"You Pick the 26,000 People Who Are Going to Die!"

Andrew Cuomo's "prescience" about the New York City mass casualty event.

Did Andrew Cuomo correctly predict how many New York City residents would die in the spring 2020 mass casualty event?

Sure seems like it.

In a March 24, 2020 press conference, the former Governor of New York reacted derisively to a federal agency’s promise to send 400 ventilators to battle COVID-19:

FEMA says, “We’re sending 400 ventilators.” Really? What am I going to do with 400 ventilators when I need 30,000? You pick the 26,000 who are going to die!”

-Andrew Cuomo, March 24, 2020

Curiously, the number of New York City residents reported to have died between the day after 15 Days to Slow the Spread was declared through the end of May was 26,062 more than the same days in the previous year.

Cuomo had previously likened ventilators to critical missiles in the “war” against COVID-19. By the 24th (a.k.a., CARES Act Eve), he said New York State had procured 7,000 ventilators but needed 30,000 total. Whether his “26,000” was a mental math error (i.e., 30,000 - 400, vs 4,000) is unclear.

It’s widely assumed that fervent and overzealous use of ventilators in New York City hospitals contributed to the staggering death toll in the city’s spring 2020 mass casualty event.

Yet no one has released time-series data or descriptive statistics that show how many patients in city hospitals were placed on mechanical ventilators, or how many deaths in the 11-week mass casualty event were people were treated or managed with the devices.

New York nursing homes have been the focus of several reports. However, most deaths - and most of the excess deaths - during the mortality wave occurred in hospitals.

The state still hasn’t reported how many nursing home residents died in hospitals. No investigation regarding the city’s one-month ~300% increase in deaths at personal residences has been published (as far as I know).

These gaps, along with other discrepancies and incomplete datasets, raise obvious, if uncomfortable, questions:

Did Cuomo’s prediction really come true? That is, did all of those people die on the days claimed, in the places claimed? Where’s the proof?

Death certificates aren’t public in New York, and state law largely exempts death certificates from Freedom of Information request, which means the deaths from this period can’t be independently verified.

I don’t know what Cuomo knows, but I’m guessing there’s more than meets the eye to “the 26,000 people who are going to die.”

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