[ad_1]
Editor of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo’s book on his leadership during the pandemic said he had stopped promoting the title due to an investigation into withholding data on the deaths of nursing home residents.
Sales of the book, “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the Covid-19 Pandemic,” had already slowed considerably as the governor found himself embroiled in overlapping crises of his own, including a drumbeat of accusations concerning his inappropriate behavior towards young women and manipulation by his employees of retirement home data
Gillian Blake of the Crown Publishing Group said in response to an email from the New York Times that there were “no plans” to reprint Mr. Cuomo’s book or republish it as a paperback, citing “the ongoing investigation into NYS reports of Covid-related deaths in nursing homes”.
The book was published by Crown, a division of Penguin Random House, which rushed to print it last year. The publisher celebrated its acquisition in an ad last summer, describing how Mr. Cuomo, “in his own voice”, would write about “the decision-making that shaped his political policy.”
A spokesperson for Mr. Cuomo did not immediately return a request for comment.
Mr Cuomo and his key associates withheld the actual number of nursing home residents with Covid-19 who died, excluding those who died in hospitals from the official state tally for the entire period. last year.
The Cuomo administration released the data in February, after a report by state attorney general Letitia James suggested widespread undercoverage, and a court ordered the data to be made public following the ‘a freedom of information lawsuit brought by the Empire Center, a conservative think tank.
Mr Cuomo had started work on the book early last summer, when he received praise for his pandemic leadership and saw a surge in national popularity fueled by his press conferences. daily.
The decision to publish a triumphant account of the state’s battle against the coronavirus has been questioned by some political observers at the time, especially given the crushing death toll in New York City and the second wave of the disease looming even as Mr. Cuomo organized promotional events for the book. Mr Cuomo, however, said the book was not premature, arguing it was “halfway” for the pandemic and noting that the manuscript offered a “plan for moving forward.”
Critics and political opponents for the governor, including President Donald J. Trump, had previously raised questions about his handing over of nursing homes in New York City, which were hit hard during the worst days of the outbreak in March and April.
In June, Mr. Cuomo’s top aides were actively fighting their own health department over what data to include in a report on the deaths of nursing home residents. At the time, the state was publicly reporting that about 6,500 nursing home residents had died, leaving out those taken to hospitals. The true tally was over 9,000, according to a chart prepared for the report and reviewed by The Times.
Once assistants, including her oldest adviser, Melissa DeRosa, learned that the Health Department intended to include that higher number, they rewrote the report to remove it, according to documents and interviews with people with direct knowledge of the discussions.
Four days after the report was released, Mr Cuomo first said publicly in a radio interview on July 10 that he was considering writing a book. By this point, he had already started seeking permission from a state watchdog agency to derive outside income from the sale of books.
The book wasn’t officially announced until the following month. It hit shelves in October and was quickly declared a bestseller.
But its sales have been reported as a new wave of coronavirus infections that has gripped the state and the nation. This trend appeared to intensify over the past six weeks, as the governor’s public image deteriorated following a cascade of scandals.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have looked into the state’s management of retirement homes, according to three people familiar with the matter.
“Pending the ongoing investigation,” Ms. Blake said in the email, “we have suspended our active support for“ American Crisis ”and have no plans to reprint or republish in paperback. . “
Even before several women came forward to accuse Mr. Cuomo of workplace sexual harassment and other inappropriate behavior, sales were dying. Between Jan. 23 and Feb. 27, the title only sold around 400 copies, according to NPD BookScan, with a total of 45,800 sold and several thousand eBooks also purchased. (Online sales come in much slower, according to BookScan.)
Mr Cuomo did not say how much money he was paid to write “American Crisis,” which covers a period from the discovery of the first case in New York on March 1 to June 19, when he gave the last of more than 100 consecutive cases. daily news updates.
One chapter in the book focused on May 10, when the governor reversed course on a March memo that required nursing homes to admit or readmit Covid-positive residents. The memo had become a focal point for attacks from critics of the governor.
Mr Cuomo devotes much of the chapter to defending his administration’s performance, describing the criticism of the memo, dated March 25, as politically motivated.
“The Republicans needed an offense to distract the narrative from their botched federal response – and they badly needed it,” Cuomo wrote in the book. “So they decided to attack the Democratic governors and blame them for the deaths in retirement homes.
But, Mr. Cuomo argued later in the same chapter that “the facts have totally defeated the Republican claim.”
“New York was No. 46 out of 50 nationwide for the percentage of deaths in nursing homes,” the governor wrote, citing a July report that suggested “the virus has entered nursing homes when the workforce became infected. “
New York’s actual position in a state rankings would have been worse if the true toll – about 50% higher than it revealed – had been included in the analysis.
Cuomo administration officials and public health officials both said that even with the additional data, the findings of the July 6 report – that the March note was not a major contributor to the deaths. in nursing homes – remained the same. Failure to disclose the actual number of nursing home residents who died has not changed the total number of Covid-19 deaths in New York City – which now stands at over 47,000, including more than 15,000 residential residents of retirement.
But with Mr Cuomo’s book in the works, his collaborators prevented the Department of Health from revising the death toll to be significantly higher for months.
“American Crisis” was released on October 13. Since then, 15,025 coronavirus deaths have been reported across New York state, according to the Times database.
[ad_2]
Source link