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Bill Hammond Profile picture
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25 Aug, 4 tweets, 2 min read
Good news on the transparency front:

@GovKathyHochul_ added the more complete total of COVID deaths to her daily update — an increase of almost 12,000.

Bad news:

Just today, DOH denied my FOIL for details on this data, including dates and locations. governor.ny.gov/news/governor-…
I should have been more specific in my @nydailynews op-ed. nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-ope…
Correction: @GovKathyHochul
Another correction: The DOH denial mentioned above arrived in the @empirecenter's inbox at 4:31 on Monday, in the closing hours of the Cuomo administration.

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More from @NYHammond

Bill Hammond Profile picture
26 Aug
Team Cuomo had a knack for issuing statements that sounded like they set things straight when actually they further muddied the waters. This is a fine example. ...
Because New York's extraordinarily bad first wave hit before the testing was widely available, the state has an unusually large number of deaths that were not lab-confirmed.

Omitting those thousands of victims made the state's death toll *less* accurate, not more accurate. ...
The proper way to deal with this issue is to report deaths in two categories, which is what NYC has done from the beginning. Team Cuomo has never adequately explained why it did not do that. ...
Read 7 tweets
Bill Hammond Profile picture
24 Aug
Hochul said two things about FOIL, both of which are weak tea.

No. 1: "I will direct state entities to review their compliance with state transparency laws and provide a public report on their findings."

Huh? ...
She's depending on FOIL-flouting agencies to assess their own conduct?

The real bottleneck in many cases has been the governor's office, which reserved the power to block politically sensitive FOILs. An agency self-assessment can't fix that. ...
No. 2: "I have instructed my counsel to come up with an expedited process to fulfill all FOIL requests as fast as possible and post the completed requests publicly on line."

The problem was not slow-turning wheels. It was Zucker, Cuomo, etc., hitting the brakes. ...
Read 4 tweets
Bill Hammond Profile picture
17 Aug
The NYS Health Dept's July 2020 report on COVID in nursing homes was already discredited for understating the number of resident deaths.

But it includes another error I hadn't noticed or heard about before, and it's kind of a big deal.🧵empirecenter.org/publications/l…
As you can in the two screen shots below, the text of the report says the *number of staff* reporting symptoms peaked on 3/16/20.

But the accompanying chart says something different -- that what peaked on 3/16 was the *number of homes* reporting a 1st symptomatic staff member. Image
A separate chart shows that about 2X more staff infections were reported in April than in March. It doesn't give an exact date for the peak, but it's seems likely that it's in April. empirecenter.org/wp-content/upl… Image
Read 11 tweets
Bill Hammond Profile picture
17 Aug
Spin and deception are nothing new in Albany, or in politics generally.

In this case, though, the stakes were especially high – involving the deaths of thousands of nursing home residents and an ongoing threat to tens of thousands more. (1/?) empirecenter.org/publications/l…
Team Cuomo not only spread misinformation, but they concealed the readily available data that would have corrected the record.

The effort went on for months. It made broad use of state resources in the governor’s office, the Health Department and elsewhere. ... (2/x)
It enlisted a raft of high-ranking personnel, including the heads of DOH, DFS and SUNY.

It denied the Legislature facts needed to fulfill its constitutional role.

It violated the law, as confirmed by the judge in the Empire Center’s FOIL suit. (3/x) empirecenter.org/nursinghomes/
Read 6 tweets
Bill Hammond Profile picture
12 Aug
.@JonahDispatch: "What’s unforgivable is that Cuomo knew he screwed up. He knew his decision was disastrous. And he covered up the evidence while preening over his 'leadership.' " ($) gfile.thedispatch.com/p/cuomo-resign…
Commenter MikeS makes a great point (if we do say so ourselves). cc @JonahDispatch @iskingsb
Here's a link to the analysis MikeS mentioned: empirecenter.org/publications/i…
Read 5 tweets
Bill Hammond Profile picture
26 Jul
Cuomo just said the state's COVID death toll is 11,000 lower than the CDC's because the feds include "presumed" cases and NY counts only confirmed cases.

"We believe our number is more accurate," his aide Elizabeth Garvey said.

That's not the whole truth. 1/n
Another factor behind the discrepancy, as reported by @ReporterMarina, is that the state relies on data gathered from a limited set of institutions, such as hospitals and nursing homes, while excluding deaths that occurred anywhere else. apnews.com/article/health…
The impact of the state's two exclusions, presumed deaths and non-institutional deaths, can be seen in comparison to NYC data, which includes both.

The city tracker shows 28,402 confirmed deaths and 5,105 "probable" deaths, for a total of 33,507. www1.nyc.gov/site/doh/covid…
Read 8 tweets

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