The New York Times is continuing its series of articles critical of Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) in the weeks after President Joe Biden was inaugurated.
While Donald Trump was president, the Times and other media outlets heaped praise on Cuomo, gave him awards, and chose to make Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, some kind of villain in the coronavirus pandemic. Now that Trump is out of office, the Times, at least, seems to be more critical of the governor who oversaw one of the worst states as far as pandemic statistics are concerned.
On Tuesday, the Times reported that various metrics in The Empire State are worse now than they were when Cuomo announced in December that he was instituting an indefinite ban on indoor dining.
“As the governor spoke, average per-capita case counts in New York City were 64 percent higher than when he announced an indefinite ban on indoor dining in December,” the Times reported. “Average Covid-19 hospitalizations in the city, while trending downward, were still 60 percent higher late last week than they were when Mr. Cuomo closed the restaurants. And the test positivity rate was more than a percentage point higher.”
Cuomo, the Times noted, has said his economic closure decisions were based on four metrics, only one of which, “the rate at which people are infecting one another,” is better now than it was in December when he announced the indefinite ban.
The reason for the openings even though the numbers are worse now is that they are all heading downward, when in December they were trending upward.
The Times’ pushback on Cuomo’s reopening decision is the latest from the media outlet to heavily criticize Cuomo’s handling of the pandemic. A day earlier, the outlet reported that at least nine top health officials have left their positions in the top year due to Cuomo’s response to the pandemic.
“When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Cuomo said Friday. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”
Trump was excoriated repeatedly by the media for allegedly ignoring his health experts, yet Cuomo always received a pass.
“State health officials have grown increasingly irritated at Cuomo’s approach to the pandemic, claiming that the governor has issued top-down orders to combat the coronavirus without first notifying health department staff. Typically, he has announced an order then directed health officials to adapt to it with no prior warning,” The Daily Wire’s Tim Pearce reported. “One of the latest incidents occurred in Cuomo’s shaping of the state’s vaccine distribution plan. The governor scrapped a plan that health officials at all levels of state government had been working on in some fashion for about two decades.”
In late January, the Times pulled no punches in its report about New York “severely” undercounting nursing home deaths in the state. The Times wrote that the report from New York Attorney General Letitia James accused Cuomo’s administration of undercounting the deaths.
The Times noted that the “findings of Ms. James, a Democrat, could put her in direct conflict with Mr. Cuomo, the state’s three-term Democratic incumbent, who has touted his and his administration’s response to the coronavirus crisis, despite more than 42,000 deaths in the state.”