Timex
4737
Most of California’s deaths came from LA, San Diego, and Riverside. I just can’t see that large spike in deaths late in 2020 as anything other than a failure in leadership when we compare it to a place like New York.
Timex
4738
This is fair, this was actually an error as I meant to include the stats for new York state.
I still gotta say, the story is the same. While you see some winter spike in new York state, even when accounting for population, the spike in California at that point was significantly worse.
New York dealt with a lot of shit early on, and all of the supposedly bad handling of covid that some are suggesting occurred, happened very early on that graph… But then new York responded quite decisively. Personally, I think that longer response is a better gauge of leadership than the initial spike.
Houngan
4740
You should probably switch from deaths to cases, deaths were massively overrepresented at the start of the pandemic in elderly homes. Cases cut a truer path.
Not really, for NY specifically, because we had a huge number of cases basically before tests were available. The positive test rate was basically 100% at the peak of the NYC first wave. The “reported case count” was basically just “number of tests available”, which was paltry. You would need to extrapolate cases from deaths or hospitalizations to have close to a true number for that initial period.
Timex
4742
The thing is, nursing home deaths in new York, despite that being a source of scandal, were only around 5k. They weren’t even close to the majority of deaths.
But if you look at cases, you see a similar pattern. California’s spike in case count in winter was significantly worse, even when accounting for population difference.
And to be clear here, in not saying that California was a catastrophic failure… Certainly better than many southern states. But I think it seems worse than NY, not better.
Houngan
4743
Not the majority, but I assumed the sharpness of the early spike crushed the graph downwards.
wahoo
4744
Timex: Why are you citing the 5K of nursing home deaths? The entire agrument is that the Cuomo team REWROTE the numbers to say closer to 5K. With real numbers much higher. This is b/c thy changed location of deaths etc. Read the NYT stories.
Finally, New York’s death waved crashed b/c the nursing home mandate KILLED the vulnerable quickly instead over time.
Timex
4745
I believe that you are mistaken here, and that the REVISED numbers were 5k. The “scandal” was that he had supposedly hidden around 1.5k deaths, and had previously reported around 3.5k nursing home deaths.
But if you’ve got different numbers, I’d be interested to see them.
wahoo
4746
From last 24 hours. NYtimes has more.
onths before a blistering investigation found Cuomo sexually harassed 11 women, the same attorney general concluded that the administration understated the true death toll in nursing homes by thousands and that fatalities may have been fueled by a state order that forced such homes to accept recovering COVID-19 patients.
Whatever action may lie ahead on the harassment claims, families of the more than 15,000 New Yorkers who died in nursing homes say they want accountability, too, and are urging state lawmakers and the U.S. Justice Department to keep investigating Cuomo after he leaves office.
Timex
4747
While the notion of a coverup would be problematic, I think it’d be much more speculative to suggest that Cuomo’s actions actually caused those deaths.
At the time, I can understand the calculus… NY had run out of hospital beds. They needed to put people somewhere.
ShivaX
4748
A lot of people keep mentioning how he still hasn’t handed in said letter.
Scuzz
4750
In a perfect world maybe, but there are a lot of little people who need to collect some rents as well.
Sharpe
4751
What we need to do is simple: pay the fucking rent for everyone who makes a claim for COVID-related inability to make rent, keeping records to check afterwards and prosecute those who lie egregiously or act in bad faith. Yes, some folks will lie and cheat but MANY will be saved from suffering.
Right now, we are offering relief, but with so many qualifications and “efforts to prevent fraud” that real relief is pitifully slow and inadequate in many states. This is a national crisis; pay the fucking money now, while keeping records to use as a lever to fight fraud in due course. Not perfect but this is what we should do. (And by the way this was basically what CA did in regard to unemployment benefits in 2020, which didn’t prevent the GOP from howling about fraud but did in fact reduce suffering greatly. We can deal with the fraud later.)
Also, this is the REAL solution. A mere eviction moratorium simply shifts the burden to property owners, including many small owners. Eventually the dominos will fall there too. Lack of money to pay rent, or to pay mortgages, is the real problem. This is a national crisis; the cost should be born across the economy - by the government.
This is the American Way, and it sucks so bad. Republicans are so terrified of a 40-year-old lie (welfare queens) that it’s better a thousand children starve than one “undeserving” (brown) person get something for free.
Just implement a goddamned UBI already.
Aleck
4753
It’s an interesting idea. Any idea what something like that might cost?
Alstein
4754
Not so much that you can’t tax the rich to pay for it specifically if needed.
Sharpe
4755
First off, we’ve already allocated billions to pay for this but the payouts are slowed to a trickle by the anti-fraud measures I’ve mentioned above.
Here are some quotes from Forbes
More than 15 million people live in households that owe as much as $20 billion to their landlords, according to the Aspen Institute. As of July 5, roughly 3.6 million people in the U.S. said they faced eviction in the next two months, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey.
The Biden administration had hoped that historic amounts of rental assistance allocated by Congress in December and March would help avert an eviction crisis. But the distribution has been painfully slow. Only about $3 billion of the first tranche of $25 billion had been distributed through June by states and localities. Another $21.5 billion will go to the states.
It’s difficult to get hard numbers - but just pumping the $25 billion into the economy without undue bureaucratic delay is the first step.
Scuzz
4756
Isn’t some of the Infrastructure Bill money COVID relief money that was never spent or allocated? Also many states simply never spent huge amounts IIRC.
