It was a freewheeling conversation in a Manhattan restaurant about how to change Albany. Andrew Cuomo, then New York’s attorney general, was a lock to be elected governor in 2010 and was gaming the…
nypost.com
On March 25, his office quietly issued the disastrous order that forced nursing homes to accept infected COVID-19 patients being discharged from hospitals.
The order, which contradicted federal guidelines calling for isolation and testing, gave nursing homes no grounds for refusing patients and barred them from asking if the patients were COVID-positive.
Despite his absurd defense, Cuomo’s actions showed he knew the order was a deadly mistake. He withdrew it in May and, as the bodies piled up, secretly changed the way his office reported fatalities.
Previously, deaths across the nation were counted against nursing homes if patients contracted the disease there, even if they died in hospitals. But New York began limiting the count to those who actually died in nursing homes.
It also stopped releasing the full data, which helped Cuomo get a book deal from a publisher and win an Emmy for his TV briefings. Both should be rescinded as fraudulent.
The con unraveled in January. In quick order, a report by New York Attorney General Letitia James concluded that the state undercounted nursing-home deaths by about 50 percent. And a judge ruled that Cuomo had to turn over all the data requested in a lawsuit by the Empire Center for Public Policy.
The magnitude of the coverup turned out to be breathtaking. In days, the total deaths in nursing homes and similar facilities surged from 8,700 to more than 15,000.
Cuomo’s patina of competence and credibility was shattered. It became a federal case when The Post revealed that a top aide
defended hiding the death totals by saying the Governor’s Office didn’t want the Justice Department to know the truth