Once upon a time the world stood agog at the performance of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. Time stopped at midday when people tuned in to the briefings that Cuomo was masterfully offering. They compared his smooth delivery and full command of the facts to the less proficient performance of our president. Cuomo was so good that people were dreaming that Joe Biden would drop out of the presidential race, the better to leave the field open to the sure winner, Cuomo.
And then, reality bit. And it bit hard. For all the wondrousness of Cuomo, once the curtain was pulled back we discovered, to our dismay, that New York State was leading the nation in coronavirus deaths. Not a good line to put on your resume.
Today, the Wall Street Journal reported on what went wrong in New York. It turns out, quite a lot went wrong. Here is the executive summary:
The virus has hit New York harder than any other state, cutting through its densely populated urban neighborhoods and devastating the economy. New York state’s death toll of 30,575 accounted for 7% of the world’s deaths and 27% of American deaths as of June 11, according to Johns Hopkins University data.
The Wall Street Journal talked to nearly 90 front-line doctors, nurses, health-care workers, hospital administrators and government officials, and reviewed emails, legal documents and memos, to analyze what went wrong. Among the missteps they identify:
• Improper patient transfers. Some patients were too sick to have been transferred between hospitals. Squabbling between the Cuomo and de Blasio administrations contributed to an uncoordinated effort.
• Insufficient isolation protocols. Hospitals often mixed infected patients with the uninfected early on, and the virus spread to non-Covid-19 units.
• Inadequate staff planning. Hospitals added hundreds of intensive-care beds but not always enough trained staff, leading to improper treatments and overlooked patients dying alone.
• Mixed messages. State, city government and hospital officials kept shifting guidelines about when exposed and ill front-line workers should return to work.
• Overreliance on government sources for key equipment. Hospitals turned to the state and federal government for hundreds of ventilators, but many were faulty or inadequate.
• Procurement-planning gaps. While leaders focused attention on procuring ventilators, hospitals didn’t always provide for adequate supplies of critical resources including oxygen, vital-signs monitors and dialysis machines.
• Incomplete staff-protection policies. Many hospitals provided staff with insufficient protective equipment and testing.
The government is staffed by dummies who get in and stay in because of reasons having nothing to do with competency. It is a nest of losers. I would expect this to be particularly true of NY government. It's a sprawling, overpaid, overstaffed jobs program for credentialed stiffs. Invent-a-job for all our college grads with nothing to do and school loans to pay. Pa once worked for the government by mistake. Yikes. Double-yikes. Ma Ubu works for the government and every word I said is verified.
ReplyDeleteSo why would it be a mystery that when faced with a real emergency, the government failed? It failed to understand, it failed to act, it acted improperly, and above all, it acted with no accountability. It's what the government does. No matter, they'll vote Democrat straight-ticket no matter what happens. It's what government employees do. And the media will already be 8 hysterias past all this. Panic under the bridge.
I'm still agog at Andrew Cuomo. I've read some of his post-Covidian debacle comments, and I'm simply agog.
ReplyDeleteI never thought I'd live to see a real person who reminded me of the blonde who famously said, "How can I be overdrawn? I still have checks!"
I'm having a St Simeon moment.
In the service, we called things like this a "cluster f**k".
ReplyDeleteAndrew Cuomo will never be held accountable. In fact, he’ll be re-elected, winning by a large margin.
ReplyDeleteCuomo’ s INTENTIONS were that every single life mattered.
Too bad they didn’t.
Being on the Left means never having to say you’re sorry.
Ya' know, this could have been predicted by an half-way competent person. Of course, just grabbing all the ventilator hardware wasn't going to save people. All of the other missing parts of the system weren't going to be available.
ReplyDeleteBut, Cuomo screamed at Trump to give them to NY. Despite his having wasted the supply he'd previously had. Anyone have any doubt that the ventilators he DID get will walk out the door as soon as someone identifies an 'undocumented customer'? That's the real reason he asked for the physical hardware - someone can pick up some money facilitating the transactions. Other supplies aren't so easily fenced.
Same with the masks and other PPE - Trump called it when he questioned how they happened to be short - of COURSE they were 'walking out the back door'. Trump's had hard experience with the light-fingered and honesty-challenged employees in his businesses. He knows the solution is to stop as much as you can, and monitor them constantly. Cuomo/DiBiasio won't do that - they might find themselves in the unpleasant situation of having to fire a connected person.