Lee Ann Moulder: Mainstream media has given NY governor a pass

Anyone who is familiar with Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York knows he has received accolades from the mainstream media for his handling of the pandemic. In fact, he won an Emmy award for his colorful presentations on the coronavirus. The governor has also regularly appeared on his brother, Chris Cuomo’s, nightly show where the two of them joke and banter back and forth. While in the midst of the pandemic Gov. Cuomo even found the time to write a book patting himself on the back for his spectacular handling of the pandemic.

What the press and mainstream media do not report is that Gov. Cuomo gave a mandate that all of the recovering nursing home patients hospitalized with COVID were to be returned to their respective nursing homes even though they still tested positive for the virus. This caused an outbreak of the virus among our most vulnerable citizens, which resulted in an enormous number of deaths. The nursing home facilities balked and complained that they did not have the facilities to handle the return of sick patients, but their concerns fell on Gov. Cuomo’s deaf ears and the nursing home deaths mounted.

A U.S. Navy hospital ship and the Javitz Center were made available to Gov. Cuomo for hospital patients, but it went virtually unused. It was almost impossible to obtain the number of nursing home deaths in New York; however, the New York State Attorney General released a report several weeks ago which reflected that nursing home deaths were underreported by 50%. On Jan. 18, the reported number of nursing home deaths in New York was 8,711 and on Jan. 19, the figure increased to 12,714. As of Feb. 12, the deaths of nursing home patients were updated once again to 15,000. Now we know why it was so difficult to obtain the number of nursing home deaths. When the governor was questioned about the disparity regarding the underreporting of deaths in nursing home facilities, his response was, “Who cares, if they died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”

I think every empathetic individual who reads this letter can answer that question. Those people who lost their loved ones care, especially when many of their loved family members might be alive today if the pleas of the nursing home administrators had not fallen on Gov. Cuomo’s deaf ears. Families were unable to say good-bye to their loved ones. They died alone. Gov. Cuomo’s failure to acknowledge blame for these deaths is pathetic, but there is one certainty. Most people will never know about Cuomo’s callous remarks or bad decisions, but rather the liberal mainstream media will continue to fawn over Cuomo while failing to report the grim facts and the resulting cover-up.

Lee Ann Moulder

Center Harbor