Kudos to Glenn Reynolds for telling the truth about Governor Cuomo

Glenn Reynolds writes in part in USA Today,

…Probably the biggest and deadliest mistake was New York’s requirement that recovering patients with COVID-19 be accepted by nursing homes. That’s right — people who were still contagious with a disease that is especially deadly to the old and sick were placed in facilities that were full of the old and sick. Nursing homes that protested were ordered to shut up and take the patients anyway.

More than 5,300 nursing home patients in New York have died from Covid-19, and as an Albany Times Union account notes, critics blame this policy. Cuomo has now tacitly admitted the error by reversing the policy, requiring patients to test negative before they are sent to nursing homes.

But it took rather a long time to reverse what seems like an obviously deadly policy, one that the Wall Street Journal called a “fatal error.”

Writing in the New York Post, Michael Goodwin notes: “First, nursing homes never believed they had any right to deny infected patients, saying the order from the state Department of Health would have included that option if that were the intent. The order’s language did not offer any hint of flexibility…Worse, the order came without warning, took effect immediately and gave the homes no time to set up segregated beds and staff. All nursing homes, good and bad, large and small, were treated as if they were fit for an influx of coronavirus patients.The second problem with Cuomo’s claim is the case of the Cobble Hill Health Center, which lost at least 55 patients to the virus. The CEO, Donny Tuchman, showed reporters April emails where he asked state health officials for assistance, and was turned down. He also asked them if COVID-19 patients he had could be sent instead to the Javits Center or the Navy ship Comfort, both of which were far below capacity. He was rejected again. It’s true there was one way Albany officials did help beleaguered nursing homes. The packages of equipment they sent included body bags.”

Read the whole thing here.