Three years after former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued a disastrous order requiring nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients, placing them with those most likely to die from the virus, the Democrat leader still has not been held accountable.
In a New York Post opinion column this week, state Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Democrat, expressed frustration with the New York Legislature for ignoring Cuomo’s “fatal mandate” and the thousands of families who lost loved ones in the wake of it.
“The erasure of this fatal mandate from our state’s pandemic history is one of Albany’s most egregious and nauseating acts,” Kim wrote. “… March is a slow-moving month of hell because their nearest and dearest were caught up in New York’s deadliest policy mistake and no one will acknowledge it.”
Cuomo, who resigned due to sexual abuse allegations in 2021, issued a COVID-19 mandate on March 25, 2020 that required nursing homes to receive COVID-positive patients, meaning people with the virus were placed together with those most likely to die from it.
In early 2020, the Democrat governor received wide-spread praise in the mainstream media for his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, pro-life advocates expressed alarm and warned that the governor’s nursing home order would lead to more deaths.
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Eventually, evidence began to surface that state health officials under the Cuomo administration failed to report all of the nursing home deaths to the public. In early 2022, an audit by State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli found the Cuomo administration failed to report 4,000 nursing home deaths due to COVID-19, likely in an attempt to keep up the positive publicity about the governor’s handling of the pandemic.
Other investigations by the New York Times and state Attorney General Letitia James also uncovered evidence of a cover-up by the Cuomo administration.
Since then, however, Kim said New York leaders have not taken action to hold Cuomo or other Democrat leaders responsible for the order, which led to “thousands of unnecessary deaths.”
Kim accused the state legislature, which Democrats control, of brushing the disastrous mandate under the rug because lawmakers are more concerned about their reputation and power than justice and accountability.
Politicians, beholden to lobbyists and corporate interests, are “gaslighting families” who lost loved ones in nursing homes soon after Cuomo’s order, the state lawmaker said. He also wondered if and how state health leaders are preparing to protect elderly residents in the event of a future wide-spread health emergency.
Kim continued:
New Yorkers should look at how the United Kingdom is handling the actions of its former health secretary.
Matt Hancock is being investigated as part of a public inquiry and could face criminal-negligence charges after the High Court ruled that mandating untested, COVID-positive patients back into nursing homes was illegal.
Frustrated, Kim said he wants to believe lawmakers like himself have the ability to change things for the better, but “this hope is slipping away because of cases like this.”
Many others, including the families who lost loved ones, also have demanded accountability from Cuomo and his former administration, including Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist whose in-laws both died in New York during that time.
“Elder care homes were turned into death traps,” Dean said in 2020 when questions began surfacing about Cuomo’s actions.
Cuomo first began facing criticism in early 2020 after he issued the executive order requiring nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients. Later, he rescinded the order. Since then, the mandate has been linked to more than 15,000 deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic.
In early 2021, state Attorney General Letitia James accused Cuomo and his administration of covering up the deaths of thousands of nursing home patients related to the order. Later that year, her office also accused the governor of sexually molesting several women.
Around the same time, an explosive New York Times report exposed how several of Cuomo’s top aides helped to hide approximately 9,000 people’s deaths to COVID in nursing homes. Meanwhile, the Democrat governor was receiving massive media praise for his handling of the pandemic and getting ready to profit from his new book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic.”
