Cuomo’s Callous Response To Nursing-Home Horror
Richard Gottfried left out the most obvious cause of the high COVID-19 death rate in New York nursing homes (“NY’s Eldercide,” PostOpinion, May 19).
Nowhere did he mention the Health Department’s decision to force nursing homes to take infected people in the first place. To me, that was the match that set the fire.
The doors were closed to visitors, but homes were told to take sick people in. I’m sure the virus would have gotten in accidentally via an employee, but maybe not to the extent that it did. Why wasn’t the Javits Center used? The investigation should start at the governor’s doorstep.
Dolores Beck Cortlandt Manor
In pushing back against prosecutions for elderly fatalities in New York nursing homes, Gov. Cuomo callously told New Yorkers — and the world — to face the fact that older and more vulnerable people were “always going to die from this virus.”
Cuomo should be made to face the fact that the state’s orders resulted in a virtual death sentence for 5,000-plus seniors.
How ironic that Matilda’s Law, designed to protect those 70 and over, was named after the glib governor’s beloved mom. S. Silver
Manhattan
Misfeasance is the act of committing wrongful protocol for a legal act.
Did the governor know it was dangerous to place COVID patients into the general population of nursing homes? He should have. Deaths in Washington state’s nursing homes should have informed him.
Compounding his mistake was his cold-hearted post-analysis that suggested they were old, ill and prone to dying anyway. What he fails to see is that the state’s act advanced their demise. Phil Serpico
Queens
Cuomo is a cute piece of work. It took more than 5,000 deaths for him to finally rescind the order on sending infected COVID patients to nursing homes, where the people are old, frail and in most cases sickly. He issued these people a death sentence.
Then he just flippantly said: “People are going to die.” He has to be held accountable for his actions and not pass the buck to someone else as he usually does. Michael Quartana
Staten Island
Bill “Bojangles” Robinson wouldn’t hold a candle to Cuomo’s tap-dancing regarding his COVID-19 policies and lies.
He tries to deflect all blame for his idiotic mandates that have killed so many seniors in nursing and veterans’ homes.
If Attorney General Letitia James would investigate Cuomo with the same zeal with which she attacks President Trump and other Republicans,
she should at least charge him and Health Commissioner Howard Zucker with manslaughter.
How anyone can think Cuomo, Zucker and Mayor de Blasio are doing a good job is beyond me. David C. Obremski
Wayne, NJ
Cuomo and his administration’s callous decision to force nursing homes to take elderly people who tested positive for coronavirus resulted in a death sentence for so many of these fragile patients.
The homes were not equipped or staffed to take seriously ill patients, and there were beds available in the Javits Center and the hospital ship. This was an incredibly stupid decision.
Michael Quane South Hempstead
I am tired of all the adulation that Cuomo receives from some New Yorkers, in spite of his refusal to take any blame for the lack of preparedness and the nursinghome deaths that he is responsible for.
Imagine if he were president and mandated that all nursing homes in the country take in COVID-19 patients. He would live in infamy. John Clabough
Pine Bush
Cuomo asked who we could prosecute for the deaths of senior citizens in nursing homes.
The answer is obvious to everyone but him, I guess. It is he who should face a jury of his peers, hopefully one populated by the families and relatives of those who died because of the state’s policy. Rick Meyer
Pinehurst, NC