because it feared an investigation by the Trump administration.
But according to documents and interviews, Ms. DeRosa herself was involved in rewriting the Health Department report months before the Justice Department began seeking information about the administration’s nursing home policy.
The F.B.I. has since been looking at information that New York submitted last year to the Justice Department, which had asked for data on Covid-19 cases and deaths in nursing homes, according to people familiar with the investigation. False statements in such a submission could constitute a crime.

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