The media has been on Donald Trump’s case about his ignoring the health ‘experts’ in the government response to the Covid-19 pandemic….
But the ex-President wasn’t the only one doing that….
Across the country Governor’s came under pressure on how to deal with virus outbreaks in real time with ten’s of thousands of people for and against virus restrictions and the the roll out of vaccine shots…
The NY Times is out with a second piece knocking the New York Governor in the way he has handled the response to Covid-19 virus situation in the state…
Their actions seem to be focused on the health issues, but ARE gonna result in political trouble for the Governor who has been looked at as having done a good job for the state, but now is have a hard look at things pulling the rug out from him the states Attorney General, a fellow Democrats and now the NY Times….
Mr. Cuomo said in an interview that the scale of the pandemic had overwhelmed the state’s public health planning.
“It’s the Mike Tyson line: ‘Everybody has a plan until I punch them in the face,’” Mr. Cuomo said.
Mr. Cuomo said his approach had delivered results in New York, including a positivity rate that has been declining after a peak in early January and better vaccination rates. New York saw the worst of the pandemic in the spring, and roughly 43,000 have died, more than in any other state.
“The scale changes everything,” Mr. Cuomo said. “My job is to get the vaccinations done as soon as possible.”
In the fall, Mr. Cuomo shelved vaccine distribution plans that top state health officials had been drawing up, one person with knowledge of the decision said. The plans had relied in part on years of preparations at the local level — an outgrowth of bioterrorism fears following Sept. 11 — and on experience dispensing vaccine through county health departments during the H1N1 pandemic in 2009.
As a result, local officials across the state complained that their efforts to vaccinate were undercut by the Cuomo plan.
“Wait a minute, why are we not doing this?” Anthony J. Picente Jr., a Republican who is county executive in upstate Oneida County, said he remembered thinking.
At the New York City Health Department, officials had hoped to significantly expand a system used for childhood vaccinations, in which the city is able to order doses directly from the federal government, one city official said.
But the Cuomo administration, in an October letter to the Trump administration, told federal officials to work only with the state when it came to doling out doses. That made it difficult for the city to create its own vaccination sites, the official said.
State officials said the approach made sense for what was a statewide vaccination effort, and that the state’s plan incorporated guidance from the C.D.C. and lessons learned from previous health emergencies.
It is not possible to determine conclusively whether alternative plans at the state and local health departments would have performed better in the early weeks of the rollout. Public health departments have been chronically underfunded, a situation experts have warned of for years.
But elements of the state’s approach hindered the rollout, New York City officials contended.
Note…
This story also contains the underlying continued political push/pull between the New York State and New York City Governments and their leadership….
image….Pool photo by Mary Altaffer