Category: Corona Virus

The former New York governor's deposition took place behind closed doors.

June 11, 2024, 5:09 PM ET

5 min read

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appeared Tuesday before a congressional subcommittee to speak about his administration's response to the coronavirus pandemic, including its highly-scrutinized handling of nursing homes.

The transcribed interview took place behind closed doors with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. The GOP-led panel issued a subpoena in March for Cuomo, a Democrat, to sit for a deposition.

The former governor briefly addressed reporters as he arrived at the O'Neill House Office Building on Tuesday morning.

"Today is is an opportunity to actually get the truth and the facts out, and I welcome that opportunity," he told reporters.

He went on to accuse Republicans of weaponizing the justice system to target Democrats over the pandemic, and said he was "proud" of how New York handled the health crisis.

Cuomo's appearance comes on the heels of the subcommittee's hearing last week with Dr. Anthony Fauci as Republicans continue to try to put the country's response to COVID-19 in the spotlight amid a contentious 2024 presidential election cycle.

Fauci defended against Republican criticisms of his leadership and pushed back on their assertions about the origins of the virus.

The questioning of Cuomo is expected to largely focus on his administration's instruction to nursing homes in the early days of the pandemic to accept residents recovering from the virus after they were discharged from hospitals.

The directive was issued in March 2020 and rescinded weeks later. Cuomo has long defended the policy as having been based on federal guidance, but the move faced criticism that it led to increased deaths in nursing homes.

Cuomo's administration was also pilloried for having allegedly misreported the overall number of COVID-related deaths at New York nursing homes. At first, officials counted only residents who had died in such facilities, excluding residents who died in hospitals.

Cuomo attributed the discrepancy to a delay as his office prioritized federal requests for data over state requests. Though one of his top aides at the time admitted his office withheld certain numbers due to concerns it would be used against them by the Trump administration.

Chairman Brad Wenstrup, R-Ohio, said Cuomo's testimony is "crucial to uncover the circumstances that led to his misguided policies and for ensuring that fatal mistakes never happen again."

"It appears that politics, not medicine, was responsible for these decisions," Wenstrup said in a in a statement ahead of Tuesday's testimony. "Former Governor Cuomo owes answers to the 15,000 families who lost loved ones in New York nursing homes during the COVID-19 pandemic."

Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo's spokesperson, pushed back on the chairman's characterizations in a statement to ABC News.

"The Department of Justice has looked at this issue three times, as have the Manhattan District Attorney, the Attorney General and the New York State Assembly, all determining that the actual facts and evidence did not support any claim of wrongdoing, and no MAGA farce of a congressional hearing is going to change that," Azzopardi said in a statement.

"Despite the politicization of people's real pain, the facts remain: DOH medical professionals issued its March 25th admissions advisory based on federal CDC and CMS guidance -- just as 11 other states -- Democrat and Republican -- did," Azzopardi added.

Cuomo, who gained national attention for his often combative performances at multiple COVD-related briefings, was once heralded for his political leadership during COVID but became a pariah in his own party both over the nursing home controversy and later sexual harassment allegations that forced his resignation.

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Andrew Cuomo testifies before House panel on COVID nursing home policy - ABC News

If youve had COVID-19, you may want to have your eyes checked. SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes the disease, can infect the inside of your eyes, according to research published in April in the journal PLOS Pathogens.This holds true even if the virus didnt enter your body through the surface of your eyes.

Pawan Kumar Singh, PhD, an assistant professor of ophthalmology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, led a team of researchers who found that inhaled viruses can reach highly protected organs such as the eyes, potentially causing long-term damage. SARS-CoV-2 does so by breaching the blood-retinal barrier, layers of cells that shield the retina, the part of your eye that senses light, from microbial pathogens.

Earlier, researchers were primarily focused on the ocular surface exposure of the virus, Singh said in a news release. However, our findings reveal that SARS-CoV-2 not only reaches the eye during systemic infection but induces a hyperinflammatory response in the retina and causes cell death in the blood-retinal barrier. The longer viral remnants remain in the eye, the risk of damage to the retina and visual function increases.

Using a humanized mice model, Singh and his team showed that the prolonged presence of SARS-CoV-2 spike proteins can cause problems such as:

For those who have been diagnosed with COVID-19, we recommend you ask your ophthalmologist to check for signs of pathological changes to the retina, Singh said. Even those who were asymptomatic could suffer from damage in the eyes over time because of COVID-19-associated complications.

