NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 26: New York Governor Andrew Cuomo holds his daily press briefing at the … [+]
Yesterday, Cuomo admitted failure.
As the coronavirus pandemic spread across the globe, many championed New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo as the leader Trump should have been. With a powerful demeanor, Cuomo led his daily briefings with the confidence required of a leader in a national emergency.
Weeks after New York is estimated to have reached its peak, we now have the time to take a step back and process the trauma, and critics are increasingly pointing out flaws in Cuomo’s governing through the pandemic.
Many compare Cuomo to San Francisco Mayor London Breed, and his counterpart, California State Governor Gavin Newsom. “On March 16, with just under 40 cases of Covid-19 in San Francisco and no deaths, Breed issued the order banning all but essential movement and interaction,” explains an article comparing NYC and San Francisco timelines. By May 15th, “In New York City, the country’s most populous and densest, there had been just under 20,000 deaths; in San Francisco, the country’s second densest and 13th most populous, there had been 35,” the same article reports.
Among Cuomo’s most criticized actions: the delay in his decision to impose stay-at-home restrictions, as some epidemiologists estimate in a New York Times op-ed that “deaths might have been reduced by 50 percent to 80 percent in New York City if social distancing had been widely adopted a week or two earlier.”
But Cuomo is the first to admit his imperfections. Yesterday, Cuomo held a news briefing at the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum in which he avoided answering questions about New York’s timeline for completely re-opening. “Now, there are a lot of variables, I understand that,” Cuomo said. “We didn’t know what social distancing would actually amount to, I get it. But we were all wrong. So I’m sort of out of the guessing business.”
Cuomo’s actions in response to the coronavirus pandemic may not have been perfect, but he “has the courage to take responsibility and the blame for the ramifications of shutting down the state, he is a vastly better leader compared to a feckless President who refuses to take any responsibility for the extensive loss of life occurring under his watch,” writes Danielle Campoamor in a CNN op-ed.
Compared to Trump, Cuomo is an excellent and effective leader. President Trump was spotted on the golf course twice this Memorial Day Weekend, and was widely criticized for doing so as the coronavirus pandemic death toll hit 100,000 in the US. That is almost three times more than the country hit second hardest, the United Kingdom, with a death toll of 36,996.
Cuomo’s critics seem to forget the simple truth, that, as with most national health crises, but especially pandemics; there is no “right” answer. Though in retrospect, his decisions may now be widely criticized, Cuomo took the information he had available to him and made the decisions that seemed most sensible to him.
