27 November 2020: Former Aide Rakes Governor Cuomo's Character Over the Coals

Ex-aide Alexis Grenell rips Gov. Andrew Cuomo in blistering essay

The "ex-aide" in question is currently a media and political consultant, who worked for Andrew Cuomo when he served as New York's Attorney General prior to being elected Governor. This very much represents a "blue-on-blue" attack, following the governor's outburst at a press conference in the previous week. Here's a sample from her commentary that appeared in The Nation:

The Andrew Cuomo New Yorkers know and mostly tolerate, the snarling attack dog who gaslights fellow Democrats and deploys staff to call his female critics ‘f—-g idiots,’ dropped down to Earth last week. It was a hard landing after a long-distance love affair with a fanbase in a galaxy far, far away.

In the middle of one of his now Emmy Award–winning (apparently for using “television to inform and calm people around the world”) Red Room press conferences, the governor blew a gasket. The trouble started when Jimmy Vielkind from The Wall Street Journal asked the obvious question that every New York City public school parent wanted to know: Will schools be open tomorrow? Cuomo’s months (years, really) of pissing all over Mayor Bill de Blasio have naturally caused confusion over who owns this loser of a decision, compounded by the fact that the city (3 percent) and state’s (2.5 percent) data on infection rates don’t align. So rather than give a straight answer, the self-described “cool dude in a loose mood,” threw a Trump-style tantrum....

Cuomo undeniably offered a vision of competent, humane government at the height of the crisis, but this is who he is the rest of the time. It’s why he and his staff reflexively insult anyone who criticizes his handling of the pandemic or insists on returning to the normal system of democratic governance as Jefferson envisioned it. People like the relentlessly honest Bill Hammond from the Empire Center for Public Policy, who’s currently suing the administration to force it to disclose the real number of Covid-related nursing home deaths (“yet another publicity stunt from an arm of the far-right advocacy industrial complex”). Or Assembly member Ron Kim for suggesting that the governor acted against the public interest in letting his state be one of the two that grant hospitals and nursing homes broad corporate immunity (“politically motivated”). Or Democratic and Republican lawmakers who want to curtail the governor’s emergency powers after granting them in March, and return to their role as a co-equal branch of government (“stupid” and “completely political”).

Perhaps unsurprising given what Grennell describes of Andrew Cuomo's character, the Governor faces increasing pressure to own up to the negative elements of his administration's performance during the coronavirus pandemic. Politics abhors the vacuum created by blatant hypocrisy, and Governor Cuomo's pandemic book promotion and Emmy award have flooded New York's political atmosphere with it.

21 November 2020: Backlash For Governor Cuomo's Emmy Award

'Best Actor?': Andrew Cuomo slammed after announcement he will receive Emmy Award for coronavirus leadership

The report describes some of the reaction to Governor Cuomo's Emmy award.

21 November 2020: News/Entertainment Industry Sucks Up to Governor Cuomo With Emmy Award

Andrew Cuomo To Receive International Emmy For 'Masterful' COVID-19 Briefings

The International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences broke with all precedent to provide a sitting politician Governor Andrew Cuomo with a public relations boost by awarding the Governor for his coronavirus broadcasts, despite the Governor's ongoing lack of transparency and candor regarding coronavirus-related deaths of nursing home residents under his administration's policies. Pulitzer prize award winning journalist Walter Duranty, who viewed and concealed Josef Stalin's Ukrainian genocide by starvation in the 1930s, could not be reached for comment.

20 November 2020: Excess Deaths Reveal Hidden Problems at Nursing Homes

Not just COVID: Nursing home neglect deaths surge in shadows

This article explores nursing home deaths beyond COVID-19, with some startling findings pointing to failures of both ethics and oversight. Starting with excess deaths:

A nursing home expert who analyzed data from the country’s 15,000 facilities for The Associated Press estimates that for every two COVID-19 victims in long-term care, there is another who died prematurely of other causes. Those “excess deaths” beyond the normal rate of fatalities in nursing homes could total more than 40,000 since March.

These extra deaths are roughly 15 percent more than you’d expect at nursing homes already facing tens of thousands of deaths each month in a normal year.

The analysis was provided the University of California's Institute of Aging's Stephen Kaye, who also found that many of these excess deaths took place at nursing homes where COVID-19 ran rampant:

Comparing mortality rates at homes struck by COVID-19 with ones that were spared, Kaye also found that the more the virus spread through a home, the greater the number of deaths recorded for other reasons. In homes where at least 3 in 10 residents had the virus, for example, the rate of death for reasons besides the virus was double what would be expected without a pandemic.