The following symptoms may indicate retinal disease, according to the National Eye Institute:

If you dont have an ophthalmologist, your primary care physician can refer you to one and help determine the best course of treatment.

Though the blood-retinal barrier of people with compromised immune systems is known to be susceptible to bacteria and viruses, MU claims Singhs study is the first to suggest SARS-CoV-2 can infect that of otherwise healthy people. That said, immunocompromised people and those with diabetes or high blood pressure may face more severe COVID-related eye health issues if left untreated.

Now that we know the risk of COVID-19 to the retina, our goal is to better understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of how this virus breaches the blood-retinal barrier and associated pathological consequences in hopes of informing development of therapies to prevent and treat COVID-19-induced eye complications before a patients vision is compromised, Singh said.

For more on COVID-19:

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COVID eye health: SARS-CoV-2 may cause ocular infection, Mizzou study says - Fortune

By Amy Maxmen and Arthur Allen June 11, 2024

Stanford University infectious disease doctor Abraar Karan has seen a lot of patients with runny noses, fevers, and irritated eyes lately. Such symptoms could signal allergies, covid, or a cold. This year, theres another suspect, bird flu but theres no way for most doctors to know.

If the government doesnt prepare to ramp up H5N1 bird flu testing, he and other researchers warn, the United States could be caught off guard again by a pandemic.

Were making the same mistakes today that we made with covid, Deborah Birx, who served as former President Donald Trumps coronavirus response coordinator, said June 4 on CNN.

To become a pandemic, the H5N1 bird flu virus would need to spread from person to person. The best way to keep tabs on that possibility is by testing people.

Scientifically speaking, many diagnostic laboratories could detect the virus. However, red tape, billing issues, and minimal investment are barriers to quickly ramping up widespread availability of testing. At the moment, the Food and Drug Administration has authorized only the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions bird flu test, which is used only for people who work closely with livestock.

State and federal authorities have detected bird flu in dairy cattle in 12 states. Three people who work on separate dairy farms tested positive, and it is presumed they caught the virus from cows. Yet researchers agree that number is an undercount given the CDC has tested only about 40 people for the disease.

Its important to know if this is contained on farms, but we have no information because we arent looking, said Helen Chu, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Washington in Seattle who alerted the country to covids spread in 2020 by testing people more broadly.

Reports of untested sick farmworkers as well as a maternity worker who had flu symptoms in the areas with H5N1 outbreaks among cattle in Texas suggest the numbers are higher. And the mild symptoms of those who tested positive a cough and eye inflammation, without a fever are such that infected people might not bother seeking medical care and, therefore, wouldnt be tested.

The CDC has asked farmworkers with flu symptoms to get tested, but researchers are concerned about a lack of outreach and incentives to encourage testing among people with limited job security and access to health care. Further, by testing only on dairy farms, the agency likely would miss evidence of wider spread.

Its hard to not compare this to covid, where early on we only tested people who had traveled, said Benjamin Pinsky, medical director of the clinical virology laboratory at Stanford University. That left us open to not immediately recognizing that it was transmitting among the community.

In the early months of covid, the rollout of testing in the United States was catastrophically slow. Although the World Health Organization had validated a test and other groups had developed their own using basic molecular biology techniques, the CDC at first insisted on creating and relying on its own test. Adding to delays, the first version it shipped to state health labs didnt work.

The FDA lagged, too. It didnt authorize tests from diagnostic laboratories outside of the CDC until late February 2020.

On Feb. 27, 2020, Chus research lab detected covid in a teenager who didnt meet the CDCs narrow testing criteria. This case sounded an alarm that covid had spread below the radar. Scaling up to meet demand took time: Months passed before anyone who needed a covid test could get one.

Chu notes this isnt 2020 not by a long shot. Hospitals arent overflowing with bird flu patients. Also, the country has the tools to do much better this time around, she said, if theres political will.

For starters, tests that detect the broad category of influenzas that H5N1 belongs to, called influenza A, are FDA-approved and ubiquitous. These are routinely run in the flu season, from November to February. An unusual number of positives from these garden-variety flu tests this spring and summer could alert researchers that something is awry.

Doctors, however, are unlikely to request influenza A tests for patients with respiratory symptoms outside of flu season, in part because health insurers may not cover them except in limited circumstances, said Alex Greninger, assistant director of the clinical virology laboratory at the University of Washington.

