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While I despise Cuomo, I'm a little leary about condemning politicians about their actions back in the early days of the pandemic. Taking action is sometimes n

While I despise Cuomo, I'm a little leary about condemning politicians about their actions back in the early days of the pandemic. Taking action is sometimes necessary even with incomplete or bad information, and it will sometimes turn out to have been the wrong decision. That's inevitable. It would often be worse to have an executive that is paralyzed in fear of making a decision that turns out to be wrong. Now, the post-facto coverup, that doesn't deserve any benefit of the doubt. That's just sleaze and corruption.

throwaway292893 6y ago
The early days of the pandemic the first outbreak was in a nursing home in Washington. That was when we were still counting the first hundred and contact tracing. The people running the homes dissented against it. He still did it. It doesn't take a genius to know you will infect elderly people by sending a highly contagious disease into their facility. The cover up is beyond despicable, but the original action is indefensible.
- ggamecrazy 6y ago
  Where could those people going back to nursing home go? I'm assuming that if another facility or their family could have taken them they would have opted for that. Reminder that likely these people needed 24/7 skilled nursing help.
  - throwaway292893 6y ago
    45 other states found ways to safely handle this scenario. Either properly supply your nursing homes with PPE or bring the nursing home staff to the hospitals.
    - plussed_reader 6y ago
      And if there aren't enough bodies to meet that requirement, then what?
    - heavyset_go 6y ago
      > Either properly supply your nursing homes with PPE or bring the nursing home staff to the hospitals. The PPE that was acutely in short supply and unavailable at the beginning of the pandemic? Even doctors and nurses didn't have adequate PPE back then, and many of them got sick and died because of it.
      - throwaway292893 6y ago
        > and many of them got sick and died because of it. Source of people dying due to lack of PPE? As I understand it, there was always a low supply, not no supply. Other states managed to supply their nursing homes just fine. Seems like rationalization. Cuomo never came out and said this was caused by lack of PPE. Unless you have a source that they weren't able to equip their nursing homes due to supply issues you are assuming.
- mattmanser 6y ago
  UK did exactly the same thing. Everyone was panicking that the epidemic would grow exponentially and the hospitals would get over-run. Hence freeing up beds, and building a bunch of eventually pointless overflow hospitals. A lot of modelling was claiming that's exactly what would happen, e.g. Imperial College London claiming millions of deaths, while the actual infection curves never hit those numbers. In hindsight, that's not how the virus works, it seems to infect clusters and then drops and eventually levels out, jumps to a new clusters does the same thing, and on.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - WalterGR 6y ago
    > Imperial College London claiming millions of deaths, while the actual infection curves never hit those numbers. Because we took action to avoid that. I truly don't understand why people keep repeating such dezinformatsiya.
    - timr 6y ago
      The Imperial College report included projections if all recommended NPIs were implemented. That includes lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and so on. Those projections were still wildly off the mark. There is no way to look at their projections and take them seriously as modelers. They were simply wrong. They made bad parameter assumptions, didn't question their results or cross-validate, and ran with the scariest projections of their models.
      - WalterGR 6y ago
        I don't think that's correct. https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathematical-models https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathema... "For those readers who are unfamiliar with it, the Imperial College model is the one that projected that 2.2 million Americans (and 510,000 residents of the UK) could die from COVID-19 over the next two years without public health interventions." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 "When updated data in the Imperial team’s model indicated that the United Kingdom’s health service would soon be overwhelmed with severe cases of COVID-19, and might face more than 500,000 deaths if the government took no action... The same model suggested that, with no action, the United States might face 2.2 million deaths..."
japostoles 6y ago
It was always a bad decision, and we questioned it in realtime. Also, after the death toll rolled in they deleted the executive order from the New York State website despite it still being in effect. There was a cover up from the moment the order was issued, I'm not sure how this action was taken in good faith.
babesh 6y ago
Threatening to take medical licenses away for administering vaccines to people who weren’t eligible even if the vaccine was going to be thrown away.... and then doing a 180 and threatening to take away medical licenses if vaccines were not administered. Writing a book about his supposed epic handling of the virus. Still in office.
- lainga 6y ago
  And he won an Emmy for it!
specialp 6y ago
I am a New Yorker that had a relative die of COVID in a nursing home last year. I could understand the decision at first because they were literally constructing hospitals on athletic fields at my local university to deal with the packed hospitals. But own up to it and don't cover it up. Regardless of your political persuasion what Cuomo did is wrong by covering it up. We can't have 2 standards for politicians based on if it is someone on your team.
- zwily 6y ago
  Did those hospitals ever get used? I heard some reports that the auxiliary hospitals brought to NYC (especially the floating Navy(?) one) never even saw patients, for lots of obnoxious red-tape reasons.
  - specialp 6y ago
    No not really. The literal field hospitals were not done before the spike subsided, and the ship saw only a few patients. The ship was specifically NOT for covid patients, and so few patients that were not COVID were coming in. And yes there was a lot of red tape to get someone there.
nyczomg 6y ago
Not just sleaze and corruption. This administration was hiding data about a pandemic when we desperately needed more information about how to fight the pandemic. That is despicable and indefensible. I can forgive bad decisions in a time of crisis. But what they did was way beyond that.

