“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts. Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”
~ Governor Andrew Cuomo
A NY Times article published Monday makes Andrew Cuomo look arrogant, incompetent, and responsible for the vaccine program’s inept launch. Somehow, Cuomo has alienated his most diehard supporters.
The NY Times reported that at least nine senior health officials left. It’s the middle of a pandemic, and the reason they gave for leaving is they are treated with a lack of respect by Governor Cuomo.
Cuomo, in turn, blames them for the poor launch of the vaccination program.
According to the NY Times: The troubled rollout came after Mr. Cuomo declined to use the longstanding vaccination plans that the State Department of Health had developed in recent years in coordination with local health departments. Instead, Mr. Cuomo adopted an approach that relied on large hospital systems to coordinate vaccinations of their own staff and much of the population.
On Friday, he further killed their morale.
“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference on Friday, referring to scientific expertise at all levels of government during the pandemic. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”
He Doesn’t Trust His Health Experts, Just His Donors
Cuomo claims he had to seize more control from his health officials.
Health officials say they only find out about changes from the media. That’s how they found out the rollout would be coordinated by hospitals.
The health officials found out as he announced it at one of his pressers.
He Lied About Nursing Home Deaths
Mr. Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic has come under criticism in recent days after the state attorney general, Letitia James, said his administration had undercounted the tally of Covid-19 deaths of nursing home residents by not publicly disclosing deaths of those residents that occurred at hospitals.
He hid the information and lied. He denied it was his policy that led to the deaths of the elderly in nursing home facilities that could not accommodate them.
He Decided Not to Use a Well-Planned Vaccine Distribution Plan
In the fall, Cuomo shelved vaccine distribution plans that top state health officials had been drawing up, one person with knowledge of the decision said. The plans had relied in part on years of preparations at the local level — an outgrowth of bioterrorism fears following Sept. 11 — and experience dispensing vaccines through county health departments during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.
As a result, local officials across the state complained that the Cuomo plan undercut their vaccination efforts.
“Wait a minute, why are we not doing this?” Anthony J. Picente Jr., a Republican who is county executive in upstate Oneida County, said he remembered thinking.
In an October letter to the Trump administration, the Cuomo administration told federal officials to work only with the state when it came to doling out doses. That made it difficult for the city to create its own vaccination sites, the official said.
This NY Times piece hits after Letitia James exposed Cuomo’s nursing home lie.
Cuomo will keep blaming everyone else. Now, it’s the fault of Health officials.
Subscribe to the Daily Newsletter
wpDiscuz