Thats a solvable problem, he added. At the peak of the covid pandemic, the government overcame billing issues by mandating that insurance companies cover tests, and set a lucrative price to make it worthwhile for manufacturers. You ran into a testing booth on every other block in Manhattan because companies got $100 every time they stuck a swab in someones nose, Greninger said.

Another obstacle is that the FDA has yet to allow companies to run their influenza A tests using eye swabs, although the CDC and public health labs are permitted to do so. Notably, the bird flu virus was detected only in an eye swab from one farmworker infected this year and not in samples drawn from the nose or throat.

Overcoming such barriers is essential, Chu said, to ramp up influenza A testing in regions with livestock. The biggest bang for the buck is making sure that these tests are routine at clinics that serve farmworker communities, she said, and suggested pop-up testing at state fairs, too.

In the meantime, novel tests that detect the H5N1 virus, specifically, could be brought up to speed. The CDCs current test isnt very sensitive or simple to use, researchers said.

Stanford, the University of Washington, the Mayo Clinic, and other diagnostic laboratories that serve hospital systems have developed alternatives to detecting the virus circulating now. However, their reach is limited, and researchers stress a need to jump-start additional capacity for testing before a crisis is underway.

How can we make sure that if this becomes a public health emergency we arent stuck in the early days of covid, where things couldnt move quickly? Pinsky said.

A recent rule that gives the FDA more oversight of lab-developed tests may bog down authorization. In a statement to KFF Health News, the FDA said that, for now, it may allow tests to proceed without a full approval process. The CDC did not respond to requests for comment.

But the American Clinical Laboratory Association has asked the FDA and the CDC for clarity on the new rule. Its slowing things down because its adding to the confusion about what is allowable, said Susan Van Meter, president of the diagnostic laboratory trade group.

Labcorp, Quest Diagnostics, and other major testing companies are in the best position to manage a surge in testing demand because they can process hundreds per day, rather than dozens. But that would require adapting testing processes for their specialized equipment, a process that consumes time and money, said Matthew Binnicker, director of clinical virology at the Mayo Clinic.

Theres only been a handful of H5N1 cases in humans the last few years, he said, so its hard for them to invest millions when we dont know the future.

The government could provide funding to underwrite its research, or commit to buying tests in bulk, much as Operation Warp Speed did to advance covid vaccine development.

If we need to move to scale this, there would need to be an infusion of money, said Kelly Wroblewski, director of infectious disease programs at the Association of Public Health Laboratories. Like an insurance policy, the upfront expense would be slight compared with the economic blow of another pandemic.

Other means of tracking the H5N1 virus are critical, too. Detecting antibodies against the bird flu in farmworkers would help reveal whether more people have been infected and recovered. And analyzing wastewater for the virus could indicate an uptick in infections in people, birds, or cattle.

As with all pandemic preparedness efforts, the difficulty lies in stressing the need to act before a crisis strikes, Greninger said.

We should absolutely get prepared, he said, but until the government insures some of the risk here, its hard to make a move in that direction.

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Bird Flu Tests Are Hard To Get. So How Will We Know When To Sound the Pandemic Alarm? - Kaiser Health News

Tackling an avian influenza virus strain with pandemic potential should be straightforward if lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic are heeded.

In January 2020, when the World Health Organization declared the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2 a public health emergency of international concern, there was no vaccine, no antiviral therapeutic, and a general lack of clarity of the natural viral reservoir, how it spread, who was most at risk of severe disease, and the case-fatality rate.

Fast-forwarding to today, the world may again be on the cusp of a fresh pandemic, as the avian influenza virus H5N1 strain (clade 2.3.4.4b) that has been decimating US poultry flocks has now jumped to dairy cattle and, of greatest concern, to humans.

But the collective understanding of the threat is very different this time around, and that knowledge, coupled with effective communication of accessible public health interventions, can compensate for a near-term shortage of vaccines and targeted therapeutics.

Avian influenza virus has been known to circulate in birds since the late 1800s. The virus belongs to the influenza A virus (IAV) group, with highly pathogenic forms capable of causing mass death in bird populations. It was not until 1997 that the first human case of H5N1 avian influenza was reported in Hong Kong, in an outbreak that led to 18 human infections, 6 deaths, and the culling of millions of domestic birds to stem further virus spread1.

