Nursing Home Serial Killer Andrew Cuomo, Who Traded Campaign Cash for Seniors’ Lives, Messes with Texas

By: Daniel John Sobieski

New York’s bloviating Gov. Andrew Cuomo, half of the Cuomo Brothers comedy team with brother Chris on Comedy Central, I mean CNN,  has tried to excuse his incompetent stewardship over the health of the people of New York during the Chinese virus pandemic, by criticizing red states like Texas for opening up their economies “early” after the economy and job-killing lockdowns that have proven as great a threat to public health as any virus.

Gov. Cuomo, last seen joking about his availability on the dating scene as he ordered New York nursing homes to accept  COVID-19 patents, in effect a death sentence for the seniors residing there, took Texas to task for a recent uptick in coronavirus cases, largely the result of increased testing. Cuomo once famously said that President Trump would have to decide which New Yorkers died and which lived because his state was running out of ventilators and they never did. Nor did he run out of hospital beds thanks to President Trump who sent the Army Corp of Engineers to turn the Javits Center into a hospital, built a field hospital in Central Park, and deployed a Navy hospital. He had a surplus of beds and ventilators and yet managed to kill thousands of seniors by not utilizing these facilities and instead by cramming patients into nursing homes he turned into COVID-19 incubators. Andrew Cuomo is definitely a physician in bad need of healing himself and has no right criticizing other state governors as he did:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo criticized other state leaders’ responses to the coronavirus pandemic Thursday, saying some states who rushed to reopen their economies were playing politics….

I say to them all look at the numbers,” Cuomo said in response, referring to conservative states seeing a rise in Covid-19 cases. “You played politics with this virus, and you lost. You told the people of this state, you told the people of this country, the White House, ‘Don’t worry about it. Go about your business. This is all Democratic hyperbole.’

That’s not exactly what they said as they pointed out the health consequences of a lockdown, the hypocrisy of and constitutional issues with closing churches but keeping liquor stores open, and the hyperbole of bogus death projections from Cuomo and others using computer models that were consistently wrong regarding cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Yet they drove public policy and kept Americans who are not stupid or suicidal from earning a living and exercising their constitutional rights.

Cuomo claimed federal guidelines led to what amounts to his criminal negligence, forcing his hand, yet most states did not do what he did:

Other states, recognizing the dangers of infecting the vulnerable, required, or encouraged nursing homes to set up separate units or staffs to handle patients testing positive. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, widely criticized in the national media for avoiding a total lockdown, zeroed in on nursing homes, encouraging repeated testing and temperature-taking of residents and staff and isolating anyone testing positive. Florida, a state with 2 million more people than New York, had just 714 nursing home deaths, 13% of the number in New York.

One estimate says nursing homes have accounted for upwards of 46% of virus deaths, yet states like Como’s New York made no effort to protect seniors who were among the most vulnerable. Perhaps it was campaign cash that persuaded Cuomo to look the other way as seniors were sent to their deaths. He accepted reelection cash from a hospital association and then gave immunity to those who operate nursing homes:

As Governor Andrew Cuomo faced a spirited challenge in his bid to win New York’s 2018 Democratic primary, his political apparatus got a last-minute boost: a powerful healthcare industry group suddenly poured more than $1m into a Democratic committee backing his campaign.

Less than two years after that flood of cash from the Greater New York Hospital Association (GNYHA), Cuomo signed legislation last month quietly shielding hospital and nursing home executives from the threat of lawsuits stemming from the coronavirus outbreak. The provision, inserted into an annual budget bill by Cuomo’s aides, created one of the nation’s most explicit immunity protections for healthcare industry officials, according to legal experts.

Well, isn’t that special. Again Cuomo’s corruption and incompetence give him no right to criticize the performance of other states opening up from coercive lockdowns. Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick was not amused by Cuomo. As FoxNews reported:

Texas Republican Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick hit back at New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Thursday after the Democrat criticized the Lone Star State’s recent uptick in coronavirus cases.

Appearing on “The Ingraham Angle” with host Laura Ingraham, Patrick called Cuomo a “fraud” when it comes to his governing and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing an exorbitant number of deaths amongst seniors living in New York nursing homes or long-term care facilities.

“He had about 6,000 people die in nursing homes. We’ve had less than a thousand — and that’s on top of the other people who have died in New York,” Patrick exclaimed. “He short-changed the people of New York and he cost people their lives.

“And, how dare ]Cuomo] go on and point his finger at any other governor [in] any other state for what he did,” he added. “He killed people in New York. And, I’ll say it clearly: because of his policies of shipping people to nursing homes.” …

Patrick confirmed that while Texas has seen a spike in cases, it was expected because they’re now testing almost 35,000 people every day in 254 counties.

“So, we expected those numbers to go up. Our hospitalizations are up…The good news is we’re not seeing it translate to the ICU unit or into fatalities,” he remarked.

After yelling at President Trump for not locking down the nation soon enough and the people of New York for not obeying his lockdown edicts, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo admits that most Chinese Wuhan virus infections occur in the very place he, assorted health experts, and the anti-Trump lamestream media insist we should be – in our homes. And nearly all of those occur in people with preexisting conditions:

Most new Covid-19 hospitalizations in New York state are from people who were staying home and not venturing much outside, a “shocking” finding, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Wednesday.

The preliminary data was from 100 New York hospitals involving about 1,000 patients, Cuomo said at his daily briefing.