That suggests the care of those who didn’t contract the virus may have been impacted as healthcare workers were consumed attending to residents ill from COVID-19 or were left short-handed as the pandemic infected employees themselves.

Official state policies like New York's 25 March 2020 directive that forced nursing homes to blindly admit COVID-19 patients without testing to determine whether or not they were still contagious amplified the situation described above. The death toll associated with the directive is therefore greater than the number of deceased nursing home residents who tested positive for COVID-19.

The article also cites the state-mandated prohibition on visits by family members, which contributed to a deteriorating level of care provided to nursing home residents. Since family members both provide additional care for residents and take action to prevent neglect when observed, their state government-mandated absence ensured that the declining quality of care in these facilities went undetected. Governor Cuomo provided a shield of legal immunity for neglect to New York's nursing homes operators, many of whom are counted among his campaign contributors, during the pandemic.

19 November 2020: Opinion - Governor Cuomo's Hostile and Evasive Conduct Is Wrecking His Positive Image

Cuomo is obliterating his own (undeserved) COVID hero myth

The media has started noticing that Governor Cuomo's evasive and combative behavior in recent press conferences is aimed at obstructing their efforts to get information about state government policies.

18 November 2020: New Outbreak of COVID Infections at NY Nursing Home

COVID-19 Outbreak Recorded at Nursing Home

A new outbreak of at least 10 people associated with a nursing home in Montgomery County, New York (in the Mohawk Valley region of the state) has been reported. The outbreak comes as coronavirus infections are surging once more in the northeastern U.S.

18 November 2020: Governor Cuomo Gifted With Pay Raise

RAISE A STINK ‘Highest-paid governor’ Andrew Cuomo set to get $25,000 raise despite nursing home scandal & NY’s mixed Covid response

Governor Cuomo is set to get a raise, even though New York's state government revenues have plummeted and the Cuomo administration's continuing nursing home death scandal.

12 November 2020: 100 Days of Cuomo Administration NY DOH Stonewalling

100 Days later: Still no answers on nursing home patient deaths in NY

WRGB Albany's Greg Floyd marks the passage of 100 days since the Cuomo administration promised to make its coronavirus-related data on New York's nursing home residents available to the public:

It was back on August 3 that Commissioner Zucker was grilled at a legislative hearing by lawmakers of both parties about the directive and the department’s lack of transparency.

While we know that more than 6,600 residents died inside nursing homes, what we don’t know is how many nursing homes residents were sent to hospitals and died there. Democrats and Republicans are demanding that DOH release those figures, but DOH refuses to do so. Dr. Zucker promised frustrated lawmakers that he would reveal the numbers, but not until he was satisfied they were accurately compiled. Weeks ago Governor Cuomo provided a glimmer of hope when he said “It's not like there's a back room anywhere here, where we go back and we look at numbers and secret data. Whatever I know, I tell New Yorkers. Whatever the factors are, I tell New Yorkers.”

Immediately after that statement we contacted the Governor’s office, asking again for the full nursing home numbers, but our request was not answered.

So that brings us to today – we have started what we call the Zucker Counter, to track the total number of days the Commissioner has refused to release the numbers. The Zucker Counter now stands at 100 days – it will keep spinning until we get the numbers New Yorkers are waiting to hear.

How high will the "Zucker Counter" rise before Governor Cuomo acknowledges the extent of the coronavirus nursing home tragedy that occurred while his administration's 25 March 2020 directive was in effect?

7 November 2020: Where's the Promised Data on NY COVID Nursing Home Deaths?

Back on 1 September 2020, the Cuomo administration indicated it would make the state's coronavirus-related data on nursing home residents available to the public on 5 November 2020. No data was released on that date, nor has any data been released as of this update. Governor Andrew Cuomo's "disappointingly disingenuous" stonewalling continues.

2 November 2020: Editorial - Time for Team Cuomo's 'Data Dodge' to End

Cuomo’s data dodge: The governor needs to share New York’s actual nursing home COVID-19 death total

The editorial board of the New York Daily News opens up about their frustration with the Cuomo administration's stonewalling efforts.

Gov. Cuomo and the state Health Department are still failing to deliver on months' old promises to release the true tally of nursing home residents killed by COVID. The fact that some seeking the data have political motives is no excuse for stonewalling.

The official nursing home toll stands near 6,700 New Yorkers. But that only includes residents who died inside nursing homes, not the potentially thousands more who died after being transferred to hospitals.

The missing figures have not made legitimate questions disappear. Instead, the stalling only damages the credibility Cuomo and state health officials earned by capably handling the virus. Cuomo’s mantra-like repetition that New York ranks low among states in nursing home deaths as a share of total deaths, when he well knows that a fuller death count could change that statistic, is disappointingly disingenuous.