The high death rate in humans was a global wake-up call. National influenza pandemic plans were created, vaccines were developed, approved and stockpiled, surveillance was ramped up, and poultry were vaccinated. But a vaccine against avian influenza for humans was never rolled out to the public.

With 144 possible avian influenza virus subtypes, and no effective universal influenza vaccine design thus far, a vaccine against avian influenza for use in humans might seem unattainable. But according to the US Centers for Disease Control, only six avian hemagglutinin subtypes have infected humans and resulted in respiratory illness, and of those, H5N1 and H7N9 viruses have caused the most human cases, which narrows the list of potential vaccine candidates. Despite sporadic human cases of infection, human-to-human spread of avian influenza has thus far been infrequent and not sustained. However, influenza virus is highly mutable and could give rise to a highly human-transmissible and virulent avian influenza virus variant, which would require a pandemic response.

Whether the H5N1 virus currently infecting both poultry and dairy cattle in the United States poses a greater risk of triggering a human pandemic than previous strains capable of zoonotic infection is unknown. The virus has been circulating in the United States since at least January 2022, when it was first detected in wild birds and subsequently in poultry facilities. H5N1 infections in humans and other mammals have been reported worldwide, associated with exposure to birds, which highlights the potential for broader zoonotic transmission of this virus. But the detection of H5N1 in cows, a species not previously thought to be susceptible to IAV, in the United States in March 2024, and the subsequent reports of at the time of this writing three cases of cow-to-human transmission in dairy farm employees have raised concerns about the threat potential of this IAV if it adapts to become both endemic and highly pathogenic in mammals.

The US Department of Agriculture has taken steps to aid affected dairy producers navigate the outbreak, including the release of funds to producers who supply personal protective equipment to their employees, for the development of biosecurity plans, and for veterinarian and testing costs. Other countries, such as Mexico and France, have been vaccinating their poultry flocks against H5N1. Millions of domestic fowl worldwide have been culled in the current outbreak.

Vaccination of poultry may help quell localized outbreaks, but the rapid evolution of IAV and its continual reintroduction by wild birds makes this approach a short-term fix in the absence of a universal vaccine. And although culling of poultry has been economically viable, thanks to government subsidies and the rapid growth of birds, it is an infeasible solution for cattle. Instead, infrastructural changes need to be adopted to detect and limit spread of avian influenza virus, particularly in the event that the virus becomes more highly transmissible or virulent.

The lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic are abundant. (1) Surveillance is essential. However, the financial considerations of dairy producers complicate the picture, as they are not incentivized to report a sick animal. Eliminating that barrier is critical to reducing further animal-to-animal spread and reducing the potential for animal-to-human transmission. (2) Protecting agricultural and food industry workers is essential. Just as these employee groups suffered disproportionately severe outcomes from COVID-19 due to a lack of sufficient personal protective equipment, testing, job retention and compensation for quarantining, and affordable medical care, so too must they be at the forefront of addressing the avian influenza outbreak, as populations at high risk of exposure and vulnerable to mistreatment. (3) Inexpensive, noninvasive, rapid tests are essential, both for animals and humans, to facilitate the immediate enactment of precautionary measures. (4) Masks are a critical resource that must be depoliticized. In the absence of a widely available vaccine, masking will mitigate spread of a pandemic influenza virus strain. (5) Communication is essential. Data sharing with local, national and international stakeholders will facilitate an effective response. Engaging, rather than alienating, the public on the development of the outbreak, on both the knowns and unknowns, and of ongoing efforts to mitigate virus spread, is necessary to restore confidence in the public agencies tasked with responding to potential pandemics.

Although the evolution of circulating H5N1 may be unpredictable, the response should not be.

Read more:

To respond to the threat of avian influenza, look back at lessons learned from COVID-19 - Nature.com

FILE: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks during a coronavirus briefing at Northwell Feinstein Institute For Medical Research in Manhasset, New York on May 6, 2020. (Photo by Al Bello/Getty Images)

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (WROC) Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will be appearing in front of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

The subcommittee will be conducting a closed, transcribed interview with Cuomo about his issuance of the COVID-19 nursing home guidance. This comes after over 6,400 nursing facility residents died from COVID-related complications.

Ohio Representative Brad Wenstrup is the chairman of the subcommittee. He accused the former governor of putting elderly residents at risk and trying to cover up the death rate.

