N.Y. Dems must face COVID nursing home deaths

To the leaders of New York’s Democratic Party: As a lifelong member of the Democratic Party, my trust has been broken by your disregard for the pandemic disaster in New York nursing homes. The Democratic Party claims to care about vulnerable people, yet it has dropped the ball on investigating the deaths of thousands of vulnerable seniors — and the Cuomo administration’s role in mismanaging the crisis and covering up its deadly toll.

If former Gov. Andrew Cuomo were Republican, would the Democrats have waited so long to investigate?

The issue is near and dear to me. My father, Norman Arbeeny, died from COVID-19 in April 2020. He caught the virus shortly after the Cuomo administration forced his nursing home in Brooklyn to accept COVID-positive patients.

It was four years ago today, on March 25, 2020, that the Health Department directed nursing homes to admit patients regardless of their COVID status. Over the following six weeks, 9,000 patients carrying a deadly virus were moved into nursing homes full of highly vulnerable residents.

Undoubtedly, that policy contributed to nursing home death tolls that mounted into the thousands — including my own father.

Almost from the beginning, Cuomo and his aides lied about what had happened. They tried to shift blame to the Trump administration, falsely claiming the March 25 directive had merely followed guidance from the CDC and federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. They said nursing homes should accept infected patients only if they were prepared to take special precautions — a crucial warning that was omitted from the state’s directive.

Then Cuomo tried to blame the nursing homes themselves, saying they were required under a pre-existing regulation, known as 415.26, to turn away patients they could not safely care for. This, too, was false. Cuomo himself had suspended regulation 415.26 by executive order on March 18, 2020.

Under the circumstances, there was only one reasonable way for nursing home operators to read that directive: The state was ordering them to accept infected patients — no ifs, ands or buts.

The Cuomo administration also tried to cover up the scale of the crisis. The state’s official death toll counted only the residents who died while physically in the homes, not the thousands more who died after being transferred to hospitals or — as happened with my father — being taken home by their families.

Cuomo was repeatedly asked for the full data by the Legislature, the press and the public — and refused to provide it until February 2021, when the Empire Center and the Government Justice Center won a court order under the state Freedom of Information Law.

None of these issues have been properly investigated by the Democrats who were in complete control of Albany before, during and after the pandemic.

Many questions need to be answered: Why did the state send infected patients into nursing homes as the first and only resort when the Javits Center and the Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort remained mostly empty? Did Cuomo manipulate the death tolls to make it appear he was doing a better job for his self-aggrandizing pandemic memoir? It was as if Gen. Patton had said, in the middle of a World War II battle, “Get me my book agent.”

Also, what was the true impact of the decision in nursing homes? The Health Department’s July 2020 report on that question — which was rewritten and falsified by the governor’s office and still remains on the department’s website — cannot be the last word.

After four years of waiting for action, I find myself questioning the values and objectives of the Democratic Party in New York. It has shown more interest in going after toll violators, fare beaters, ghost license plates and illegal cannabis shops than investigating why 15,000 seniors died.

The House GOP, on the other hand, has been demanding testimony from Cuomo and other officials in his administration. They invited my family to Washington to testify in a hearing. If the Democrats take back the House this fall, will they put a stop to the necessary investigative work that the Republicans are doing?

The Democratic Party’s failure to pursue the issue makes them complicit in the disenfranchisement of a vulnerable population. Opening an impeachment and calling for Cuomo’s resignation was not good enough.

The Democrats need to step up and finally do right by victims by supporting a thorough investigation with subpoena power. They could do that right now by voting for proposed legislation to establish a Pandemic Response Study Commission, which would conduct a full, independent investigation.

Perhaps then the Arbeeny family can retire from advocacy and finally mourn our father’s passing in peace.

Arbeeny is a Cobble Hill resident. He lost his father, Norman Arbeeny, who contracted COVID-19 while in a nursing home.