By New York Post (Opinion) | Created at 2025-03-04 05:03:01 | Updated at 2025-03-04 08:54:05
5 hours ago
Andrew Cuomo says he saved New York City from COVID-19. Fact check: He brought the Big Apple to its knees and came close to destroying it.
New Yorkers taken with Cuomo’s odious, I’m-your-hero oratory should remember how he screwed us over in 2020.
The former governor and now mayoral wannabe is properly blasted for sending 15,000 COVID victims from hospitals into nursing homes where many more died than needed to — likely as a favor to the hospital industry, which donated over $1 million to his re-election campaign in 2018.
But another Cuomo blunder haunts the city’s life and economy to this day: his stubborn, autocratic, arbitrary and vindictive lockdown and restrictions on stores, restaurants, cinemas, Broadway theaters, live concerts, museums, sports arenas, playgrounds and even zoos — just about anywhere New Yorkers congregate in numbers greater than two.
Harsher rules in city
Some regulations affected the rest of the state as well, but not like they did here, where they remained in force longer and more stringently.
Cuomo actually seemed to have it in for us, falsely claiming that the city’s density made the peril greater than anywhere else. I know it’s tough to sit home and lose track of time, he said, but it’s for your own good!
In fact, he was intoxicated with gubernatorial authority, indifferent to the needs of free enterprise, and — most crucially — out to show former Mayor Bill de Blasio who the real sheriff in town was. Hint: It wasn’t the mayor.
After de Blasio jumped the gun on calling for school closures in April 2020, Cuomo never got over what he regarded as an effort to upstage him with a move that properly belonged to him — and he took it out on the rest of us.
Does Cuomo expect us to forget that indoor dining, crucial to the social fabric whether at McDonald’s or Le Bernardin, was banned until October 2020 — and then, at a ridiculous and unworkable 25% capacity, complete with temperature-taking and mask-wearing en route to the bathroom?
Offices, the heartbeat of the city’s economy, couldn’t reopen until June 2020, and then at 50% capacity. With nearly everything else in Midtown and the Wall Street area closed, and offices subject to wacky mask-and-distancing rules, was it any wonder employees chose to “work” from home?
The straitjackets remained long after Cuomo rescinded or diluted the rules around the rest of the state. I was amazed to find a full dining room at a Nassau County steakhouse, just a block over the city line, in early July 2020. Owners cheerfully ignored the 25% rule, knowing that customers’ common sense would override fiats from the imperial governor.
Cuomo didn’t let movie theaters in the Big Apple reopen until late February 2021 — four months after the rest of the state — and then at 25% capacity. Equally ridiculous, random restrictions included 33% capacity in museums and zoos, the last of which aren’t known for claustrophobic, virus-spreading indoor confines.
The damage done
Yes, the virus killed or contributed to the deaths of 45,218 New York City residents. An unimaginable 801 perished on a single hellish day — April 1, 2020.
But the threat of COVID spread was mostly over by May and all but nonexistent by the fall. The infection rate, which peaked at 60% in early April, fell to 1% just two months later. Vaccines in January 2021 reduced serious cases and deaths to near-zero.
Even so, the endless drumbeat of doom and gloom enabled lockdown-loving media coverage, especially in The New York Times, which repeatedly warned, “The virus is not done with us.”
Cuomo’s calculated overstatement of risk provided cover for teachers-union-driven school closures, costing a generation of mostly underprivileged kids a year of proper education.
Empty streets and subways provided safe harbor for criminals and psychotic “homeless.” The “work from home” trend took almost five years to finally stem. Permanently lost were thousands of stores, restaurants and small businesses that couldn’t afford to go without revenue.
They weren’t casualties of COVID, but of gubernatorial edicts to settle a score. And we are still paying the price.
