Andrew Cuomo's deadly failures

On March 30, as COVID-19 cases and deaths piled up across the Empire State, and the USS Comfort arrived to calm a broken city, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called New York the “canary in the coal mine” of the U.S. coronavirus crisis. “What you see us going through here, you will see happening all across this country.”

Except it didn’t.

Instead, New York racked up massive coronavirus deaths, as the governor’s policies (as well as those of Mayor Bill de Blasio) left New Yorkers exposed. The rest of the country suffered losses, but nowhere near the intensely high number reached by New York.

The story of Cuomo’s role in the pandemic has been massaged by the media. And, indeed, Cuomo’s “just the facts” press conferences were initially soothing at a time of confusion and disarray. His Powerpoint presentations, blessedly boring during a tumultuous time, often began with what day it was, a feature appreciated by people in a seemingly permanent Groundhog Day in their homes. One of the slides invariably included raw numbers of how many had been diagnosed, how many were in the hospital, and how many had died. But as the smoke began to clear, it’s become increasingly obvious that the governor’s bad decisions, petty rivalries, and general incompetence caused much of the destruction in the first place.