27 August 2021: Opinion - The Damage in Trust from Cuomo's Undercounts of COVID Deaths

12,000 Forced Errors

The Albany Times-Union is calling for new Governor Kathy Hochul to replace the state's ethically-troubled Health Commissioner Howard Zucker.

How did the state Department of Health miss 12,000 deaths from COVID-19? One thing we can be sure of: It wasn’t by accident.

This undercount was, rather, quite intentional. As for the motivation, there’s no official word from the agency or Commissioner Howard Zucker, for whom this is not the first fudging of data that might have diminished the superstar image Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo enjoyed for his initial handling of the pandemic.

The opinion piece proceeds to recount the nature of the NY DOH's underreporting of COVID deaths in the state's official figures, recognizing the same tactics were used to undercount the full extent of COVID deaths in New York's nursing homes during the period the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive was in effect. It then gets to the core of the problem:

It does not take a degree in medicine, statistics or political science — or a huge leap of logic — to see the manipulation here. Mr. Cuomo and Dr. Zucker kept the public in the dark about how high the numbers really were at a time when the governor was gaining national attention for his handling of the pandemic and signing a $5.1 million deal to produce a book about it.

We can’t be sure how the true figures might have changed the public’s behavior — whether more people might have taken the pandemic seriously and not now be so resistant to masks and vaccines, or whether some of the politicians who demanded the premature end of public health measures might have thought twice about their recklessness.

But we don’t have to guess what such deception does to the public’s trust in a vital institution like the Health Department, which we need to provide trustworthy information and guidance in such crises, not serve as an extension of the governor’s press office or political campaign.

The piece concludes by calling for Hochul to bring on a new Health Commissioner.