So says Bob McManus of the New York Post. But at least Cuomo “looked good” pulling off the double homicide, McManus adds.
Looking good on television may count for something, but it can’t overcome the facts, which are these:
Going into the holiday weekend, more than 23,000 New Yorkers who tested positive for coronavirus had died, or roughly six times the 3,700 Californians killed by the disease.
Overall the Empire State, with not even 6 percent of the nation’s population, has accounted for fully 24 percent of America’s traceable pandemic deaths, as well as 22 percent of its confirmed caseload.
As for the economy:
On Friday, the Albany-based Empire Center reported New York had lost 1.8 million private-economy jobs last month. The state’s overall lockdown-driven private-economy job losses exceed the national average by 50 percent.
Further, the center reported, unemployment insurance claims suggest that joblessness in New York soon will exceed 20 percent, compared to a national rate of 14 percent-plus.
Meanwhile, state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli reports a 68 percent drop in state tax revenues in April — a figure driven in part by changes in tax filing deadlines, but staggering nevertheless.
New York was never going to do well with the Wuhan coronavirus. As a major port of entry and with its biggest city so densely populated, the state was destined to suffer a disproportionate number of coronavirus cases and deaths. And, in the face of so many cases and deaths, the economy in certain parts of the state was destined to be devastated whether or not the governor ordered a formal shutdown.
However, Cuomo’s decisions made a bad situation considerably worse. Says McManus:
There’s a growing consensus that New York was late in recognizing the coronavirus threat, that its numbers were unsound and that it was too slow to react. And when action did come, it was at once confused, over-broad and heavy-handed, thus damaging to the economy — and in at least one instance, needlessly under-inclusive and thus lethal.
That “one instance” was, of course, nursing homes. It was in these facilities that Cuomo “killed grandma” by requiring nursing homes to receive recovering, yet still contagious, coronavirus patients. McManus points out that the number of deaths from the coronavirus in New York nursing homes exceeds significantly the total number of coronavirus deaths in the entire state of California.
Cuomo has never offered a satisfactory explanation, either the New York’s terrible overall numbers or his deadly decisions on nursing homes. Pathetically, he blames President Trump, rather than his health commissioner, for the nursing home fiasco.
Mainstream media types are mostly averting their eyes from Cuomo’s dreadful performance. But at least I no longer hear them outing the guy as a replacement Democratic presidential candidate.