throwaway292893 6y ago

The early days of the pandemic the first outbreak was in a nursing home in Washington. That was when we were still counting the first hundred and contact tracing. The people running the homes dissented against it. He still did it. It doesn't take a genius to know you will infect elderly people by sending a highly contagious disease into their facility. The cover up is beyond despicable, but the original action is indefensible.

ggamecrazy 6y ago
Where could those people going back to nursing home go? I'm assuming that if another facility or their family could have taken them they would have opted for that. Reminder that likely these people needed 24/7 skilled nursing help.
- throwaway292893 6y ago
  45 other states found ways to safely handle this scenario. Either properly supply your nursing homes with PPE or bring the nursing home staff to the hospitals.
  - plussed_reader 6y ago
    And if there aren't enough bodies to meet that requirement, then what?
  - heavyset_go 6y ago
    > Either properly supply your nursing homes with PPE or bring the nursing home staff to the hospitals. The PPE that was acutely in short supply and unavailable at the beginning of the pandemic? Even doctors and nurses didn't have adequate PPE back then, and many of them got sick and died because of it.
    - throwaway292893 6y ago
      > and many of them got sick and died because of it. Source of people dying due to lack of PPE? As I understand it, there was always a low supply, not no supply. Other states managed to supply their nursing homes just fine. Seems like rationalization. Cuomo never came out and said this was caused by lack of PPE. Unless you have a source that they weren't able to equip their nursing homes due to supply issues you are assuming.
mattmanser 6y ago
UK did exactly the same thing. Everyone was panicking that the epidemic would grow exponentially and the hospitals would get over-run. Hence freeing up beds, and building a bunch of eventually pointless overflow hospitals. A lot of modelling was claiming that's exactly what would happen, e.g. Imperial College London claiming millions of deaths, while the actual infection curves never hit those numbers. In hindsight, that's not how the virus works, it seems to infect clusters and then drops and eventually levels out, jumps to a new clusters does the same thing, and on.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- WalterGR 6y ago
  > Imperial College London claiming millions of deaths, while the actual infection curves never hit those numbers. Because we took action to avoid that. I truly don't understand why people keep repeating such dezinformatsiya.
  - timr 6y ago
    The Imperial College report included projections if all recommended NPIs were implemented. That includes lockdowns, masks, social distancing, and so on. Those projections were still wildly off the mark. There is no way to look at their projections and take them seriously as modelers. They were simply wrong. They made bad parameter assumptions, didn't question their results or cross-validate, and ran with the scariest projections of their models.
    - WalterGR 6y ago
      I don't think that's correct. https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathematical-models https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/in-defense-of-mathema... "For those readers who are unfamiliar with it, the Imperial College model is the one that projected that 2.2 million Americans (and 510,000 residents of the UK) could die from COVID-19 over the next two years without public health interventions." https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6 "When updated data in the Imperial team’s model indicated that the United Kingdom’s health service would soon be overwhelmed with severe cases of COVID-19, and might face more than 500,000 deaths if the government took no action... The same model suggested that, with no action, the United States might face 2.2 million deaths..."

japostoles 6y ago

It was always a bad decision, and we questioned it in realtime. Also, after the death toll rolled in they deleted the executive order from the New York State website despite it still being in effect. There was a cover up from the moment the order was issued, I'm not sure how this action was taken in good faith.

babesh 6y ago

Threatening to take medical licenses away for administering vaccines to people who weren’t eligible even if the vaccine was going to be thrown away.... and then doing a 180 and threatening to take away medical licenses if vaccines were not administered. Writing a book about his supposed epic handling of the virus. Still in office.

lainga 6y ago
And he won an Emmy for it!

specialp 6y ago

I am a New Yorker that had a relative die of COVID in a nursing home last year. I could understand the decision at first because they were literally constructing hospitals on athletic fields at my local university to deal with the packed hospitals. But own up to it and don't cover it up. Regardless of your political persuasion what Cuomo did is wrong by covering it up. We can't have 2 standards for politicians based on if it is someone on your team.

zwily 6y ago
Did those hospitals ever get used? I heard some reports that the auxiliary hospitals brought to NYC (especially the floating Navy(?) one) never even saw patients, for lots of obnoxious red-tape reasons.
- specialp 6y ago
  No not really. The literal field hospitals were not done before the spike subsided, and the ship saw only a few patients. The ship was specifically NOT for covid patients, and so few patients that were not COVID were coming in. And yes there was a lot of red tape to get someone there.

nyczomg 6y ago

Not just sleaze and corruption. This administration was hiding data about a pandemic when we desperately needed more information about how to fight the pandemic. That is despicable and indefensible. I can forgive bad decisions in a time of crisis. But what they did was way beyond that.