8 May 2021: Cuomo Heavily Relied on NY DOH Commissioner Zucker at Peak of Pandemic

Cuomo’s Schedules for the Peak of New York’s Pandemic Show Limited Contact with Outside Experts

This blog post by the Empire Center for Public Policy's Bill Hammond was originally posted on 12 March 2021. Hammond reviewed Governor Cuomo's daily meeting schedules from February through April 2020, the first, deadliest peak of the coronavirus pandemic in New York, finding that Governor Cuomo only regularly met with one official with any health care training during these months: Howard Zucker.

As New York’s coronavirus pandemic exploded last spring, Governor Cuomo’s circle of regular contacts dwindled to a handful of close advisers, according to his recently released official schedules for March and April.

Only five people took more than 10 meetings with Cuomo in April 2020, compared to 15 people in March and 17 in February.

One of those top five, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker appears to be the only person with medical or public health training whom the governor regularly spoke to during that pivotal period.

Although not necessarily a comprehensive record of the governor’s conversations, the schedules shed new light on his decision-making process during the early weeks of a public health disaster that has claimed the lives of almost 50,000 New Yorkers.

Cuomo often cited experts in his daily briefings last spring, but it’s unclear who besides Zucker he was turning to for ongoing scientific advice.

The Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive would have been greenlighted by both Health Commissioner Zucker and Governor Cuomo. Neither has claimed responsibility for authorizing the directive, nor has any public official in New York claimed responsibility for authoring it.

That missing information says quite a lot about whether the two men or any of the state officials who drafted and reviewed the directive really thought it was a "smart" move on their part at the time.