Thread by @JewhadiTM

Despicable @NYGovCuomo just told one of the biggest lies of the entire pandemic, via @BecketAdams #ChinaVirus

@JaniceDean washex.am/33mAFrO

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo alleged this week that long-term care facilities in the Empire State “never needed” to accept coronavirus-positive patients.

“It never happened,” he said during a press call, presumably with a straight face.

This is so exceptionally dishonest, one can hardly believe he actually said it.

"I put my head on the pillow at night saying I saved lives,” said the governor of the state with the worst overall COVID death toll and the second-worst per capita death rate in the union.

“That's how I sleep at night. And I know we have.”

However, according to a report from his own NY State Department of Health, "6,326 COVID+ residents were admitted to facilities" following Cuomo's mandate that nursing homes accept readmission of Covid+ patients from hospitals.

Whether or not this was "needed," it did in fact happen.

A reporter challenged Cuomo, asking him to reconcile reports showing that more than 11,000 people may have died as a result of the his order requiring these facilities to accept readmission of COVID+ patients.

“What would you say to New York residents who lost their loved ones in nursing homes due to your mandate back in late March regarding sending COVID-positive patients back to nursing homes?” the reporter asked.

Cuomo deployed several tactics in his response, including gaslighting, blaming the federal government, and attacking Florida.

“I would say, first of all, that’s not why they lost a loved one. Your premise, the premise of your question, is just factually wrong. People who were lost in nursing homes were lost because that’s where the virus preys. The virus preys on senior citizens.

The virus was introduced in this country in Washington, state of Washington in a nursing home. That’s who succumb to this virus, are immune-compromised senior citizens, and they’re predominantly located in nursing homes...

If you’d like to actually understand some facts, I’ll have them send you a full report that was done...

Ignorance doesn’t help grieving people. The rule that the state had, which was from the CDC guidance, right?

The law also said a nursing home cannot accept a person who they cannot treat effectively while protecting the other residents. That’s the law.”

It gets worse.

“So,” Cuomo concluded, “we never scrambled for beds, and we never needed nursing home beds because we always had hospital beds.

So, it just never happened in New York, where we needed to say to a nursing home, ‘We need you to take this person even though they’re COVID positive.’ It never happened...

So, it just never happened that we needed a nursing home to take a COVID-positive person. It never happened.”

It happened, a lot. If the governor is trying to weasel out of responsibility for his own dictate by leaning on the word “needed,” that may be worse than an outright lie

On May 21, the Associated Press reported that more than “4,500 recovering coronavirus patients were sent to New York's already vulnerable nursing homes" because of Cuomo’s directive.

In August, the AP reported separately that as many as 11,000 people may have died because of the nursing home advisory.

“New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes … could actually be a significant undercount,” the AP reports.

“Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.”

And here is the governor of New York, where more people have died of the coronavirus than anywhere else in the United States, attempting to gaslight to the public into thinking he did not do that thing he most absolutely did.

I don’t know what is going on in New York, but it has managed somehow to produce both the worst mayor and the worst governor in the entire union.