New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo snapped at a reporter during a press conference on Sunday when asked about families who lost loved ones in nursing homes from COVID-19, the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2, after Cuomo ordered nursing homes to take patients that had the highly contagious disease.
“What is justice? Who can we prosecute for those deaths? Nobody,” Cuomo said to the reporter. “Nobody. Mother nature. God. Where did this virus come from? People are going to die by this virus. That is the truth. Best hospital system on the globe, I believe we have. Best doctors, best nurses who have responded like heroes, every medication, ventilators, the health system wants for nothing. We worked it out so we always had available beds. Nobody was deprived of a bed or medical coverage in any way.”
More than 5,400 people have died in nursing homes, which experts have said largely happened due to Cuomo’s policy. Cuomo’s administration has now been accused of hiding nursing home deaths as backlash continues to grow against the governor and lawmakers have called for a federal investigation.
“And still people died. Still, people died. Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus,” Cuomo continued. “That is going to happen despite whatever you do.”
“You can have a situation where everyone did the right thing and everyone tried their best, and people still die,” Cuomo concluded. “Look, people rationalize death in different ways. I don’t think there was any logical rationale to say, they would be alive today.”
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TRANSCRIPT:
REPORTER: Governor, what would you say to families who have suffered losses inside nursing homes? And they’re looking for accountability. And they’d like to see justice. For example, I’ve recently interviewed a family, three siblings. They’ve had two nursing home losses within a few weeks of one another on two separate floors in the same facility here in Albany. They felt so much solace when you got up and talked about Matilda’s law. They said, “Great, we’re protected. Our loved ones are going to be okay because of Matilda’s law.” And then their loved ones passed away because they couldn’t get the testing. So they’re looking for accountability and they feel that they were failed. What’s the comment to that?
NEW YORK GOVERNOR ANDREW CUOMO (D): Yeah. The comment is this. And I have those conversations all day long with people who have lost people, right? We lost 139 people yesterday in hospitals. Who is accountable for those 139 deaths? Well, how do we get justice for those families who had 139 deaths? What is justice? Who can we prosecute for those deaths? Nobody. Nobody. Mother nature. God. Where did this virus come from? People are going to die by this virus. That is the truth. Best hospital system on the globe, I believe we have. Best doctors, best nurses who have responded like heroes, every medication, ventilators, the health system wants for nothing. We worked it out so we always had available beds. Nobody was deprived of a bed or medical coverage in any way.
And still people died. Still, people died. Older people, vulnerable people are going to die from this virus. That is going to happen despite whatever you do. Because with all our progress as a society, we can’t keep everyone alive. Despite what everything you do and older people are more vulnerable. And that is a fact. And that is not going to change. And look, to me, the really difficult conversations for me are “My son was 40 years old. It was not a senior citizen, did not have a comorbidity and got this virus because he was an essential worker and doing the right thing and had an aneurysm. I thought young people were fine. And he was doing the right thing as an essential worker.” There’s a randomness to this virus that is inexplicable. Why do people die? That’s beyond this. Who’s accountable? You can have a situation where every –
You can have a situation where everyone did the right thing and everyone tried their best, and people still die.
REPORTER: What you’re saying, still, that if the mandates that are currently in place right now, that we’ve all just been talking about in here, were in place from the get go, they feel that their loved ones might still be here.
CUOMO: Look, people rationalize death in different ways. I don’t think there was any logical rationale to say, they would be alive today. I said, from day one, the fear is we overwhelm the hospital system, and then people die, because we couldn’t get them the medical care. That was an accountable avoidable situation. That was Italy, by the way. People died in hallways, on gurneys in hospitals, because the doctors and the nurses were overwhelmed, and because they didn’t have a ventilator, they didn’t have a doctor available, and people died. That is a heartbreak, because then you say, “They didn’t have to die,” “If the doctor had gotten to my mother, my mother would have been alive.” That’s what we protect against, and we did it successfully. I now get criticized that I had an overcapacity of beds available. “Oh, you didn’t need all those beds, as it turned out.” I’ll take that, I’m guilty. I increased the hospital capacity to an extent that we didn’t even need. But you know what? Nobody died where we didn’t do everything that we could. And that has been true from day one. It’s true today, and it was true from day one.