Now he cares about the elderly catching COVID-19.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo — whose administration infamously ordered the state’s nursing homes to accept coronavirus-stricken patients at the height of the pandemic last year — tried to guilt young people Monday into getting vaccinated by warning they could kill their grandparents if they don’t.
“There is an attitude that they’ll be fine, why should they take the vaccine?” the governor said at a press briefing, referring to young people.
“My argument is, yeah, maybe you’ll be fine, and by the way, you don’t know that either,’’ the governor said. “Maybe you will get a long-haul syndrome that we’re not really be sure what it is yet but a lingering consequence of COVID.
“Or maybe you’ll go home and kiss your grandmother and wind up killing your grandmother. So show some civic responsibility,’’ Cuomo said.
His comments come just over a year after the state Health Department’s controversial edict that sent nursing home residents who tested positive for the virus back to the facilities — even though the elderly are among the most vulnerable to COVID-19.
A February analysis of data by the nonprofit Empire Center for Public Policy found that “several hundred and possibly more than 1,000” fatalities from the virus in nursing homes in the state could be tied to the policy — despite the Cuomo administration insisting it was not a “significant factor” in the toll.
Cuomo and his aides are accused of then withholding the true number of nursing home residents who died from COVID-19 by excluding those who ultimately passed away in hospitals — a scandal that is now at the center of state and federal probes.
