Name: Andrew Cuomo Refuses To Give A Hard-Hit New York County A Mass Vaccination Site
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Andrew Cuomo Refuses To Give A Hard-Hit New York County A Mass Vaccination Site

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×U.S. EditionPart of HuffPost Politics. ©2022 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved.×AdvertisementAdvertisementMeredith Wisner, chair of the Rockland County Working Families Party, a progressive group, said Cuomo’s “personal animosity towards Ed Day” is “the only logical explanation” for the lack of a state-run mass vaccination site in the county.And New York Assemblyman Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents Rockland County in the state legislature, offered a similar assessment.Advertisement“We’re an incredibly diverse county that deserves a mass vaccination site and it appears as if the only reason Andrew Cuomo is withholding one is over political differences,” Lawler said in a statement. “He needs to stop playing politics with people’s lives and work with County Executive Ed Day and other local elected officials to get shots in arms.”Advertisement“It’s hard to come up with a justifiable reason why a county with all of these things should not have a state-run mass vaccination site.”- New York State Sen. Elijah Reichlin-Melnick (D)“It’s hard to come up with a justifiable reason why a county with all of these things should not have a state-run mass vaccination site,” Reichlin-Melnick told HuffPost, citing the county’s population size, high infection rate and relatively scarce public transportation infrastructure.AdvertisementRockland County lacks the extensive commuter rail network and proximity to New York City available in Westchester County, the suburban enclave across the Hudson River. As a result, seniors and people with medical conditions not only have to navigate the state’s byzantine website and ― until Wednesday ― strict eligibility requirements, but also correctly identify a pharmacy with vaccines left. If, like many of the county’s oldest and most impoverished residents, they don’t have a car, they then have to find a way to get there.By contrast, setting up a mass vaccination site at Rockland Community College ― a location touted by many local officials ― would make vaccination a stop away on a central public bus line.“My office hears from dozens of people a day who are desperate” to find a vaccination site, Reichlin-Melnick said. “It feels to people like almost this sort of lottery system that’s deeply unfair because it rewards people who have the wherewithal to be able to invest and figure out these complicated systems in order to get their doses, and people who don’t ... just find it incredibly challenging.”Nonetheless, nearly has had one vaccination shot. It’s a vaccination rate that is about in line with the state as a whole ― but lower than neighboring Westchester, where more than 26% of residents have received a shot, or Manhattan, where more than 27% of residents have gotten their first shot.In addition, Rockland County is home to one of the country’s largest concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews. These devout Jewish communities, where large families and dense living are the norm, were by COVID-19. Some ultra-Orthodox Jewish leaders are from comments Cuomo made in October singling out ultra-Orthodox communities in Rockland County as COVID-19 hot spots in need of stricter lockdowns and tougher enforcement of public health rules.AdvertisementFor Cuomo to shower critical attention on the community then, but not to extend extra help to the region now is particularly frustrating, according to Yossi Gestetner, a Rockland County resident and executive director of the Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council.“This county and other counties that were held up as examples of problem areas ― why don’t they get comparable help from the government?” Gestetner asked.For those who persist in the belief that Cuomo has picked a fight with Day in particular, there is no shortage of bad blood to point to. Over the years, Day has attacked Cuomo for shifting onto localities, proposing new , and allegedly refusing to heed Day’s requests for a in the county.AdvertisementDay insists that he has “not had any overt issues with the governor.”Yet he has still had plenty of criticism for what he considers the state’s unduly top-down approach to managing the pandemic, particularly given Rockland County government’s experience in 2019.“We have been in the dark from Day One and that has been one of the primary complaints of every county executive,” Day said. “We had the expertise.”At the same time, someone active in Rockland County politics, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from Cuomo, told HuffPost that the governor and Day’s mutual enmity is likely just one of the factors behind vaccination issues in Rockland County.“Once the scandal with the nursing homes started to percolate, I have detected that the governor’s staff has lost focus,” the person said. “That contributed to the issues with the vaccine in Rockland County.” (The FBI is investigating whether the number of nursing home coronavirus-related deaths, after ordering the homes to accept COVID-19-positive patients.)And unlike Reichlin-Melnick, Skoufis, Jones and virtually every Republican in the state legislature, Day has not called for Cuomo’s resignation ― or weighed in one way or another on the scandals surrounding Cuomo from .AdvertisementNeither Day nor Reichlin-Melnick were willing to speculate about ulterior motives that Cuomo might harbor.“I think it’s enough to simply look at the reasons why we need to have one in this county and every other similarly situated county in the state does at this point and ask the question why it’s the case that Rockland’s been left out,” Reichlin-Melnick said.Suggest a correctionNewsletter Sign UpHuffPost's top politics stories, straight to your inbox.Successfully Subscribed!Realness delivered to your inbox

×U.S. EditionPart of HuffPost Politics. ©2022 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved.×AdvertisementAdvertisementMeredith Wisner, chair of the Rockland County Working Families Party, a progressive group, said Cuomo’s “personal animosity towards Ed Day” is “the only logical explanation” for the lack of a state-run mass vaccination site in the county.And New York Assemblyman Mike Lawler, a Republican who represents Rockland County in the state legislature, offered a similar assessment.Advertisement“We’re an incredibly diverse county that deserves a mass vaccination site and it appears as if the...

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danielmarans

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Andrew Cuomo Refuses To Give A Hard-Hit New York County A Mass Vaccination Site

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