New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, with a lack of self-awareness seldom seen outside hereditary dictatorships, is writing a book on managing the Covid-19 outbreak – after leading the state to the US’ highest coronavirus death toll.
Crown Publishing announced the book, titled ‘American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic’, on Twitter on Tuesday, and said it will be released on October 13, three weeks before the US presidential election. The book will include leadership advice and a look at Cuomo’s relationship with President Donald Trump.
Its release was announced the day after Cuomo gave a speech at the Democratic National Convention, praising his state’s success in dealing with the virus and blaming the Trump administration for allowing New York to be “ambushed” by the pandemic. “We went through hell, but we have learned so much,” Cuomo said.
The book likely won’t dwell on the fact that New York, the fourth-largest US state by population, has had nearly 33,000 Covid-19 deaths, over double the nation’s second-worst death toll. Nor will it emphasize that Cuomo’s own actions contributed to many of those deaths.
The governor issued an executive order in March requiring nursing homes to admit Covid-19 patients transferred from hospitals. Cuomo later rescinded the order, but not before thousands of people had died.
Why is Andrew Cuomo writing a book about how well he handled a pandemic in the middle of a pandemic that is very much still in progress?
— Judd Legum (@JuddLegum) August 18, 2020
New York has reported more than 6,600 Covid-19 deaths in nursing homes, but unlike other states, it counts only residents who died on nursing home property – leaving out those who became ill and were sent to hospitals for intensive care.
Cuomo has touted the fact that only around 20 percent of New York’s Covid-19 deaths are from nursing homes, but undercounting likely plays a big part in that. In nearby Pennsylvania, whose Democrat governor issued a similar order on admitting Covid-19 patients, nursing homes account for nearly 70 percent of deaths. People aged 65 and older account for more than 17,000 Covid-19 deaths in New York City, or 74 percent of the total toll.
sorry, still thinking about how Cuomo has found no time to halt evictions or help any of the industries devastated by this pandemic, but has had plenty of time to write a book about what a good job he did that time he directly caused the deaths of over 30k NY citizens.
— Joseph Fink, healthcare is a human right (@PlanetofFinks) August 18, 2020
So, news of a book containing Cuomo’s leadership advice was met with disgust by many observers. Janice Dean, a Fox News meteorologist whose mother and father-in-law died of Covid-19 in New York nursing homes, tweeted that it was unsurprising Cuomo is “writing a book to profit off the thousands of people that died of his leadership. He’s the same guy that made a poster of Covid death mountain and sold it for $11.99.”
Journalist David Sirota noted the irony of Cuomo offering leadership advice after his Covid-19 debacle: “This is like if George Bush wrote a self-congratulatory memoir about Hurricane Katrina a few weeks after the storm hit.”
Podcast co-host Ben Jammin suggested an alternative title – ‘How to Get Away with Murder’ – while another Twitter user said, “If you order right now, we will throw in a free body bag for grandma!”
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