New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo, who once said that “extreme conservatives … have no place” in his state and more recently derisively dismissed God’s influence, just issued another in his line of greatest pseudo-elitist hits:
He told anti-lockdown protesters that if they were upset about his putting them out of work with the increasingly discredited Wuhan-flu lockdown strategy, they should get jobs as “essential” workers.
And thus spake His Essentialship himself.
Cuomo, who has already released essential thugs from prison, lest the poor souls become ill, who are now committing essential crimes (in one case breaking an infirm man’s arm in a robbery), made his comments Wednesday after protesters flocked to the state capitol in Albany prior to his Wuhan virus briefing.
The Daily Mail provides a summary of the situation, writing:
• [The protesters] want to get back to work and say that the ‘cure is worse than the illness’ because they have no money
• Cuomo, in his press conference, told them to get jobs in essential retail businesses if they are so desperate
• He fumed at them for not understanding they could risk other people’s lives by resuming their normal work
• New York hospitalizations, intubations and deaths continue to slowly decline but the state is still on lockdown
• Cuomo said he would not reopen unless he knew the state was prepared for a second wave of infections
“Fumed” at them may be right. Emotional control doesn’t seem to be the strong suit of the man who not long ago, on TV with his brother Chris (a.k.a. Fredo), got into a spat over who was mommy’s favorite child (one-minute video below).
On Wednesday, though, Cuomo the Essential was angry about what he considered the protesters’ ignorance and self-centeredness.
As the Mail tells us, the governor “fumed at the suggestion that the ‘cure was worse than the illness’ itself, as some protesters have claimed, and said they had to consider the possibility of infecting other people and not just becoming infected themselves once they were back in the workplace.”
“The illness is death. What is worth [sic] than death?” the paper continued, quoting Cuomo. “And it may be my death as opposed to your death.” Perish the thought.
“That’s what we have to factor into this equation. Yeah, it’s your life do whatever you want. But you’re now responsible for my life. You have a responsibility to me,” the Mail also quotes the man who signed a bill allowing prenatal infanticide up till birth as saying. “It’s not just about you. Get your head around the ‘we’ concept. It’s not all about you.”
The Mail also relates His Essentialship as saying, in what apparently was quite the lecture:
You wanna go to work? Take a job as an essential worker. Do it tomorrow. You’re working.
You’re an essential worker. There are people hiring. You can get a job as an essential worker.
Now you can get a job and you can go to work and you’re not going to kill anyone.
Now, perhaps there’s something about contagion escaping my non-essential self, but I didn’t know that diseases quite nobly spared the “essential.” “No, he’s a grocery store clerk. Let’s move on to the hairdresser over there.” Quite chivalrous, that Wuhan virus!
In reality, approximately 80 to 85 percent of employment-age Americans are working even now, according to radio host Mark Levin. Yet hospitals aren’t overwhelmed, and Wuhan virus deaths are declining. So why would Cuomo consider working a death sentence?
Moreover, a study just showed that lockdowns do not save lives (which would mean the politicians are destroying our economy for nothing); in fact, the data indicate that the lockdowns may actually cost lives.
Cuomo was sincerely passionate during his lecture (video below). But as when making his statement about conservatives being unwelcome in his state — which was an angry response to those opposing his SAFE gun-control act, which also did nothing to save lives — he displayed sincere ignorance.
Consider: “How can the cure be worse than the illness if the illness is death?” Cuomo also said Wednesday. “It does not equal death. Economic hardship, yes, very bad — not death.”
This is a shallow but common analysis. The mainstream media generally present this debate as a matter of people’s health/human lives vs. the economy — or, as the even more demagogic (or dumb) put it, vs. “money.” But what is money?
Money represents resources, people’s capacity to obtain food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, education, and everything else that preserves life and makes it worth living. Note here that the lockdowns are impoverishing many and could possibly spark a great depression. And poverty is associated with a host of negative health and health-related risks, such as a higher incidence of manifold diseases, depression, anxiety, stress-related disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, suicide, domestic violence, child abuse, and crime.
Of course, we’re already seeing evidence of the above consequences.
Furthermore, even insofar as quarantines may be necessary, they should be targeted. By my count, 17 rural, upstate New York counties have zero to two Wuhan flu-related deaths each. So why are the restrictions that apply to virus hot spot New York City placed on these counties as well? Why is it one-size fits all?
This is a nationwide phenomenon, mind you. Yet Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson made a relevant point yesterday evening by way of a rhetorical question: If a disease were ravaging what the Left calls “flyover country,” would the Essential Ones quarantine the big cities to combat it?
Don’t bet on it. One difference is that politicians fear that only locking down the cities in our current situation would bring “racism” charges. Yet if mostly white rural America were a disease hot spot, locking down cities in deference to it would also bring racism charges.
As for Cuomo, if he wants to deliver a lecture, he ought to start with his brother. Wuhan-virus-infected Chris Cuomo, after all, was apparently outside recreating — and wasn’t social distancing — when he claimed he was quarantined in a basement and then became hostile (video below) with an elderly bicyclist who questioned him.
But, hey, some people’s recreation is, apparently, more essential than other people’s jobs.
Photo: AP Images
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
