NY Gov. Cuomo facing backlash for ‘victory lap’
ALBANY, N.Y. – Monday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo unveiled a poster he helped design that showed, among many other things, New York coming down the mountain of the coronavirus pandemic.
“What we did was historic because we did tame the beast. We did turn the corner. We did plateau that mountain. And then we came down the other side,” Cuomo declared at his regular COVID-19 briefing. “And they will be talking about what we did for decades to come.”
They will also be talking about New York still having, by far, the highest death toll in the nation, even as its infection rate is among the lowest, Sanjay Gupta said Tuesday afternoon on CNN’s “The Lead With Jake Tapper.”
“I’m a little surprised by that poster, I got to tell you, because I think, if anything, what this virus has taught us is that we need to have a significant amount of humility,” Gupta, a neurosurgeon and CNN’s chief medical correspondent, told Tapper. “This virus surprises us over and over again. There’s no place in the country that’s not vulnerable.”
Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s senior adviser, said the problem was the federal government not shutting down travel from Europe to the USA for six weeks before the pandemic, leading to more than 3 million people coming to New York.
“You’re damn right New York got hit the hardest, and it was only New Yorkers banding together that got us through this,” Azzopardi said. “Spare me the punditry.”
Taking safety steps
Cuomo stressed that New York’s infection rate, which hovers around 1% of those tested, could easily jump if residents are not diligent with safety precautions.
New York requires people from states with high infection rates to self-quarantine when they enter New York.
New York reported about 25,000 deaths from coronavirus as of Wednesday, but if “probable” deaths are counted, the total is about 32,400. The state
Department of Health doesn’t include probable deaths, but national trackers at John Hopkins University do.
New York had as many as 800 deaths a day from the virus in early April but cut the daily toll to a few in recent weeks.
The state with the second highest number of deaths is New Jersey with about 15,500.
“We just have to cross our fingers and hope that it stays there because you see the infections now all across the country, and it’s going crazy,” Cuomo said Monday night on NBC’s “The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon.” “We’re just worried that the infection is going to come from other states now, back to New York, which would be a real tragedy.”
Cuomo touts success on poster
Gupta and Tapper on CNN, which is home to a nightly prime-time show hosted by the governor’s younger brother, Chris, were critical of Cuomo’s tone and poster.
“I think that we should have learned, I think we have learned, that victory laps are not the thing to be doing, because we’re not through this by a long shot, sad to say, even in New York,” Gupta said.
Tapper said Cuomo’s poster – which the state sells for $11.50, the cost of production – has plenty of symbols, but none about the state’s death toll, calling it “revisionism.”
“No rendering on that poster of criticism that Gov. Cuomo ignored warnings, no depiction of the study that he could have saved thousands of lives had he and Mayor de Blasio acted sooner,” Tapper said. “No painting there on the poster of his since-rescinded order that nursing homes take all infected patients in.”
The governor has been a regular guest on his brother’s CNN show, and last month, Chris Cuomo hailed his brother’s management of the virus.
“Obviously, I love you as a brother; obviously, I’ll never be objective; obviously, I think you’re the best politician in the country,” Chris said. “But I hope you feel good about what you did for your people because I know they appreciate it. ... I’ve never seen anything like what you did, and that’s why I’m so happy to have had you on the show. And I hope you know that.”