Day 384: Covered Up

Loyal readers may recall that the true extent of New York State's nursing home deaths came out back around Day 363. One might think that counting is hard, even if it's your job, but one would (allegedly) be wrong; the New York Post reports that Melissa DeRosa, Cuomo's secretary, admitted to covering up the numbers for fear of federal prosecution.

In addition to stonewalling lawmakers on the total number of nursing home residents killed by COVID-19, Cuomo’s administration refused requests from the news media — including The Post — and fought a Freedom of Information lawsuit filed by the Empire Center on Public Policy.

Instead, it only disclosed data on the numbers of residents who died in their nursing homes.

But after state Attorney General Letitia James last month released a damning report that estimated the deaths of nursing home residents in hospitals would boost the grim tally by more than 50 percent, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker finally released figures showing the combined total was 12,743 as of Jan. 19.

In other cover-up/miscounting news, Taiwan News reports on 150,000 missing pensioners in Wuhan:

On Wednesday, RFA [Radio Free Asia] published government figures released by the Hubei Civil Affairs Department showing that 150,000 names had vanished from the list of pension recipients over the first three months of 2020, when the outbreak in Wuhan was at its peak. These subsidies are paid to elderly residents in Hubei over the age of 80 who are in need of financial assistance.

[...]

Given China's rapidly aging population, an academic who wished to remain anonymous told RFA that there should be an increase in the number of elderly collecting such subsidies, much less such a dramatic decrease. The scholar believed that the massive burden on the health care system brought on by the outbreak could have indirectly "led to an increase in the number of deaths from other diseases."

P.S. Massachusetts cases were up a third of a percentage point today.