His testimony is crucial to uncover the circumstances that led to his misguided policies and for ensuring that fatal mistakes never happen again, Rep. Wenstrup said in a statement. It is well past time for Cuomo to stop dodging accountability to Congress and start answering honestly to the American people.

Cuomo has faced backlash regarding this data. His top aide said officials froze over concerns the information would be used against them. In August 2021, Cuomo announced his resignation from the governors office.

The former governor posted a video statement to YouTube, which aims to cut through politics and share the facts about the COVID-19 pandemic with New Yorkers. You can watch the full video by clicking here.

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Former Gov. Cuomo will appear before COVID-19 select subcomittee - RochesterFirst

WASHINGTON Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo is scheduled to testify Tuesdaybefore a congressional panel investigating the COVID-19 pandemic, with his administrations handling of nursing home deaths in New York expected to be a main focus for investigators.

Cuomo's testimony will occur behind closed doors, with attorneys for the Republican-led House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic expected to question him about a March 2020 state directive that blocked nursing homes from rejecting patients with COVID-19.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented nursing home policies that had deadly consequences for New Yorks most vulnerable population, Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), chairman of the subcommittee, saidin a statement.

Cuomo asserted he was following federal guidelines. But many families of New Yorkers who died of COVID-19 while at senior living facilities have blamed Cuomo's directive forincreasing the spread of the virus, as many facilities were unable to properly isolate virus-positive patients.

Asked about Cuomos expectations for the subcommittee interview, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi in a statement to Newsday described the panels investigation as a craven partisan farce.

Azzopardi continued: For years they've been shamelessly weaponizing peoples pain.

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island), the only New Yorker on the pandemic subcommittee, defended the panels work, saying were just looking for the facts, and wherever they lead, they lead.

A lot of this is making sure that we get the answers for those families, we get accountability for those families, but that we also ensure it never happens again, and we learn from this experience, Malliotakis said in an interview. If we don't know how we got to certain decisions that were made during COVID, how do we learn from this horrific experience, and improve the response for a future pandemic?

Malliotakis said she expects a transcript of Cuomos interview to be made public in the future. Malliotakis also said she expects Cuomo to be called to testify at a public hearing, although she did not have a time frame. The subcommittee expects to release a report with its findings eventually, Malliotakis said.

New York Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, said in a 2021 report that the state Department of Health underreported the number of nursing home COVID-19 deaths by about 50% by omitting deaths of nursing home residents who were transferred to hospitals. An audit by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli in 2022found the health department underreported 4,100 deaths between April 2020 and February 2021.

The Health Department issued updated fatality figures in February 2021, after James' report, reporting 13,197 confirmed and presumed COVID-19 deaths of nursing home residents across New York from March 1, 2020 to Feb.5, 2021.

Nancy Gertler, of Great Neck, whose 98-year-old mother, Florence, was among the COVID-19 fatalities at the Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation in April 2020, told Newsday she still questions what led to the March directive and hopes the panels work leads to recommendations that prevent this from happening again.

Gertler continued: I dont understand why [Cuomo] would allow nursing homes with the most fragile patients why he would force them to admit people with COVID. I think its horrifying. My mother was one of the first people to die in the nursing home that they actually said her death was from COVID-19.

Cuomos former top aide, Melissa DeRosa, is scheduled to be interviewed by subcommittee investigators this month. Other Cuomo administration officials who have testified include former State Health Commissioner Howard Zucker and Jim Malatras, the former Chancellor of the State University of New York, who served as a Cuomo senior adviser, Wenstrup said.

The panel heard testimony last week from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, at a combative public hearingthat underscored the partisan divide over the initial federal response to the pandemic. Fauci drew praise fromDemocrats for his work advising the Trump White House in the earliest days of the pandemic, but Republicans questioned whether Fauci sought to cover up competing theories about the origin of the virus.

A spokeswoman for the Democrats on the committeesaid in a statement to Newsday: The Select Subcommittee Democrats take seriously any effort to evade transparency and mislead the public, and remain committed to the forward-looking work of fortifying infection control and prevention to protect Americas nursing homeresidents.

Laura Figueroa Hernandez is the White House correspondent and previously covered New York City politics and government. She joined Newsday in 2012 after covering state and local politics for The Miami Herald.

