CNN's Tapper Slams NY Gov: Stop 'Crowing' Amid COVID Failures
NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo makes an announcement and holds media briefing at 3rd Avenue office. (Sipa via AP)
Tapper began his criticism on Twitter in a series of tweets:
"NY state has lost more than 32,000 lives to COVID-19. So while it's great that the numbers have gone down, it's perplexing to see crowing, Cuomo going on Fallon, etc. No other state has lost as many lives, not even close. New Jersey is next with 17,000+
"Yes, this has been a major challenge for every leader, but New York's leaders do not have a success story to tell. It's been about missteps and late actions.
"It's great that the numbers have gone down, and I hope to God they stay there. But New York's leaders were late and made many mistakes; it's been an absolute tragedy."
More than 400,000 people have been infected with COVID-19 in New York and at least 30,000 have died. The state is currently testing about 60,000 per day.
New York averaged about 10 virus-related deaths a day in July, a huge drop from the 799 deaths over a 24-hour period at the peak of the outbreak in April. About 790 people are hospitalized now, down from nearly 19,000 people a few months ago.
Tapper also laid into Cuomo on this show, "The Lede""
"The Governor Andrew Cuomo seems to be on something of a victory tour congratulating the state and himself for defeating the virus, even selling this poster which shows his state getting over the mountain by bringing down the curve, during the '111 days of hell,' as the governor put it," he said.
"The poster includes references to his daughters and a boyfriend, little inside jokes," Tapper continued. "There are no illustrations, however, of the more than 32,000 dead New Yorkers, the highest death toll by far, of any state.
"No rendering on that poster of criticism that Governor Cuomo ignored warnings, no depiction of the study that he could have saved thousands of lives had he and Mayor [Bill] de Blasio acted sooner," Tapper said. "No painting on that poster of his since-rescinded order that nursing homes take all infected patients in."
Gov. Cuomo is currently taking a victory lap for his handling of the coronavirus in New York, but one decision made early in the shutdown continues to dog him.
The criticism of the nursing home order has been circulating since May when Cuomo reversed the order. Last week Cuomo’s administration published a report attempting to clear his name once and for all. The report flatly claims “nursing home admissions from hospitals were not a driver of nursing
home infections or fatalities.” Instead, the report blames the spread of the virus on health care workers and notes that 80% of the homes that took in COVID patients already had someone who had tested positive for the virus. But the report isn’t a scientific study and medical professionals contacted by the Associated Press said it looked more like a political document.
“I think they got a lot of political pushback and so their response was, ‘This isn’t a problem. Don’t worry about it,’” said Rupak Shivakoti, an epidemiologist at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health.
“It seems like the Department of Health is
trying to justify what was an untenable policy,” added Charlene Harrington, a professor emerita of nursing and sociology at the University of California at San Francisco.
Cuomo has claimed the attacks on his nursing home policy are just “ugly politics” and furthermore that the report vindicates him. But when the Associated Press asked experts to look at it, they noticed that it really sidesteps the central question: What impact did the order have on deaths in nursing homes?
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