Exactly three years ago this week, then-state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker testified before the Legislature, delivering a full-throated defense of the Cuomo-Hochul administration’s nursing-home policy.
From a deadly March 25, 2020, nursing-home order, to the elaborate efforts to cover up its fatal consequences, the moment demanded truth, transparency and accountability.
Zucker was the wrong man for the job and failed miserably to deliver.
Meanwhile, with COVID tests in high demand and not readily available, friends and family of the Cuomo-Hochul administration were getting incredible VIP access that misallocated resources and abused power.
Zucker should have been fired on the spot, but instead, he failed upward and now serves in a senior position in the Biden Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Didn’t anyone at the White House look at his disastrous record?
Three years after that hearing, New Yorkers are still searching for accountability; Zucker’s Aug. 3, 2020, testimony was his first and only joint legislative hearing on the disastrous March directive.
After COVID-positive patients were ordered back into nursing homes to be placed with healthy seniors, thousands of residents died of the disease as a result.
There was no bureaucrat in a more powerful position to answer for this than Zucker. That August hearing was a moment of truth that proved to be anything but a proper accounting.
Just weeks before, he’d released a report drastically undercounting nursing-home deaths and attempting to clear the administration of wrongdoing.
Lawmakers wanted to examine inaccuracies with case counts and death tolls, how Zucker’s Department of Health was tracking nursing-home patients who received intensive-care from hospitals and other impacts of the deadly nursing-home order.
Zucker simply defended the policy, doubled down on his phony report and cynically blamed asymptomatic staff for the infections in the affected facilities.
He claimed the state did not want to “double count” nursing-home deaths as the reason for spotty data.
At his behest, DOH refused to count patients as “nursing-home deaths” if they were moved from homes to hospitals before passing away.
New York was the only state in the country attempting this deceptive tactic.
Zucker came to the hearing empty-handed, without any new concrete figures.
He refused to answer for the heavy-editing work of the governor’s office to limit the count, and ultimately refused to show up for a follow-up hearing the week after.
Scandal and controversy plaguing Howard Zucker didn’t stop there.
While nursing homes were receiving an influx of COVID-positive patients, they were not able to adequately test patients and staff due to shortages.
Yet with an illegal and abusive assist from Zucker’s DOH, family and friends of the Cuomo-Hochul administration had the red carpet rolled out for them when it came to testing.
Every element of misappropriation was on display: Health Department staff would show up at private friends’ and families’ residences, and their test samples were given front-of-the-line attention at the state lab.
There was plenty of controversy over those Zuckerbucks used by Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to influence US elections, but far more attention should have been given to the Zuckerswabs used by Howard Zucker to benefit Cuomo-Hochul VIPs during COVID.
With all this, folks might think he surely was disciplined, fired, demoted or otherwise punished.
Wrong.
Turns out, he got a promotion — a big one: He’s now deputy director of global health at the CDC.
In this role, Zucker is responsible for overall planning, direction and management of global strategy and programs at the CDC.
It’s been three years, but New Yorkers have not forgotten, and thousands of families of deceased seniors will not stop demanding answers and accountability.
From Congress to local district attorneys, there are many authorities with the power to investigate his and the administration’s misdeeds to help bring closure.
(But don’t count on Gov. Kathy Hochul, who promised a report but still has yet to deliver.)
At the least, the state could finally update its grossly inaccurate July 2020 DOH report.
And as for the disgraced Howard Zucker, he should be permanently tossed as far out of government as possible.
Lee Zeldin (R) represented Suffolk County in the House of Representatives from 2015-2023 and ran for governor of New York last year.
https://nypost.com/2023/08/01/feds-hired-ny-health-czar-who-defended-deadly-nursing-home-order/
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