14 June 2024: Hochul Commission Reviewing Cuomo Pandemic Policies Faults Cuomo for Leadership Failures, but Not COVID Nursing Home Deaths

Cuomo Faulted for Pandemic Leadership but Not for Nursing Home Deaths

The New York Times reports on the findings of an audit commissioned by replacement NY State Governor Kathy Hochul on the policies her disgraced predecessor Andrew M. Cuomo implemented during 2020's coronavirus pandemic in New York.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

A long-awaited review of New York State’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic under former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo declined to fault him for the thousands of people who died of Covid-19 at nursing homes.

The report said the nursing home deaths in New York were largely consistent with national outcomes, but it nonetheless criticized Mr. Cuomo’s decision to centralize the state’s pandemic response in his office as “a significant and unnecessary mistake.”

Gov. Kathy Hochul commissioned the review, which was conducted by the Olson Group, a consulting firm, after she succeeded Mr. Cuomo in 2021. The purpose was to scrutinize New York’s handling of a crisis that shuttered businesses, strained social services and relegated millions of children to remote learning.

Remarkably, the New York Times's story describes the commission's report with words that suggest it was a whitewash for state officials and their decisions during the pandemic:

Investigators describe the nursing home issue as “a source of emotional distress to families as well as an area where the state came up well short in terms of both perception and performance, although overall outcomes were not substantially inconsistent with overall performance in such facilities nationwide.”

But despite blaming Mr. Cuomo’s micromanaging of the pandemic response, the report does not dig deeper on who was responsible for the failures.

Instead, a note in the report’s conclusion says state officials “made it clear” that the report should focus on lessons for the future, rather than mistakes of the past.

This entry was added to the timeline on 10 August 2024. We're playing catchup for this ongoing story after wrapping up a couple of other projects....