30 September 2021: Howard Zucker's Pending Retirement a Step Closer

Hochul announces new health commissioner to succeed Zucker

The ethically compromised doctor heading New York's Department of Health, Howard Zucker, was moved a step closer to his pending retirement. Replacement Governor Kathy Hochul announced she has found a replacement Health Commissioner for the state:

Dr. Mary T. Bassett, a former commissioner of the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, has been appointed state health commissioner by Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Bassett, who was the New York City health commissioner from 2014 to 2018, will succeed Dr. Howard Zucker, who resigned last week but had agreed to stay on until a successor was named.

According to the governor's office, Bassett brings decades of experience to the position, most recently serving as the director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud (FXB) Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University as well as the FXB Professor of the Practice of Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health.

Bassett is taking over leadership of a health department that has staffing shortages at key positions. Earlier this month, its second-in-command, Lisa J. Pino, departed after a little more than a year in the job. She was replaced by Kristin M. Proud, now the acting executive deputy commissioner....

The health department has been on the front line of the state's response to the COVID-19 pandemic and became embroiled in controversies during the crisis, mostly involving issues related to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and top members of his administration. There are pending investigations of some of those matters, including allegations that Cuomo, with Zucker's assistance, had directed priority coronavirus testing for members of Cuomo's family and people with connections to the governor.

By "some of those matters", the author of this report means the matter of the Cuomo administration's deadly 25 March 2020 directive, which forced New York nursing homes to blindly admit COVID patients being dumped out of hospitals under a policy developed, implemented, and enforced by the NYDOH under Howard Zucker. And then there's also the matter of Zucker's participation and complicity in the Cuomo administration's attempted cover-up of the full extent of the deaths that resulted among New York's nursing home residents.