Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 grandstanding has decimated New York City

Anyone still thinking border closures are the solution to COVID-19 need only look to locked-down New York, where Andrew Cuomo’s incompetence has lead to the country’s highest death toll, writes James Morrow.

Along with obesity, heart disease, and respiratory problems, it turns out that Trump Derangement Syndrome is one of the most deadly comorbidities associated with COVID-19.

Ever since the coronavirus took hold in the United States, the State of New York has stood out as a disaster zone of the first order – and has been used as an example by leaders around the world, including in Australia, to show what can happen if you let the virus get out of control.

Yet Andrew Cuomo, New York’s grandstanding, Trump-hating governor has largely gotten a pass for letting this happen on his watch by an American media that can’t get enough of his habit of picking fights with the president.

To take just one example, as recently as a week ago Cuomo was being celebrated by the New York Times for referring to COVID-19 as a “European” virus in a press conference.

Take that, Trump!

Never mind the death count, which on any reckoning has been appalling.

As recently as a week ago Cuomo was being celebrated for referring to COVID-19 as a “European” virus. Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty

By the numbers, New York accounts for nearly one-third of America’s coronavirus deaths. The state’s death rate of 1,485 per million people would make it the most deadly COVID-19 hotspot in the world, were it its own country.

It’s worth noting by comparison that Sweden, whose laid-back herd immunity policies have seen it condemned for supposedly putting the economy before people, has suffered a relatively scant 384 deaths per million.

What’s worse, the tragedy in New York hasn’t just been the result of factors like population density, though that no doubt didn’t help.

Instead, protected from criticism for being the anti-Trump, the ruinously incompetent Cuomo mismanaged his state’s response every step of the way, even ordering nursing homes full of the most vulnerable New Yorkers to take coronavirus sufferers or lose their accreditation.

That’s not a misprint: on March 25, as the pandemic was ramping up, New York authorities ordered nursing homes to take stable COVID-19 patients released from hospital, even if they were still positive.

By the numbers, New York accounts for nearly one-third of America’s coronavirus deaths. Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty

By May 1, the latest date for which figures are available, more than 4,800 people had been taken by coronavirus in the state’s nursing homes – though the number is surely far higher by now – amounting to one-fifth of the 24,039 deaths that had been recorded by New York at the start of the month.

Even more bizarrely, Cuomo did this while the US navy hospital ship Comfort was steaming towards New York and the city’s giant Javits Convention Centre was being converted to a field hospital.

Neither saw much action; the Comfort stayed for five weeks and treated just 182 patients, 70 per cent of whom were suffering COVID-19.

Turning the tired argument of the lockdown fetishists that those who want to remove the more onerous (and, let’s face it, least scientific) restrictions on society are willing to sacrifice the old and the vulnerable to do so, Cuomo quite literally exposed thousands of elderly people to the virus – while at the same time imposing some of the strictest lockdown measures in the country.

Cuomo made other missteps, too.

Cuomo has seemed more focused on taking aim at Donald Trump than in managing the crisis. Picture: Mandel Ngan/AFP

A report by ProPublica has blasted Cuomo for getting into a fight with New York City mayor Bill De Blasio over whether to shut the city, reacting too late, and even blaming the press for not raising the alarm – even though the New York Times alone had written almost 500 stories on the looming threat of coronavirus by the time he acted.

What’s worse, by the time he moved, it was too late.

But on the theory that an over-reaction is better than no reaction at all, he put his state as well as New York City into a perpetual lockdown that has caused countless businesses to shutter, jobs to be lost, and forced previously middle and working class families literally onto the bread line.

As a powerful editorial in the New York Post noted this week, in the past month and a half Catholic Charities has seen a 200 per cent increase in demand for its services.

Last Friday, police reported 3,500 New Yorkers lining up outside a Queens church for free food, hours before it even opened. The economic disaster will haunt the city for years after the coronavirus passes.

Fortunately, many are finally starting to wake up.

This week even the Guardian published an op-ed stating that “Cuomo should be one of the most loathed officials in America right now”, though incredibly much of their criticism centres on the author’s belief that Cuomo isn’t left wing enough.

This week New York Governor Andrew Cuomo continued to say that New York City is seeing a steady decline in coronavirus cases. Picture: Spencer Platt/Getty

But the damage has been done.

Meanwhile death toll associated with New York’s has been used to justify harsh lockdown provisions around the world, including here in Australia, where we are bleeding out at the rate of $4 billion a week.

Victoria’s Dan Andrews, who has probably been the most reluctant premier to wind back his state’s harsh restrictions and whose cops have been some of their most enthusiastic enforcers, last month told the ABC that those frustrated with his rules should have a look at what’s gone on in New York.

On Thursday Queensland’s Chief Health Minister Jeannette Young, who appears to have supplanted Anna Palaszczuk as de facto premier of the Sunshine State, similarly invoked New York in justifying continued border closures.

Yet New York, with its high density and terrible leadership is not the American example anyone should look to.

Instead, we should strive to be more like Georgia and Florida, whose governors opened their states – to much criticism, including being accused of committing “human sacrifice” – and have seen cases not spike, but rather decline.

Catch James Morrow every Sunday morning on Outsiders, Sky News Australia, 9am.

Originally published as Andrew Cuomo’s COVID-19 grandstanding has decimated New York City