Cuomo Fiddles with Vaccine while New York Burns

A ndrew Cuomo forced vaccine doses to be thrown away. It can’t be stated often enough or loudly enough: After the miraculous and heroic efforts of great pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines before the first American had even been infected, and after the usual testing and regulatory hurdles consumed nearly eleven months, and after the first New Yorker accepted her jab on December 14 in an event Cuomo celebrated and streamed on his official channel, the governor of New York has been preventing people from getting the vaccine. “Bedlam” and “chaos” are two of the more polite words being used by administrators on the ground as they tiptoe their way through the regulatory minefield Cuomo quickly engineered between health-care professionals and the people of New York.

As the vaccine started being distributed to states, Cuomo continued, utterly predictably, to engage with the catastrophe in his oblivious I’m-the-king style. Micromanaging the vaccine, he issued one diktat after another determining what sorts of people should receive the vaccine first, with a close and obsessive eye on the perceived value of varying groups. He decreed via executive order that million-dollar fines and other penalties would be meted out to those who failed to follow to the letter the Byzantine rules he threw together on the fly and made official policy via executive order. New York City’s comptroller noted on Sunday that the sign-up process involves completing a tricky 51-point survey and uploading an insurance card, two significant barriers to seniors. Would-be users reported spending three hours trying to log on to the state site without getting through. Meanwhile, Israel, whose population is comparable to New York City’s, has vaccinated nearly ten times as many people as Gotham.

As of last Friday, half of the miraculous doses New York State had received, and two-thirds of those delivered to New York City, were sitting unused on shelves like a cruel bureaucratic parody of the Island of Misfit Toys. Some unknown number of doses simply expired unused, and had to be tossed in the garbage.

Andrew Cuomo forced vaccine doses to be thrown away.

Those who doubt that the desire to assert “leadership” rather than entrusting the people with the tools to save lives is a dangerous impulse are being taught a useful lesson. Everything the government touches turns into the DMV. As Cuomo issues decree after decree to entangle a situation that need not be more complicated than simply allowing clinics to give out the vaccine based on the information available on a driver’s license, every New Yorker who has not been vaccinated is effectively living with a bullseye on his forehead. The coronavirus is running rampant once again. New York, in the new year, has routinely set new records for case counts, which peaked at 10,000 per day last spring (using the seven-day rolling average as the measurement) but have in the past week skyrocketed past 15,000 per day. COVID is not nearly as lethal as it once was, but it’s killing more than 150 New Yorkers a day, far more than it has at any time since last spring. COVID in January of this year alone will kill many more New Yorkers than died on 9/11. February and March could be even worse if the vaccine does not get widely distributed.

Medical experts are loudly stating that it’s critical to vaccinate as many as possible as quickly as possible. Sometimes this means giving a shot to people who aren’t in high-risk groups because, once a vial is opened, its contents must be used within six hours. Clamping down on options via a strict ranking system enforced by the full power of government threats is the most lethal approach imaginable. In 1947, in a technologically primitive time compared to ours, New York City managed to vaccinate 6,350,000 people (against a smallpox outbreak) in a single month. The number of deaths attributed to that outbreak: two.

Cuomo’s threat to punish those who vaccinate people in what he believes to be the wrong order is not an idle one; officials in New Rochelle found themselves targeted by a state investigation, and thunderously denounced by a state spokesman, for vaccinating municipal workers and teachers. Hospitals and clinics receiving the vaccine were told they had to adhere to a baffling and complicated eligibility matrix dictating the order of distribution or face severe sanctions. Administrators are understandably confused about whether this or that person meets the eligibility requirements. At Housing Works, a nonprofit group that assists those with AIDS and the homeless, a medical officer told the New York Times, “We interpreted the maintenance team was eligible. It wasn’t completely clear. I hope I’m right.”

The story of Cuomo’s mismanagement of the crisis is a litany of catastrophically bad decisions. As late as March 2, just as the virus was starting to spread at a phenomenal and devastating rate, he told us, “We should relax because that’s what is dictated by the reality of the situation.” Three weeks later, he ordered nursing homes and rehab facilities to take in COVID patients, and didn’t reverse the order until May, by which point thousands of nursing-home residents had been felled by the virus. In October, just four months after he said, “The science is crystal clear: Vaccines are safe, effective, and the best way to keep our children safe,” he joined a shocking election-season gambit by Democrats to terrify the public about the supposed dangers of any vaccine that emerged while Donald Trump was president, adding, with an assertion of breathtaking irresponsibility, “It’s going to be a very skeptical American public about taking the vaccine and they should be!” Cuomo has insisted at every step that he has merely been “following the science.” But Andrew Cuomo forced vaccine doses to be thrown away. If there’s any archetypal figure he emulates, it is not the scientist but the Grim Reaper.