How Gov Cuomo’s Missteps Allowed COVID-19 To Overwhelm The US

Thursday, October 22, 2020
By Paul Martin

by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Thu, 10/22/2020

Earlier this week, NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo attacked the governors of New Jersey and Connecticut over outbreaks that recently sent case numbers in those states to their highest levels in months. He then turned his attention to President Trump, his perpetual antagonist, and in an unusually scathing denunciation, Cuomo slammed Trump as a “super spreader” and claimed Trump was personally responsible for every death caused by COVID-19 in the state.

Cuomo has stepped up his public briefings again lately, as the number of COVID-19 cases is once again on the rise in his state, which reported more than 2,000 new cases yesterday for the first time in months. But the governor has also just published a new book detailing his experience as ‘America’s governor’, stepping up to lead during the early days of the crisis, when his briefings were carried live on national cable news.

No other governor received such fawning treatment by the press. But in a new report, the Financial Times, a British newspaper respected for its impartial coverage of American politics, digs into the “mythology” surrounding Cuomo’s reputation. The paper found that both Gov Cuomo and NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio repeatedly ignored warnings from experts, wasting six weeks (including the entire month of February) urging citizens to go about their lives, as the virus silently spread across the city.

When confronted with their initial response, both men have claimed that they were ‘flying blind’, forced to battle the virus without adequate testing resources thanks to the ineptitude of the Trump Administration. Other reports have detailed the bureaucratic incompetence at the CDC that seemed to almost deliberately delay the widespread availability of tests. But both men had been advised of the risks, and still they resisted closing schools and businesses – for fear it might hurt the city’s economy – or take other precautions to limit travel into and out of the state.

The inadequate government response led to divisions between public hospitals and wealthy private hospitals, between the rich and poor, the suburbs/Manhattan vs. the Bronx and the outerboroughs. Oxiris Barbot, who quit early on after being sidelined by Mayor de Blasio, warned in early February that New Yorkers should stay calm because “this is not something that you’re going to contract in the subway or on the bus.” Even back then, the scientific community knew enough to call this statement into question.

But the reality is that scares over previous epidemics hitting New York had proven to be just that – scares. And the mayor and governor were treating the disease like Ebola, preparing for isolated cases, not a full-scale outbreak.

Others claimed New York should have been heading into lockdown when the first National Guardsmen arrived in New Rochelle. But that’s not what happened. Instead, public health professionals who warned that hospitals needed to start stocking up on PPE in February were ignored. A few weeks later, nurses in the Bronx were treating patients while swathed in garbage bags, while hospitals on the Upper East Side still had empty ICU beds and more than enough masks to go around.

The Rest…HERE

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