© AP Photo
New York now reports nearly 55,400 people have died of COVID-19 in New York based on death certificate data submitted to the CDC, up from about 43,400 that Gov. Cuomo had reported to the public as of Monday, his last day in office.
"We're now releasing more data than had been released before publicly, so people know the nursing home deaths and the hospital deaths are consistent with what's being displayed by the CDC," Hochul said Wednesday on MSNBC. "There's a lot of things that weren't happening and I'm going to make them happen. Transparency will be the hallmark of my administration."
Comment: Anytime a politician says "___ will be the hallmark of my administration," it should be taken with an eye roll and then a suspicious glance.
The Associated Press first reported in July on the large discrepancy between the fatality numbers publicized by the Cuomo administration and numbers the state was reporting to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Comment: This makes sense from a political point of view. Better to make the additional deaths public now, where they can be blamed on Cuomo, than have it come it later and have to take the PR hit.