It’s hard to know what’s worse – dying than lying.
More than 32,000 New Yorkers have died from the coronavirus, a toll higher than any other state. New York also ranks second in at least out of every 50 states, with deaths per million inhabitants. Only New Jersey did it less.
You would not know it, listen to Goai Andrew Cuomo, who complained that his administration ‘tamed the beast’. Or the media praising him and dealing with many, many lower deaths.
Cuomo does everything he can to cover the mistakes. He supports two-pronged efforts in Albany to investigate the deaths of thousands of elderly people in nursing homes destroyed by the virus.
Legislators need to persevere, and in fact broaden their research to address the poor performance of many hospitals in the state. On March 2, a day after the first coronavirus case was revealed in New York, Cuomo told New Yorkers not to worry because “we have the best health care system on the planet.” That’s a whole lot. Patients treated for COVID-19 in hospitals here have died at more than twice the national average. California has had more cases of coronavirus than New York, but fewer than a third as many deaths.
The press rarely puts the figures into perspective, talking about positive cases but not death rates, increasing but not totals. Looking at deaths per million shows the biggest impact – the biggest failure – was the Northeast Polder. New Jersey: 1,797 deaths per million residents. New York: 1,689.
Florida, target of any number of alarmist headlines, is down to 408 per million inhabitants. Mar Gov. Ron DeSantis is a Republican and unfortunately not having a CNN anchor as a brother.
Cuomo is praised even after he and the Department of Health spent years stripping the outskirts of New York City of enough hospital beds and equipment. There are five hospital beds for every 1,000 residents in Manhattan, but only 1.8 beds for every 1,000 residents of Queens and Brooklyn. The result? When the pandemic broke out, those hospitals were quickly overwhelmed. The death toll for COVID-19 patients at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan was 17%. At Coney Island Hospital, 41% of COVID-19 patients did not. You could also be in a third world country.
New York State is stepping up its efforts to protect nursing home residents from COVID-19. Florida and Texas, both populated states, have accounted for only one-quarter of the deaths in nursing homes.
Figures do not lie. New York did not destroy the coronavirus. The virus took thousands of lives in New York unnecessarily, due to the mistakes of the Cuomo administration.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York.
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