Empire Center Article Questioning New York’s Nursing Home Staffing Law Misstates Evidence

The Empire Center’s Bill Hammond published an article, “A Study of COVID-19 in Nursing Homes Raises Doubt About New York’s Minimum Staffing Law,” that argues that “A newly published study of COVID-19 in nursing homes links larger numbers of employees to higher rates of infection and death for residents – raising fresh doubts about New […]

Was Cuomo’s COVID Mandate Associated with Nursing Home Deaths? A Correction

I recently wrote about the relationship between Governor Cuomo’s policy requiring nursing homes to accept new residents discharged from hospitals with positive COVID-19 test results. The policy was in place from March to early May 2020. I compared my results with those of a study by Bill Hammond and Ian Kingsbury of the Empire Center, […]

The Empire Center’s Report on Nursing Home Deaths Answers Some Questions, Raises Others

The Empire Center’s February 18th Report, “COVID-positive Admissions Were Correlated with Higher Death Rates in New York Nursing Homes” shows an association between COVID-positive admissions and death rates in nursing homes in New York State, following the State Health Department order on March 25th, 2020 requiring that they accept recovering COVID patients. The Empire Center […]

Cuomo’s Nursing Home Controversy – What does the Data Show?

Questions have been raised since last Summer about New York’s published count of nursing home resident deaths. The State had claimed until this month that nursing home deaths stood at only 7,491, a relatively low rate compared to other states across the nation. This, despite Governor Cuomo’s health department directive issued on March 25th that […]

The Botched COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout: 100 Million Doses in 100 Days Isn’t Enough

The rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine in New York State and elsewhere has been marred by confusion and limited supplies of vaccines. In New York, the state portal does not provide an easy way for people to identify all the locations that have the vaccine, or to sign-up, other than for sites operated by the […]

Poverty in Upstate Metropolitan Areas: Myths and Realities

We live in an era in which long-held attitudes about race have been heightened by political campaigns that attempt to mobilize fears among white voters about minority group members and immigrants.  These appeals have ranged from claims that President Obama is a Muslim who was born in Kenya and claims that criminal undocumented immigrants endanger […]

New York’s Explosion of COVID Cases and a Flawed Vaccine Roll-Out

When Covid-19 first appeared in New York in March of this year, the state, like other locations, faced a novel disease against which there were few defenses. New York faced a dire situation in March – hospitals in the New York Metropolitan area were overwhelmed.  With cases and hospitalizations skyrocketing, the State imposed a lockdown, […]

COVID-19: The Harsh Tradeoffs

COVID-19 created a series of dilemmas for policymakers at the state and federal levels.  Actions that would reduce the frequency of infection involved measures that would limit personal interactions, causing the loss of jobs, while reopening the economy proved to result in higher levels of infection, hospitalizations and deaths. But, the difficult policy choices were […]