- New York Governor Andrew Cuomo still enjoys high approval ratings after ending his streak of more than 100 days of daily coronavirus briefings.
- However, as Cuomo has made more specific returns to airwaves, including an appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on Monday, his early response to the pandemic has come under increased scrutiny.
- Particularly on the subject of an executive order that he signed sending COVID-19 patients to nursing homes, a new Associated Press report features numerous medical and scientific experts who question a study by the New York Department of Health.
- The conflict between Cuomo’s newly discovered popularity and closer examination of how he presided over the largest number of deaths of any state in the country foreshadows the formation of his legacy as one of the most prominent American figures during the pandemic.
- Visit the Business Insider home page for more stories.
After presiding over 30,000 deaths and subsequently reducing new COVID-19 cases to less than 1,000 on a seven-day moving average, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has placed himself in a unique and contradictory position.
Since his streak of more than 100 consecutive daily press sessions ended in June, which has become the subject of international intrigue and copious memes, Cuomo has made more targeted media appearances, both in the form of news conferences and in interviews with TV.
The governor’s recent media strategy, along with new reports on his early management of the coronavirus pandemic, reveals Cuomo’s unrivaled strengths and failures as one of the most important governors in modern American history.
Cuomo’s apparent return of victory also heralds his complicated legacy as one of the most prominent political leaders during the COVID era.
He is one of the most trusted figures in the American public when it comes to handling the virus, according to Insider polls, but he has also monitored the worst death toll of any state in the country.
The conflict between the two has largely developed below the surface for most Americans, and the fate of his legacy as a leader remains unclear.
‘Learn from New York’
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo speaks in front of piles of medical protection supplies during a press conference at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, which will partially become a temporary hospital during the outbreak of coronavirus disease ( COVID-19) in New York City, New York, USA, March 24, 2020.
REUTERS / Mike Segar
Since the mega streak of daily coronavirus briefings ended last month, Cuomo’s press conferences have often focused on multiple warnings to other states seeing spikes in new cases and hospitalizations.
These briefings have had a marked I told you The tone, at times, alongside Cuomo promoting his famous slide shows to demonstrate how New York was able to close its cases while other states barely flattened the curve amid the rush to reopen business.
“Just learn from what New York did, learn from the numbers, learn from the data,” Cuomo said Monday. “And we knew that if you recklessly reopened the virus it would take off again.”
Later that day, one of Cuomo’s most eye-catching television appearances came on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon on NBC.
The rather light-hearted nature of the interview didn’t sit well with some experts, like CNN’s Jake Tapper.
—Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) July 14, 2020
“I’m telling you everything is fine,” Cuomo told Fallon. “We went through hell and back … but we went from having, Jimmy, the worst infection rate in the country. Now we have the best infection rate.”
“So we really turned the corner,” he continued. “New Yorkers stepped forward … and we tamed the beast here in New York. So we just have to cross our fingers and hope it stays there.”
Tapper described Cuomo’s appearance in Fallon and recent comments about how New York shot down his cases as “a victory tour” and “revisionism” during his CNN show yesterday.
The Republican Governor’s Association was quick to post the video.
—The RGA (@The_RGA) July 14, 2020
Cuomo could have been low after the press briefing streak ended with new cases falling to their lowest levels since the start of the outbreak in March.
Instead, he indulged in a nightly interview to promote his response.
‘An unsustainable policy’
AP Photo / Kathy Willens
Within hours of Cuomo going to Fallon, the Associated Press published a long story examining the July New York report on how 6,300 coronavirus patients ended up in nursing homes, a move that has led to Cuomo’s strongest criticism. during the pandemic as the deaths occurred.
“Scientists, healthcare professionals, and elected officials attacked the report released last week for flawed methodology and selective statistics that eluded the actual impact of the March 25 order, which the state’s tally passed over 6,300 patients. with viruses recovering in nursing homes at the height of the pandemic, “the AP reported Tuesday.
Scientists who spoke to the AP for the story described the New York study as closely tailored to reach the governor’s previously stated conclusion that the virus was already in many nursing homes and Cuomo’s executive order to send them patients with COVID-19. it did not have a substantial impact on the spread or deaths.
“It appears that the Department of Health is trying to justify what was an unsustainable policy,” Charlene Harrington, an emeritus professor of nursing and sociology at the University of California, San Francisco, told the AP.
“Would this be published in an academic journal? No,” added Catherine Troisi, an epidemiologist at the University of Texas, Houston.
Central to the experts’ claims with the study was the unanswered question of what happened in the 20% of New York nursing homes that saw COVID-19 positive residents arrive when there were no cases in the facilities to start.
The study emphasized that 80% of state nursing homes had positive cases prior to infected arrivals under the executive order, but did not detail the other side of the equation.
New York’s coronavirus death count also does not include those who had the virus in nursing homes, but later died in a hospital, while states like California include those incidents in their count.
Cuomo’s office defended the order saying they were following CDC guidelines, but Cuomo demonstrated his willingness to reject President Trump’s decisions throughout the outbreak.
“They really need to acknowledge the fact that they made a mistake, that it was never correct to send COVID patients to nursing homes, and that people died from it,” said Dr. Michael Wasserman, president of the Long-Term Care Medicine Association. California Term. , he told the AP.
The governor’s office did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.
The mountain
Cuomo presents a green topographic sculpture model of the COVID-19 hospitalization curve from day 1 to day 111. This is the mountain New Yorkers climbed before the hospitalization curve stabilized after 42 days, he said during the Informative session.
Lev Radin / Pacific Press / LightRocket via Getty Images
Perhaps there is no better distillation of Cuomo’s signature style of micromanagement and optics manufacturing than the much-discussed poster he unveiled at Monday’s press conference.
“What if someone says, ‘OK, there are no words? Paint me a picture that tells the story of what you’re trying to say,'” Cuomo said as he reiterated his love for early-century posters.
He then unveiled the “New York Tough” poster, depicting Cuomo’s proverbial “mountain” of COVID-19 cases that eventually returned.
Cuomo had already pulled out a mountain accessory at previous briefings, which resembles the Devils Tower model of “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”.
However, the poster really said it all.
—Rich Azzopardi (@RichAzzopardi) July 13, 2020
From Salvador Dali’s version of a rubbing nose to the inside joke detail of the “boyfriend cliff”, referring to the “boyfriend” of Cuomo’s daughter Mariah, who stayed with the governor’s family during the closure, Cuomo’s poster provides an unvarnished lens in his view of New York’s pandemic response.
A boyfriend dangling off a cliff with one hand may have no relevance to how the New York government tried to mitigate the virus, but it fits Cuomo’s notion of being the protagonist of the COVID-19 saga.
During the huge popularity of Cuomo’s press conferences in April, one of his former campaign communication advisers, Lis Smith, who reached national prominence at the peak of Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign, told Insider that “what that we are seeing now is the best of Andrew Cuomo, and it is Andrew Cuomo that the people close to him know and love. “
By May, New York state lawmakers were criticizing Cuomo for taking “dictatorial powers” amid the pandemic.
Cuomo reached an approval rating of 87% for his handling of the virus in a Siena survey in late March, and his overall approval still remains stable at between 65% and 70%.
Despite everything, he has been at the center of the coronavirus story.
And for now at least, his perceived flaws have been reinforced by the public’s newly discovered admiration.
“He’s a bully, but he’s a bully with 85% approval,” a longtime Democratic lawmaker told Insider in May, when Cuomo still had plenty of mountains to descend.
