NYC Begs Gov. Cuomo To Let It Start Vaccinating Seniors: 'We've Got To Save Lives'
Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is having it out with Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over when his city can begin distributing COVID-19 vaccines to seniors and essential workers, and de Blasio is actually on the right side of the issue.
Leave it to Cuomo to make de Blasio, who might be the worst mayor in the country’s history, to appear reasonable. But that is what is happening, as Cuomo refuses to budge on the state’s vaccine plan, which is still needlessly bogged down in its first of many phases.
New York’s nursing home residents and staff members are first in line to get inoculated under Phase 1A. They are joined by other general health care workers. The problem is, many of those people apparently can’t be persuaded to get vaccinated, so tens of thousands of doses are just collecting dust.
The Daily Mail reported New York City has dished out only 149,000 of its allotted 487,000 vaccine doses, and that is over a three-week period.
With so many doses sitting around, the city’s mayor rightly sees it fit to move on to the next phase.
Credit is due to de Blasio, but just this once.
The radical Democrat wants to begin vaccinating New Yorkers over the age of 75, as prescribed under the plan’s Phase 1B. He’d also like to see police officers, corrections officers, first responders, retail workers and school teachers get the shot.
But Cuomo, who has mismanaged virtually every aspect of New York’s response to the pandemic, sees things differently.
The state vaccination guidelines strictly state that vaccines will go to health care workers and nursing home residents and their staff. Cuomo has even threatened to fine hospitals $100,000 if they don’t administer their vaccine doses to staffers by the end of the week.
You can lead a horse to water …
For reasons that are not the business of Cuomo or any other person, many people working in New York’s hospitals simply don’t want the vaccine. Some already had the virus, while others just don’t want to take it, according to the Daily Mail. That has led de Blasio to the logical conclusion that it’s time to move past those who are passing on a vaccine.
“We need to vaccinate all New Yorkers who are vulnerable, all New Yorkers who are high priority. We need the freedom to vaccinate,” de Blasio said at a Thursday news conference. “It makes no sense if I have someone over 75 who’s ready right now to be vaccinated, there’s no reason I shouldn’t be doing that.”
“If I’ve got an essential worker or a first responder who is ready right now and we have really efficient ways to reach them because they’re part of the government … we can organize within our agencies very efficiently … there’s no reason to hold that back,” he added.
Big-government de Blasio then did the unthinkable; he criticized big-government Cuomo.
“If you had a world where everyone said ‘I 100 percent want the vaccine’ … then the governor’s theory would make a lot of sense. But on the ground it’s different. We’re at the frontline, here’s what we’re seeing. A lot of people aren’t ready to take the vaccine in category 1A,” he said.
The worst mayor in American also blasted his state’s government for not allowing people who are over 75 and currently hospitalized to be eligible for vaccines, saying, “It makes no sense.”
New York Times reporter Emma Fitzsimmons quoted de Blasio as saying, “We’ve got to save lives,” which might be the most lucid statement the man has ever uttered.
New York City says it has thousands of slots available to vaccinate New Yorkers and can’t use them because of Gov. Cuomo’s restrictions.
“We’ve got to save lives,” Mayor Bill de Blasio pleads, asking again to vaccinate seniors: Who is most vulnerable? Who is most likely to die?— Emma G. Fitzsimmons (@emmagf) January 7, 2021
The governor reportedly isn’t budging, though — which means that in this Democrat-on-Democrat dispute, Cuomo has made de Blasio the reasonable one. That’s all the more reason to crown him the worst governor in the country — a field populated by half-wits.
New Yorkers certainly shorted themselves with regard to competent leadership — or lack thereof.
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