Doug Smith is an opinion columnist, historian and Associate editor for Free State Patriot
May 11, 2020
“Forgive our New York “arrogance”!
This was a line Governor Andrew Cuomo (D), NY used when minimizing the CV outbreak and urging, along with fellow Democrat Bill DeBlasio, Hizzoner the Mayor, people to continue doing what they do. Go to Chinatown and the New Year’s parades. Ride the Subways. See a show. Play Frank Sinatra. This, even as infections were showing up by the hundreds in New York city.
Early on, New York Nursing Homes asked urgently that CV positive patients not be returned to their facilities, but hospitalized, or sent to some temporary facility such as the Javits Center, geared to handle isolation and treatment. Cuomo refused, and ordered , Ordered, that hospitals send elderly infected patients to nursing homes and that the nursing homes take them, stating “ It is not the state’s job to provide nursing homes with PPE, and they do not have the right to object to the regulation ordering them to take the patients. It is their fiduciary responsibility. “
As a result, a large percentage of the deaths in NY were people who could not isolate or get away, because they were old people trapped in a nursing home. Thousands have died in NY nursing homes, a large percentage of the totals in the US. In his NY arrogance, Gov Cuomo stuck with an order that condemned thousands to preventable deaths in recent months.
As the New York Times now reports, in March, after hundreds of cases in NYC, Cuomo and DeBlasio were continuing to downplay the outbreak and urging people to come to New York. This follows the advice of NY Health officials urging people to congregate in huge crowds in Chinatown for Chinese New Year’s in February, as our way of “showing the Coronavirus” and refusing to stigmatize anyone. Tracing of the virus across the US, by the Times own reporting, shows that travel to and from NYC, far more than from China and Italy, was the primary vector spreading it across the US. With Cuomo s strong rhetoric about the hard steps he took, and how long he may keep his state locked down, he overlooks one vital piece of information, reports the Times. The horse was already out of the barn before the Governor slammed the door, put in his thumb, pulled out a plum, and said what a good boy am I. The missteps, and arrogance of the Governor and the NYC Mayor are largely responsible for the extent of the pandemic in the rest of the country, aside from the fact that in raw numbers, far and away most of the infections took place in New York. Even, as the Times notes, the large numbers in Louisiana, tied to Mardi Gras, are traceable back to NY.
Now that it is becoming apparent that even with Cuomo s rhetoric, things were never as dire, by orders of magnitude, as he tried to paint it, while shifting blame from himself. Ventilator need was off by orders of magnitude, as was the urgent need for hospital beds. As it becomes apparent, the NY arrogance is on display once again. Samaritans Purse, who set up field hospitals previously in Ebola hotspots and other crises, set up a hospital and treated CV patients in cooperation with Mt Sinai Hospital. Now that the need is winding down , NY city council has made it clear that the ( free, I should note) Doctors and equipment provided by this ministry, is not welcome because they disagree in principle with the NY stance on LGBTXYZ issues. They have no place in New York. They did not, by the way, examine the beliefs or lifestyles of the patients they treated, they simply treated them. But now? The old New York arrogance: disagree with me, then get thee hence! That, of course, does not come from Cuomo himself, but neither does he use his considerable bully pulpit to say “New York thanks and welcomes all who have come to help us in our hour of need”
In Fact:
Cuomo has also stated that volunteers who come to New York, and were there at least 14 days, will have to pay NY State income tax (the highest in the nation). When asked if he would waive that for people who came to help, at great personal sacrifice and risk, he said “I cannot give them money when we have a $ 13 billion deficit. Give them money? Cuomo plans to extort money from volunteers who came at his call to help. I wonder, now, does that include the Navy crew of the USNS Comfort? As for the 13 billion deficit, that is not as a result of the last few months. We can detail it at another time, but who was the Governor of New York for the last 8 years as they grew that deficit? Here’s a hint: it was not the volunteers who came to help New York. It was, by some accounts, the most eligible bachelor in New York.
Now there is a part of me that is outraged and offended by Cuomo ‘s “New York Arrogance”. There is a part of me that say, No, Governor, I will Not forgive your arrogance. I will not forgive it because you don’t learn from it, and your arrogant choices and mistakes have cost your state and our nation greatly. Images of the movie Escape from New York come to mind, with the entire arrogant island turned into a maximum-security prison. (Call me Snake.)
But no, I suspect that for all your arrogance, humble men like Franklin Graham will still come at your hour of need, not because you are worthy. It is a common thing for Leftist and non-Christians to criticize the actions of Christians by sneering at them, Well, what would Jesus do? Jesus would heal the ear of a man who was there to arrest him and take him to his death. Franklin Graham and Samaritans Purse did what Jesus would do.
Jesus would even forgive your arrogance, more easily than I.
He would also say, now, Go and sin no more.
Work on that arrogance, Andrew. You might try the humility of Franklin Graham. New York may not deserve better, but maybe we can give them better anyway.
Free State Patriot 
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