CNN's Cuomo Asks if Florida Should Get Enough COVID Vaccine
We occasionally need a friendly reminder there isn’t just one terrible Cuomo out there.
Yes, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has proven to be uniquely wretched in so many ways during the annus horribilis of 2020. Not that we need a recapitulation, but he’s now facing a sexual harassment allegation as Joe Biden considers him for the post of United States attorney general.
One is at least relieved the attorney general doesn’t make decisions about what hospital patients get sent back into nursing homes, but the fact that Cuomo’s even being considered is a reminder you didn’t need about the inexplicable love affair between the mainstream media and one of the worst governors since Pontius Pilate.
Lest you’ve forgotten, there’s still Chris Cuomo, though. Since we’ve all been spending less time in airport terminals these last few months, some of us may have forgotten about that other Cuomo — at least after the combined Cuomos’ COVID-briefing Smothers Brothers routines got old.
Chris Cuomo is still on CNN, though. He’s still got opinions. And they’re still ghastly.
On Tuesday, he proved it while talking about the distribution of the coronaviru vaccine now available hand thanks in large part to the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed.
We don’t have enough of it, at least not yet. That means there are going to be logistical challenges.
Chris Cuomo, distribution-chain expert that he is, is peeved at how those challenges are being handled. According to the Media Research Center, his specific peeve Tuesday was that Florida is getting more vaccines than New York is getting.
Not that Cuomo knows the numbers or anything; he’s only part of a massive media node and that kind of work is apparently beyond him. However, as part of Cuomo’s regular “Vacci-Nation” (groan) segment, the CNN host went through the vaccine distribution numbers as he understood them, and didn’t like why the Sunshine State was getting so many of the inoculations.
“Where to focus the vaccine, who should get it? OK. Well, if you start with the obvious metric, where are the most cases, where are people dying the most? It’s going to be your big states. New York, California, Texas, Florida. OK,” Cuomo said, according to the MRC transcript.
“But now let’s look at those states. They also have the most health care workers, right? Because you have the most people. You have the most people, most population, most cases, most health care workers, most everything. Nursing home patients and health care workers, they need a lot and they’re first up for doses.”
Yes, well, you’re watching a news channel, so the likelihood you need Fredo explaining this to you is minute. However, while he agrees we should focus the vaccine on states where people are dying the most, he seems to have some odd ideas on where we should go from there.
He goes on to say that “only one of the states that I just mentioned, Texas, is even scheduled to get close to enough doses to give everyone in the first group a single dose by the end of the year. Why Texas? It’s not the biggest? Certainly hasn’t been the most responsible. Why Texas? In fact, of the five states that will get enough to give everyone in the first group a single dose by New Year’s, none of the states who will qualify that way are in the top 20 when it comes to case count.
“Again, is this just about math? Or is it manipulation?”
Duh-duh-duhhhh! Now, I know you’re probably focused on the fact Cuomo is insinuating — in the absence of any proof — that Texas is getting its vaccine allocation because Trump loves him some Texas.
Mind you, every other conspiracy theory the left has had about the administration putting its thumbs on the COVID scales with Operation Warp Speed has been comprehensively disproven by the facts. But this time, Chris Cuomo’s seeing through all of the lies.
However, while your brain was probably focusing on that, you should keep in mind his talk about how Texas “hasn’t been the most responsible” when it comes to stopping the spread of COVID. It’ll come in handy later. Anyway, next he talked about his brother and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“Context, I know this guy named Cuomo up in New York,” Fredo said. “He said about 10,000 doses were administered yesterday. That leaves him just as exposed, given the scale of need, as he was without the vaccine, relatively. Every bit counts, of course, but New York needs so much more and a lot faster or the curve of cases is going to go up longer and include more of the people that we need on the front lines. Time equals death here.
“Governor DeSantis in Florida said they sent about 100,000 to five hospitals. But there’s a delay as shipments for the next two weeks are, quote, ‘on hold right now.’ Two issues. One, why did they get so many more than New York, is it true, that they did? Because the numbers seem to suggest it. Is that the answer?”
After taking a couple of more shots at DeSantis, Cuomo got to his real questions about Florida: “Did they get the doses they need. Should they?”
Should they?
Now, pretty much everything that came out of Chris Cuomo’s mouth that isn’t a proper noun or a conjunction is wrong, but let’s start with that question: Why would Florida get more vaccines than New York? Why would Operation Warp Speed focus efforts on Florida in a bid to inoculate people against a disease that’s known to be particularly brutal on the elderly?
This question basically answers itself, but let’s go to the statistics just to drive the point home: 20.5 percent of Florida residents were estimated to be over the age of 65 in 2018, according to the Population Reference Bureau. That was the second-highest percentage in the United States, right after Maine.
New York was tied at number 26 with Kentucky and Tennessee, with 16.4 percent of their residents over the age of 65.
Those over 65, along with health care workers and those with high-risk medical conditions are considered the first group where vaccinations should go, according to a CDC planning document.
So, if you want to save lives, focus on Florida first. Time equals death here, right?
But actually, don’t focus on anything Chris Cuomo said, because what isn’t wrong is out of context. According to the U.K. Daily Mail, New York state has 87,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine. That’s less than the 170,000 it expected, but pretty much every state is dealing with production issues. (Uncertainty about production, incidentally, is why De Santis said Florida’s vaccination effort is “on hold,” according to WBBH-TV.)
That 10,000 number for New York state Chris Cuomo mentioned? It was really the number of people Andrew Cuomo announced would be vaccinated on Monday, according to the New York Post. The state actually managed to vaccinate 4,000, the Post reported.
As for the number of vaccines allocated to each state in the first round, The New York Times reported that the aim is to send 169,650 doses to New York and 179,400 to Florida.
California, meanwhile, is set to get 327,600 doses, while Texas is getting 224,250, according to The Times.
In other words, this isn’t because Donald Trump thinks Ron DeSantis is a peachy keen guy and that Andrew Cuomo is a bad ol’ Democrat who yells at reporters about orange zones and red zones. The most populous state — California — is getting the highest number of doses, with the remaining states in the top four getting decreasing numbers by their population ranking.
Oh, and one last thing — Chris Cuomo’s implication that we should take into account which states have “been the most responsible” in allocating the vaccine isn’t just reprehensible, it also ignores the fact that that guy named Cuomo he knows up in New York sent COVID-positive seniors back into rest homes to infect and kill other seniors. We don’t know how many because he refuses to let anyone investigate.
That same Cuomo guy threatened to sue other states that would force New Yorkers to quarantine at the beginning of the pandemic, when such quarantines could potentially have helped dramatically slow the spread. That Cuomo is now a fan of those quarantines for people visiting his state. And, after bragging about the state’s ability to vaccinate 10,000 New Yorkers on Monday, he managed only 4,000.
And Chris Cuomo wants to talk about who’s been “responsible”?
How “responsible” a state has been — by liberal standards of behavior, naturally — should have nothing to do with how many doses of the vaccine it receives. To insinuate that much is odious under any circumstances.
To insinuate that when your brother is Andrew Cuomo, however — during a segment in which every “fact” is misleading or wrong — defies description.
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