It shows that 66% of new admissions were from people who had largely been sheltering at home. The next highest source of admissions was from nursing homes, 18%.

“If you notice, 18% of the people came from nursing homes, less than 1% came from jail or prison, 2% came from the homeless population, 2% from other congregate facilities, but 66% of the people were at home, which is shocking to us,” Cuomo said.

“This is a surprise: Overwhelmingly, the people were at home,” he added. “We thought maybe they were taking public transportation, and we’ve taken special precautions on public transportation, but actually no, because these people were literally at home.”

They were sheltering in place just as “experts” like Dts. Fauci and Birx and politicians like Andrew Cuomo have been telling us to do, yelling at us to do. This survey also showed that virtually all new cases are from folks with preexisting conditions and those who are in identifiable and vulnerable populations: Just as politicians are releasing prisoners from the confined space and tight quarters of a jail cell, they order us to shut up and sit down in the limited confines of our homes. Sunlight is the best disinfectant but we, particularly the younger, healthier, and least vulnerable among us, are not allowed to go outside. We are to shelter in place and die in place:

The information was from a statewide survey of 1,000 patients at 100 New York hospitals. The results are preliminary but offer a strong picture of who’s most at risk.

The study showed that virtually all coronavirus cases, 96 percent, were people who have other health issues; 73 percent of cases were people age 51 or older and in a state that’s majority white, a majority of the coronavirus patients are black or Latino.

Remember how Andrew Cuomo yelled at us for disobeying his orders?  By doing so we were endangering lives, including our own:

On Friday, March 20, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the “New York State on PAUSE” executive order mandating that 100% of the state’s non-essential businesses close or have their employees work remotely. Non-essential gatherings, regardless of size, are also barred under the measure….

“When I issued the stay-at-home order, it wasn’t, ‘It would be nice if you did.’ It is a mandate,” said Cuomo. “Stay at home. If you’re a non-essential worker, stay at home”

“If you leave the house, you’re exposing yourself to danger. If you leave the house, you’re exposing others to danger. You can leave the house, go home, and infect whoever’s at home. So stay at home,” he continued.

Now Cuomo echoes Captain Louis Renault in the 1942 classic movie Casablanca who uttered the iconic line, “I am shocked- shocked- to find that gambling is going on in here!” Cuomo is shocked, shocked to find his stay-at-home mandate has killed New Yorkers who never left their homes, By staying home, they exposed themselves to danger. Cuomo is also probably shocked, shocked if he even accepts responsibility, that his administration’s executive order shoveled COVID patients into nursing homes to infect and kill in droves the vulnerable residents inside, even as the hospital ship Comfort was in New York Harbor to receive patients, just as was the underutilized converted Javits Center.

New York Post columnist Miranda Devine recently noted that Cuomo is still sending COOVID patients into nursing homes, not only failing to protect the most vulnerable but deliberately putting them at risk:

In an interview on “Fox & Friends” with host Ainsley Earhardt, Devine said that COVID-19 patients were transferred back into nursing home facilities because of an order from Cuomo in late March.

“And, it’s obscene really that he’s not admitting that now. He is still sending them back there and he’s acting as if there was no choice. Of course, there was a choice,” she remarked, noting that President Trump sent a Navy ship to New York City to assist and the Javits Center was converted into a care facility.

The nursing homes were begging for them not to be sent back, these COVID positive patients from hospitals and it was just impossible for them. They were short-staffed. How could they quarantine these elderly, frail people?” she asked….

“He is still doing it and this is what is so reprehensible. It’s one thing to make a mistake in the heat of the moment. It’s another to dig your heels in while people are still dying,” Devine continued. “I mean, in this last week, we have added another 1,700 that hadn’t been counted before to the death toll in nursing homes. So, just stop it. Admit you did wrong and fix it.”

Somehow this was never brought up when Chris Cuomo, who violated quarantine rules to visit another property he owned, interviewed brother Andrew. Instead of asking why Andrew herded COVID patients into nursing homes, Chris asked Andrew how he felt about being single and eligible again.

Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Post, Michael Goodwin, has no time for such nonsense and notes the callous indifference of Andrew Cuomo as he literally sentences New York seniors to death as they stay in their homes – nursing homes that are unsafe:

On Tuesday, Cuomo was asked about a report from the Associated Press that his team had added more than 1,700 deaths to the count of those who died in nursing homes, bringing the total to at least 4,813.

“I don’t know the details, frankly,” the governor answered, turning to an aide.

Sgt. Schultz reporting for duty!

Gov. Cuomo will not take responsibility for this ongoing atrocity and, as he lectures President Trump and the American people on our duties and responsibilities, he is willing to lie about his culpability in the deaths of thousands of the most vulnerable:

“The nursing home has to make the decision,” he said Tuesday. “If they don’t think they can take care of someone, all they have to do is say no.”

In this case, he “knows” something that’s simply not true, according to nursing home executives. The March 25 order that forced infected patients on them allows for no exceptions and has not been changed.

The killer fifth paragraph still reads: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. NHs are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to ­admission or readmission.”

Cuomo, the great health care expert and governor extraordinaire, says he didn’t know. But it is the job of this know-it-all who daily lectures the nation and President Trump on what needs to be done to see to the well-being of his people first – particularly the most vulnerable, the ones he ordered to stay home and the ones trapped in nursing homes. He didn’t. He lied and people died.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.