Timeline of the New York Nursing Home COVID-19 Scandal Cover-up.

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a Penguin Random House representative reached out to a Cuomo literary agent to discuss a book deal. ”

“The governor and the state Department of Health issued a statewide advisory barring nursing homes from denying admission to patients solely on the basis of a suspected or confirmed Covid-19 diagnosis. Nursing homes were not given advance notice of this order, and it is now confirmed that the Executive Chamber, not DOH, wrote this advisory.”

“The governor signed the 2021 fiscal year state budget into law that included an added blanket immunity for hospitals and nursing homes from COVID lawsuits. Link.”

“Cuomo rescinds March 25th Guidance and prohibited hospitals from discharging a patient to a nursing home unless the patient first tests negative for COVID-19 and requires nursing homes to test all staff twice weekly and authorizes the Commissioner to revoke an operating license for failure to comply and establishes penalties.

In the May 10th section of Cuomo’s book, he (falsely) states:
“New York was number forty-six out of fifty in the nation when it came to percentage of deaths in nursing homes. There were only four states with a lower percentage of nursing home deaths, and New York had a much worse situation to manage.”
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““[Cuomo’s] literary agent told a Penguin Random House representative that then-Governor Cuomo had been writing a book about his experiences during the first six months of the pandemic” Source. They said they had about 70,000 words completed. (page 28)”

“The DOH releases its report analyzing COVID deaths in nursing homes, which concluded that Covid-19 fatalities in nursing homes were related to staff.

*The report was revised on February 11, 2021 following the AG’s January 28, 2021 nursing home report.

*Articles detailing how aides rewrote and manipulated data to follow the book’s narrative
Cuomo personally directed officials from the Executive Chamber, Task Force, and DOH to prepare the report in order to combat criticism for the March 25th order (pages 7 and 43 of the NYS Assembly Report).
It is important to note the following inaccuracies present in both versions of this report:

• It states that the New York Times released an article claiming New York was 46th in the nation in terms of nursing home deaths. Cuomo continued using this number repeatedly. What kind of government official uses a newspaper article instead of their own Department of Health for data? (page 7)

• Claiming the total of nursing home deaths to be 6,432 when it is now known its over 15,000

• Stating that the total admissions resulting from the March 25th order was 6,326; when the true number is above 9,056.

• The claim that NYS was the 46th state in terms of nursing home deaths. This is based on the false death count above.
The insinuation that the March 25 guidance was not responsible for any fatalities. This is virtually impossible when it is known that 9,056 Covid positive patients were transferred into nursing homes during the 6 weeks the guidance was in effect for.

• The lack of mention of the March 6th guidance; that insinuated that staff that had received the flu vaccine was exempted from wearing masks while working.
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“Auction process for the book between 3 publishing houses. PRH ultimately won the Cuomo book contract with a $5.2 million bid. ”

“The Cuomo administration sends a letter to JCOPE asking for approval to write a book.

In an interview with WAMC radio, he stated: “...I am now thinking about writing a book about what we went through, lessons learned, the entire experience because if we don’t learn from this then it will really compound the whole crisis that we’ve gone through…”. See July 1, 2020 for how much progress he had already completed in the book. ”

“JCOPE gave final approval for the book & listed 9 requirements, none of which were communicated to PRH by the Cuomo administration. The first two were:

1. The book must be written on the Governor’s own time and not on State time;

2. No State property, personnel or other resources may be utilized for activities associated with the book;

On this same day, the Cuomo team officially entered into a contract with PRH and sent a rough draft manuscript. Source

From this day until the book’s publishing in October, there were ongoing communications and meetings between PRH and the Cuomo Staff in regards to the book. Source.
”

“DOJ inquiry letter is sent to the Cuomo administration asking for information about nursing homes.”

“An aide to Cuomo, Gareth Rhodes, completed an audit on nursing home deaths, but the administration refused to share information or data for an additional 6 months. Source. ”

“Executive Chamber employee spoke to representatives from a daytime talk show about interviewing Cuomo and how to use this interview to drive sales. Source.”

“Cuomo’s book is released.”

“The DOJ sends an additional letter requesting more nursing home fatality data stating New York is the only state in the country, which does not include those residents transferred to hospitals in nursing home COVID-19 fatality totals. ”

“The New York attorney general issued a report that found that Cuomo’s state health department undercounted Covid-19 deaths among residents of nursing homes by approximately 50%, essentially by leaving out deaths of residents who had been transferred to hospitals. The New York Times reported the overall number of deaths did not change.

This prompted Dr. Zucker to confirm a total of 9,786 deaths (about 3,000 additional)”

“When confronted about the nursing home death report (above), Cuomo callously stated “who cares [where they died]? They died!”. He also stated:, “When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts . . . because I don’t. Because I don’t”. Press briefing here.”

“A state Supreme Court judge ruled in favor of the Empire Center’s FOIL suit and ordered the DOH to release the requested data by Feb. 10. That data showed a total of more than 15,000 resident deaths, or 6,000 more than previously reported. The ruling concluded that the DOH’s actions were illegal.”

“The DOH’s website is updated to reflect total nursing home deaths including those residents transferred to hospitals as 13,163. ”

“Ms. DeRosa says, that she and other Cuomo aides “froze” because of the DOJ request back on August 26, 2020. She later issued a response to that.
The Cuomo administration meets with Democratic lawmakers in a closed-door meeting regarding unanswered questions following the August hearings. Democratic lawmakers release a letter from the administration with answers to questions from the August hearings. The letter raised the total COVID-19 nursing home death total to 15,059 as of February 9th. Partial transcript was released.

The DOH report on Nursing homes is revised. Comparison of this version versus the original version here. (Click here to go back to July 6, 2020)”

“NYT reports that Cuomo’s executive aides rewrote, manipulated and falsified information on the DOH July 6, 2020 report.”

“NY Times releases an article about Cuomo’s multi-million dollar book deal and how his aides hid a damaging death toll. ”

“A report by the New York State Bar Association’s Task Force on Nursing Homes and Long-Term Care concluded: “Although the Governor would later describe the March 25th directive as in accordance with CDC guidance, there appears to be significant difference between then-current CDC guidance and the March 25th directive.””

“The Empire Center released a summary of the Cuomo administration’s cover up of the pandemic in nursing homes titled ‘Like fire through dry grass.’”

“Assembly releases report on Cuomo including sexual harassment, book deal, nursing homes and the Cuomo Bridge. It did not include anything regarding preferential COVID testing, see Cuomo’s letter to the Assembly warning them not to investigate this.”

“NYS Comptroller releases an audit on the nursing home fiasco.”

“Hogan Lovells releases its Investigative report on JCOPE’s Approval of Governor Cuomo’s July 10, 2020 Outside Activity Request. Some key findings:

• They agree with JCOPE’s conclusion that Governor Cuomo “misused the power and authority of his office to create, market and promote for enormous personal profit a work that not only was derivative of his official duties but could only have been brought into existence and completed on schedule through the . . . assistance of a group of Executive Chamber and other State officials . . . .”

• “​​The Executive Chamber then exerted pressure on JCOPE to expedite the approval of the [book] request…”

• The arrangement the Governor had, “created financial incentives – or, at a minimum, the appearance of such incentives – for the Governor to tailor his policies and actions to generate material for his book and/or to secure a lucrative publishing contract”

• It must have been obvious for JCOPE to know that the Governor had to use State resources to write this book while also leading the State’s response.

• The Executive Chamber clearly overpowered and controlled JCOPE, and JCOPE failed to assert its authority as a watchdog agency. Cuomo’s administration was able to easily and quickly push an ethically questionable agenda. ”