Nursing home families still in the dark after Gov. Cuomo’s COVID disaster

Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s now-notorious decision to force nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients was based neither on science nor common sense. Even back then, we knew as much — and rushed to remove our 89-year-old father, Norman Arbeeny, from his nursing home in Brooklyn. Already infected, he died at home on April 21, 2020.

We need answers: substantive, accurate accounting. Science back then told us that a COVID-positive patient was infecting about three others. Meanwhile, Cuomo claimed a year ago — falsely, we now know — that some 6,000 COVID patients were sent into nursing homes. So we extrapolated then that the total extra nursing home death tally could be as high as 18,000.