Andrew Cuomo COVID Policy Harms Disabled

In late April 2020, while field hospitals built with millions of dollars stood empty and the USNS Comfort prepared to leave NYC after having only treated 182 patients, Governor Cuomo announced that further construction on such sites would halt, because they were unnecessary. “Thank God New Yorkers listened, and the projection turned out to be incorrect, because we reduced the spread of the virus with the closings, NY PAUSE, etc.,” Cuomo said on April 21. “Did you need the beds? Yes. You needed the beds because that was the projections. We stopped any new construction when we saw the rate starting to stabilize.”

We know now that this “stabilization” for hospitals involved sending contagious individuals back to nursing homes, where they would infect others. But it wasn’t just nursing homes. Cuomo’s edicts put another vulnerable population in inexcusable peril: New Yorkers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) living in group homes. A study released in June in Disability and Health Journal titled “COVID-19 outcomes among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities living in residential homes in New York state” found that people with IDD living in residential group homes were more than twice as likely to have severe outcomes and deaths as the state’s general population.

MM

About the Author

Maria McFadden Maffucci

Maria McFadden Maffucci is the editor in chief of Human Life Review and the mother of a young adult on the autism spectrum.

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In late April 2020, while field hospitals built with millions of dollars stood empty and the USNS Comfort prepared to leave NYC after having only treated 182 patients, Governor Cuomo announced that further construction on such sites would halt, because they were unnecessary. “Thank God New Yorkers listened, and the projection turned out to be incorrect, because we reduced the spread of the virus with the closings, NY PAUSE, etc.,” Cuomo said on April 21. “Did you need the beds? Yes. You needed the beds because that was the projections. We stopped any new construction when we saw the rate starting to stabilize.”

We know now that this “stabilization” for hospitals involved sending contagious individuals back to nursing homes, where they would infect others. But it wasn’t just nursing homes. Cuomo’s edicts put another vulnerable population in inexcusable peril: New Yorkers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) living in group homes. A study released in June in Disability and Health Journal titled “COVID-19 outcomes among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities living in residential homes in New York state” found that people with IDD living in residential group homes were more than twice as likely to have severe outcomes and deaths as the state’s general population.