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Andrew Cuomo to testify Tuesday before House COVID panel - Newsday

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"For the life of me, I cant understand why anyone would take a COVID positive patient and put them in a nursing home where, you know, thats medical malpractice in my mind, and that is a decision I cant understandIm not a lawyer. Its not necessarily about criminal liability, etc., but if we dont actually know the truth, we cant actually help you find closure." - Representative Ami Bera, M.D. (D-Ca.), former Chief Medical Officer of Sacramento County May 17, 2023, hearing for the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

Last year, I appeared before Congress at a hearing in Washington, D.C., to talk about how my family and thousands of others in New York lost loved ones to COVID-19 after they contracted the disease in nursing homes.

Tuesday, June 11, will be the most important moment we have had when it comes to our fight for answers and accountability. It will be the first time that our former disgraced governor will sit down and be questioned under oath about his deadly decisions that we believe led to their preventable deaths. That will occur when former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears in front of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic.

LIBERAL NY TIMES COLUMNIST ADMITS MEDIA, PUBLIC HEALTH WERE 'TOO DISMISSIVE' ON LAB LEAK THEORY

Many of you know how personal this story is for me. My husband lost both of his parents in separate facilities during the spring of 2020 after an executive order was issued, which stood for 46 days, admitting over 9,000 COVID-positive patients into a place where our most vulnerable reside.

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo will have to answer to Congress about how COVID-19 patients were pushed into nursing homes with deadly consequences. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

We were never warned of this decision, and there has never been a thorough investigation into why nursing homes were the first and only option to send in COVID-19 positive patients. Because if there is one thing we knew at the very beginning of the pandemic, it was that this virus would be the most dangerous for the elderly.

And despite having other options, like the Javits Center, the USNS Comfort and other makeshift provisional hospitals with thousands of empty beds, then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo decided instead to unleash COVID-19 into nursing homes and put the most vulnerable lives in danger.

There have been a few government reports and hearings over the years that have never amounted to much in the way of justice. In 2022, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul hired a consulting firm based in Alexandria, Virginia, to look back at the policies and decisions made in New York during the pandemic, but it didnt have subpoenas, and the contract will expire in just a few days.

According to a recent report, the Olsen Group has billed the state for less than half of its allotted $4.3 million. My guess is that document will never see the light of day.

More recently, there has been a proposed bill in Albany that promises hearings and investigations into state records and (most importantly) subpoenas to compel testimony from Cuomo and his former associates.

It would seem that the work of the subcommittee in D.C. has finally shamed some of our elected representatives in New York to look like they care about a much-needed after-action review.

One of our biggest questions as the virus ravaged nursing homes is who came up with the March 25 directive that was in place for over six weeks, and then suddenly reversed while magically disappearing from the Health Departments website.

It doesnt take a virologist to figure out that putting a highly contagious airborne virus into nursing homes would be a death trap. Interestingly, on June 3, there was a Harvard research paper released (the first of its kind) that studied the "Clinical Outcomes After Admission of Patients With COVID-19 to Skilled Nursing Facilities." Its conclusion stated:

The Andrew Cuomo book on the New York COVID-19 outbreak. (Getty Images/AP)

"That admission of COVID-19positive patients into SNFs early in the pandemic was associated with preventable COVID-19 cases and mortality among residents."

Even Cuomo knew that allowing COVID patients into a nursing home would be a recipe for disaster. One of his most memorable quotes in the early stages of the pandemic was when he addressed the importance of protecting nursing home residents, and said the virus, if allowed into their facilities, would spread like "fire through dry grass."

We have our suspicions about who was behind the March 25 directive (and were confident it wasnt written by doctors), but the truth wont come out unless there is a full investigation with access to all state documents, electronic messages and most importantly subpoena power which has never happened until now.

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And the other major point that needs to be addressed is why Cuomo and his staff went to such great lengths to cover up the death toll (by the thousands) and (still) continue to lie about it? Did it have anything to do with his $5.2-million book deal that was auctioned off to the highest bidder?

The timeline is very curious, because after a Cuomo commissioned report was released, whitewashing his involvement in the nursing home tragedy, and drastically undercounted the deaths (which to this day has never been corrected on the DOH website), Cuomo then signed his multi-million-dollar book contract.

And if we find out that his administration purposely hid information and lied to the public to make money, wouldnt that be a crime?

