Kaufman: Like Minnesota, New York sees nursing home debacle due to poor leadership

Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a self-aggrandizing poster depicting the Empire State’s experience during the coronavirus pandemic.

AJ Kaufman

Earlier this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a self-aggrandizing poster depicting the Empire State’s experience during the coronavirus pandemic; it included President Trump sitting on a crescent moon, next to the phrase, “It’s just the flu.” The bizarre propaganda also shows a mountain with a yellow line above it, representing the alleged curve of COVID-19 cases in New York. 

The monstrosity is now available for pre-order on the official governor’s website for $15, plus shipping and handling and your contact information. Pre-orders totaled about 15,000 in the 24 hours since the link was published. Where does the money go? Never mind. The Stalinist poster is the governor’s second this year and fourth commissioned by Cuomo since he assumed office. 

I suppose you can memorialize a government failure among the worst in American history, but this is rather risible. 

Over at Hot Air yesterday, Allah Pundit summarized the situation:

“The strangest thing isn’t that Cuomo would feel the urge to commemorate this catastrophe or even that he’d choose to do it in such an offbeat way, although both of those are really strange. The strangest thing is how jokey and personal some of the allusions in the poster are. Cuomo’s daughters are depicted, as is his Pontiac GTO muscle car. Zoom in and you’ll find an image of “boyfriend cliff,” which no one can make sense of but which I assume refers to some of the parental advice Cuomo would occasionally dispense during his endless “golden boy” media tour at the height of New York’s crisis.”

There is, of course, no mention of New York’s fatal nursing home edicts — perhaps only equaled by the debacle we’ve seen in Minnesota, where nearly 1,200 our 1,500 fatalities occurred at long-term care or assisted living facilities — or record-setting deaths on the poster. Instead of contrition, Cuomo is boastful and deflective this week.

“We went up the mountain, we curved the mountain, we came down the other side and these are little telltale signs that, to me, represent what was going on,” he said in part.

The 6,300 COVID-positive patients admitted to nursing homes beg to differ.

The governor has said many times during crisis to avoid politics, but what is this? It’s all about him; he’s seemingly having the time of his life, unlike New York’s residents who are fleeing the state in droves.

Let’s also recall New York started as the American epicenter of the global pandemic and has recorded over 400,000 positive cases, leading to almost 33,000 deaths. That’s the sixth-highest reported toll in the world and highest per-capita.

Ironically, you can argue the Trump Administration and federal government helped Cuomo’s state like no other: bringing in an incredible Navy hospital ship; advising utilization of the Javits Center; and the generous Samaritan’s Purse field hospital erected in Central Park, which leftist city officials hated. And yet there still was monumental failure, coinciding with Cuomo’s inexplicable celebrity status that even irked liberals like CNN’s Jake Tapper.

More people have died from coronavirus in New York City alone (over 22,000 among a population of 8 million) than California (39 million), Texas (29 million), Florida (21 million) and Georgia (11 million) combined.

Yet Cuomo’s approval rating is somehow soaring. Heck, so is Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s despite similar setbacks, “abject failures” and recall efforts. Maybe Walz should distribute posters too, or more murals. He already has t-shirts.

 

 

A.J. Kaufman

A.J. Kaufman is an Alpha News columnist. His work has appeared in the Baltimore Sun, Florida Sun-Sentinel, Indianapolis Star, Israel National News, Orange County Register, St. Cloud Times, Star-Tribune, and across AIM Media Midwest and the Internet. Kaufman previously worked as a school teacher and military historian.