What a good example. I heard this claim recently from a family member and decided to look it up. It sounds unbelievable and deeply disturbing that Cuomo would knowingly send infected people to be admitted to nursing homes. The way the story is told, it sounds like he's actually trying to spread the disease and kill old people.

It turns out it's all spin. I'll admit it took quite a bit of digging to get beyond all the nypost/wsj/fox stories spreading misinformation. Yes, Cuomo said a COVID-19 diagnosis was not a reason to exclude patients from returning to a nursing home in March. But also, hospital bed space was absolutely critical during that time. While this was happening, about 25% of the nursing home workforce was infected anyway, and staff seems to have been the primary means of transmission. Also, after a week or so of showing symptoms, it was thought that the patients are no longer infectious to others.

The reason that you, my family, and the right-wing media are going crazy over Cuomo's decision is because Trump is making it a political issue and using this as a talking point. The reality is that Cuomo arguably made the best decision possible at the time, and there wasn't really an alternative. Other states made the same decision at the time, and based on the outbreak numbers we're seeing today, we'll see that decision again in the near future. The only other option was to let hospitals overflow their capacity. Maybe there should have been centers for COVID patients that are released from hospitals, but that's a massive logistical problem to be solved on short notice in the middle of a pandemic.

Cuomo's executive order happened in March. By May, once things were getting under control, Cuomo changed that order, presumably because hospitals now had more capacity to house patients. Take a look at the curve from NY and tell me you could have made a better decision at the time: https://www.syracuse.com/coronavirus-ny/

If you want a reason to be outraged at Cuomo, the real scandal here is NY state providing immunity from lawsuits to nursing homes who mishandled the outbreak. The reason you're not hearing outrage about that from right-wing press is that it's also a republican strategy. States across the country are granting lawsuit immunity to protect insurance companies and care facilities.

This is the closest you're going to get to the real story, if you'd like to learn more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/nyregion/nursing-homes-de...