The governor, who was elected to serve and protect the people of New York through a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic, instead acted recklessly with deliberate indifference, causing thousands of avoidable nursing home deaths.

One of our biggest questions as the virus ravaged nursing homes is who came up with the March 25 directive that was in place for over six weeks, and then suddenly reversed while magically disappearing from the Health Departments website.

This man needs to finally answer questions under oath. While we were all locked away and told to avoid the virus at all costs, his administration decided to unleash the lethal illness into senior care residences without warning or protection.

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I look forward to hearing Andrew Cuomo finally swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

But if he continues to lie, obstruct and blame others, then so help him God. Hes going to need support from a much higher power than the person who believed had all the control in the world during the pandemic: himself.

CLICK HERE FOR MORE FROM JANICE DEAN

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Cuomo finally forced to tell whole truth about COVID-19 decisions that cost thousands of lives - Fox News

Metro

By Carl Campanile

Published June 9, 2024, 7:53 p.m. ET

A congressional panel investigating COVID-19 met with relatives of New York nursing home residents who died during the shutdown as the panel readies to grill ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo on the pandemic.

Members of the Republican-led Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic received a detailed 121-page timeline from Peter Arbeeny, whose father, Norman, died from the infection after being released from a Brooklyn nursing home.

The scathing document on the wecarewall.com website claims Cuomo and his administrations decisions and alleged coverups contributed to COVID-related deaths in nursing homes.

Its the first time Cuomo is being officially interviewed by congressional probers though in a transcribed interview behind closed doors.

Keeping track of Governor Cuomos multitude of lies, manipulations, and misdeeds can be overwhelming, Arbeeny, who met recently with House investigators, says in the document.

The preface to the timeline called the now infamous [Cuomo] $5.2 million book deal was the black cloud hovering over the New York Nursing Home Scandal and the driving force of corruption, greed, and betrayal at the highest level of State government.

The COVID-19 panel, whose members include Staten Island Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Staten Island/Brooklyn), has interviewed other families of COVID victims and state ethics officials involved in the controversy.

The panel interviewed Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director, last week.

For nearly four years, Governor Cuomo has stonewalled our Committee as we seek to prevent the next pandemic, improve governments preparedness and response plans and gather answers for families who lost elderly loved ones because of his order forcing nursing homes to positive accept positive patients even if they could not care for them, Malliotakis said.

We look forward to finally getting answers, transparency and accountability for New Yorkers.

Questions that will undoubtedly be asked according to Malliotakis and Arbeeny and other sources consulted by the panel:

Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy who issued critical reports on the Cuomo administrations actions, also was consulted by the panel, as were state ethics officials tasked with reviewing the controversial book deal.

Cuomo who resigned as governor amid numerous sexual harassment and misconduct accusations he denies is looking forward to defending his management of the once-in-century pandemic.

The Department of Justice has looked at this issue three times, as have the Manhattan District Attorney, the [state] Attorney General and the New York State Assembly, all determining that the actual facts and evidence did not support any claim of wrongdoing, and no MAGA farce of a congressional hearing is going to change that, Cuomo spokesman Richard Azzopardi said.

The Cuomo spokesman also said the administrations March 25 directive telling nursing homes to admit or readmit COVID positive patients from hospitals did not cause Arbreenys fathers death.

We understand Mr. Arbeenys pain its terrible to lose a loved one under any circumstances but as court and publicly available DOH documents prove, the DOHs March 25 guidance played no role in his fathers loss: he was admitted to Cobble Hill Health Center on March 20, 2020, released on April 8 and passed away tragically April 21 critically, Cobble Hill Health Center did not admit a single covid positive patient into their facility until three weeks after Mr. Arbeeny was discharged, Azzopardi said.

The March 25 memo to nursing homes on admitting positive COVID-19 patients discharged from hospitals was based on guidance from federal health officials, the Cuomo rep said.

He said in May 2020, New York became one of only eight states to include presumed nursing home deaths from COVID to the daily tally, dramatically increasing New Yorks nursing home death numbers.

Azzopardi said that fact flies in the face of MAGA conspiracy theories that there was an attempt to undercount nursing home deaths.

He also maintained the federal governments own guidelines prohibited COVID patients from being treated on the USS Comfort ship.

By the time they reversed themselves, New Yorkers had flattened the curve and fears of a hospital collapse were no longer at issue, Azzopardi said.

