New York Governor Andrew Cuomo faces violent backlash from the scientific community and others for using a state report supporting his theory that coronavirus deaths in nursing homes were not caused by his policies, despite that the report may not have fully explored the issue.
Cuomo has been insisting that the thousands of nursing home deaths had nothing to do with his March 25 order requiring nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients who were medically stable without analyzing them, claiming that the deaths were caused by infected staff members who spread the virus. . The new report supports this, but experts have questioned the methods of the report.
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Would this be published in an academic journal? No, “epidemiologist Catherine Troisi of the University of Texas at Houston told The Associated Press.
The report says 80 percent of the 310 nursing homes in the state that took coronavirus patients already had cases before Cuomo issued their order, but Troisi said it doesn’t address what impact the order had on the other 20 percent. .
Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at New York City University School of Public Health, told the AP that the number of state-reported nursing home deaths does not include residents who died in a hospital. Nash said this is a “potentially huge problem” that does not count the cost of the virus and could “introduce bias into the analysis.”
Rupak Shivakoti, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, noted that even if the report is accurate in stating that infected staff was the single most important factor contributing to residents’ deaths, the order may still have played an important role.
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“If they didn’t infect other patients directly,” Shivakoti said, “they could still have infected a worker.”
Cuomo blamed “dirty politics” for the accusations he faced for his order, which he finally rescinded on May 10. He said it was a “political conspiracy that deaths in nursing homes were preventable.”
Rep. Steve Scalise, R-Republican, who is the leader of a House subcommittee on the COVID crisis, said in a letter to Cuomo last week that “[b]Unconvincing data manipulations, insults and half-heartedness will not make the facts or questions they ask disappear. ”
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi responded: “We are used to Republicans denying science, but now they are screaming about time, space, and dates on a calendar to distract themselves from the many, many, embarrassing failures of the federal government. . No one is buying it. “
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Charlene Harrington, professor emeritus of nursing and sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, is not convinced by the explanations from New York.
“It appears that the Health Department is trying to justify what was an unsustainable policy,” said Harrington.
Cuomo, who initially received adulation for his leadership during the pandemic, was also recently criticized for selling a poster promoting New York’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.
On Monday, Cuomo released the poster he designed called “New York Tough” that suggested capturing the journey his state went through while tackling the pandemic.
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According to the pre-order page, the poster costs $ 14.50 plus shipping and handling, and “New York State does not profit from the sale of this poster.”
Cuomo also recently told 1010 WINS radio that he is writing a book about his experience in managing the pandemic.
Associated Press contributed to this report.
