During the earlier months of the Covid-19 pandemic, New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo was praised for how he handled the crisis. However, his status as a responsible, "good" star politician seems to have come to an end.
New York State Attorney General, Tish James, released a report in January detailing how Cuomo's administration underrepresented the number of Covid deaths in nursing homes by up to 50%. It has also come to light that Cuomo and his team delayed sharing Covid related information during an August request for nursing home data.
Cuomo denies these claims, saying that there is no reason to investigate as he has always fully reported all of the nursing homes' Covid deaths. Despite his efforts to preserve his image, many Democratic government officials have pushed to have Cuomo stripped of his emergency powers (ex: the power to decide on issues like business openings and closures) and for there to be a full investigation of this nursing home scandal. However, there is no sign that members of both the Democratic and Republican parties are seeking for Cuomo to resign or be impeached.
source: https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/20/politics/andrew-cuomo-nursing-home-controversy/index.html
4 comments:
I wonder why this issue was not a scandal much earlier; even the public information showing that Cuomo ordered covid patients into nursing homes on March 25th was damning enough that it was deleted off the state of New York's website. Instead, he was given an Emmy award and propped up as an "example" for other states to follow despite the fact that his state's covid-19 mortality rates were much higher than other states during the initial months of the pandemic. If Cuomo had truly covered it up, then an investigation would only make him look worse than he already does.
While I don't know if these statements have been proven true yet, if they have, I believe this should be given greater attention. One of the worst things a person, especially of a leadership position, can do is lie. No matter how insignificant the matter is, lying destroys a person's integrity, making them an unreliable source. While lowering the number of deaths may have seemed to have been better for his image, the bottom line is it was false information, and should never have been given in the first place. People deserve to know the truth, as well as should be able to be confident that officials in government are people whom they can trust and respect. Personally, I believe this all would have much better had he just handled this situation honestly.
I don't really know what motive Cumo would have to under report deaths in nursing homes. It doesn't really make him look bad if people in nursing homes are dying at a high rate from Covid, because we all know that elderly people are more likely to pass then younger people from this virus. Even though he did issue orders making safety precautions like sanitation and mask wearing mandatory, it isn't really his job to enforce them. However, he did lie about the deaths in nursing homes, which really undermines his credibility. If he's willing to lie about something this small, it makes you wonder what else he could be falsely reporting or lying about.
Lying politicians is nothing new. Downplaying things that make one’s government look bad is pretty common. For example, Lyndon B. Johnson’s administration had made many lies about the vietnam war that were ultimately exposed the pentagon papers. Nixon’s watergate scandal forced him to resign. However, Cuomo’s “scandal” is not nearly on the same scale - this is more on the lines of Ted Cruz lying about his record on immigration policy: it basically boils down to politicians taking advantage of their constituents ignorance. In the same way that Ted Cruz’s supporters may not completely know his past on immigration, Cuomo took advantage of the fact that he was the main source of covid related information and therefore had more power over what people knew (kind of like cable tv). I’m not saying lying is ethical, but sometimes it is necessary. For example, Barack Obama wouldn’t have been president if he hadn’t concealed his support of same sex marriage during the times that same sex marriage was unpopular. Only when the public supported it, did Obama say he did too. While you can argue this isn’t exactly lying, it still falls under a kind of “decievement.” On most occasions, lying is wrong, but if it helping against an evil, then it can be defensible.
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