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Here are the questions ex- NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo could face at hands of House COVID-19 panel - New York Post

Mona Charen, syndicated columnist

Here are Trumps words from that infamous April 2020 press conference about Covid:

So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way. I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning.

Yet here we are, a little more than four years later, and the narrative about how COVID was handled has shifted. It now seems to be conventional wisdom that the worst errors we committed concerned massive shutdowns and school closings. We hear comparatively little about the large discrepancies between Republicans and Democrats in death rates because of the formers resistance to public health measures and vaccination.

A serious country would look back at Trumps greatest challenge during his presidency and remember what an embarrassing failure it was.

It began with denial of the problem. Trump told Bob Woodward in a February 2020 phone call that You just breathe the air and thats how its passed. And so thats a very tricky one. Thats a very delicate one. Its also more deadly than even your strenuous flus. This is deadly stuff.

But in his public statements, Trump repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of the virus. On Jan. 22, 2020, he said, We have it totally under control. Its one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. Its going to be just fine. On Feb. 7, he tweeted:

Great discipline is taking place in China, as President Xi strongly leads what will be a very successful operation.

On Feb. 10, he again reported on a chat with Xi, reassuring Americans that I think China is very, you know, professionally run in the sense that they have everything under control.

On Feb. 26, he urged people to wash their hands (fair enough) but then suggested that the new virus was the same as the flu exactly the opposite of what he told Woodward.

On Feb. 27, he predicted that COVID would disappear its like a miracle.

On Feb. 28, Trump said the Democrats were politicizing the coronavirus, calling it their new hoax.

Trumps principal actions as chief executive in the early days of the pandemic were to enact travel bans from China and later Europe. He did nothing to initiate a testing program, though he did assert falsely that anyone who wanted a test could get one.

In March, Trump urged that the Grand Princess cruise ship, with sick passengers aboard, not be permitted to dock in San Francisco because he didnt want to increase the number of cases counted in the United States. I like the numbers being where they are. I dont need to have the numbers double because of one ship that wasnt our fault.

Also in March 2020, citing a small French study, Trump declared that the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, taken together with an antibiotic, could be one of the biggest game changers in the history of medicine and should be put in use immediately.

On April 3, Trump mentioned that the CDC was now recommending that people wear masks but said that he would not wear one.

By July, with the number of cases rising sharply, Trump suggested that the tests were picking up trivial cases: They have the sniffles and we put it down as a test. By that point, 3.7 million Americans had been infected and more than 140,000 had died.

Also in July, Trump elevated Dr. Stella Immanuel on Twitter. Dr. Immanuel touted hydroxychloroquine as a cure for COVID and denied that masks were effective. She also believed that gynecological problems like cysts and endometriosis are caused by people having sex in their dreams with demons and witches.

In a September 2020 campaign stop, Trump said that COVID affects virtually nobody, mainly just elderly people, elderly people with heart problems and other problems. If they have other problems, thats what it really affects, thats it.

Trump modeled contempt for masking, mocking reporters and others for wearing them. He held huge rallies and White House indoor parties that became superspreader events. When he himself became infected with COVID, he failed to disclose it to associates like Chris Christie (who wound up in intensive care) and arguably attempted to infect Joe Biden at the first presidential debate.

Trump denied the problem, failed to coordinate a federal response other than banning travel, embraced quack cures and modeled antisocial behavior. After first praising Xi Jinping to the skies for his strong control of the virus, he switched to name calling the Kung Flu, the China virus to incite xenophobic responses. He really did only one big thing right backing Operation Warp Speed, which hastened the development of the vaccine.

Now his party has gone full nutcase, demonizing Anthony Fauci. These are unserious people in thrall to a sociopathic clown. The U.S. death rate from COVID far exceeded that of peer nations. That was not due to excessive lockdowns or masking. It was due to incompetence in the White House. Time for a great remembering.

EDITORS NOTE: Mona Charen is policy editor of The Bulwark and host of the Beg to Differ podcast. Her new book, Hard Right: The GOPs Drift Toward Extremism, is available now.

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Trump's COVID-19 response was worse than we remember - Marquette Mining Journal

Longview, TX (75601) Today

Mostly cloudy this morning. Scattered thunderstorms developing this afternoon. High 86F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%..

Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. Low near 70F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.

Updated: June 10, 2024 @ 12:10 pm

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Embracing NHSN Analytics and the Power of Data for Action - Longview News-Journal