As I’ve noted before, the politicians and experts telling us to shut up, sit down and stay in our homes under virtual  house arrest themselves all have jobs to go to and paychecks to collect. They are essential, we are told, as opposed to you and me and most of America, who are not. Leading the pack is Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, of which it is now being said -- if you can fake it there, you can fake it anywhere. Cuomo has been faking it as a truthful and competent leader of his state.

At a recent press conference, Cuomo showed the elitism and arrogance of so many politicians and their media mouthpieces as they are unmasked by a crisis they have no intention if wasting. Liberals have always dreamed of controlling every aspect of our lives and the Wuhan virus crisis has given them a dream opportunity to do just that.

Cuomo was quizzed by a reporter about the huddled masses who are yearning to breathe free and when the lockdown rules would at least be loosened so the common folk could begin to put their lives together. Cuomo was not amused:

The governor was asked at a press conference Wednesday to respond to the out-of-work quarantine protesters who say the state’s economic lockdown cannot continue as-is because their cash savings are running out. After a lengthy back-and-forth with a reporter, Cuomo eventually said that if the demonstrators are so desperate for work, they should “take a job as an essential worker.”

To their families who love them and depend on them all workers are essential, Gov. Cuomo. The reporter tried to make that point and noted the protestor’s complaint that the effects of the lockdown might be worse than the virus it is supposed to contain:

“There are protesters outside right now, honking their horns and raising signs,” the reporter said, “These are regular people who are not getting a paycheck. Some of them are not getting their unemployment paycheck. And they’re saying that they don’t have time to wait for all of this [coronavirus] testing and they need to get back to work in order to feed their families.”

She added, “Their savings [are] running out; they don’t have another week. They’re not getting answers. So, their point is: the cure can’t be worse than the illness itself.”

“The illness is death,” said the governor. “What is worse than death?”....

“What if the economy failing equals death?” the reporter persisted. “Because mental illness that the people stuck at home – ”

“No, it doesn't,” Cuomo interrupted. "It doesn’t equal death. Economic hardship. Yes. Very bad. Not death. Emotional stress from being locked in a house. Very bad. Not death. Domestic violence on the increase. Very bad. Not death.”

Increasing levels of stress, depression, anxiety, suicide, alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence do not bother Cuomo, who warned of a ventilator crisis that did not happen and a shortage of hospital beds that did not happen. He once said he would leave it up to President Trump to decide who would get ventilators and who would die

There are long-term health consequences of a lockdown that Cuomo does not care about. People will die of the effects of the lockdown long after it and Cuomo’s insufferable press conferences are over.

Cuomo, like so many others in the elite, ignore the health care costs of crushed lives and dreams, the human costs of lost jobs and careers, of nest eggs broken on the ground, of people who used to provide for their families fighting in stores over rolls of toilet paper. We are being guided by the best infectious disease experts in the world, we are told, experts so smart they didn’t anticipate or consider the lives lost from depression, suicide, drug and alcohol addiction and despair in a land where abortion is considered an essential procedure but heart stint and CT scans not so much.

Also ignored by Cuomo and others is the human cost of the lockdown forcing hospitals to not schedule allegedly “nonessential procedures”:

Critical health care for millions of Americans is being ignored and people are dying to accommodate “potential” COVID-19 patients and for fear of spreading the disease. Most states and many hospitals abruptly stopped “nonessential” procedures and surgery. That prevented diagnoses of life-threatening diseases, like cancer screening, biopsies of tumors now undiscovered and potentially deadly brain aneurysms. Treatments, including emergency care, for the most serious illnesses were also missed. Cancer patients deferred chemotherapy. An estimated 80 percent of brain surgery cases were skipped. Acute stroke and heart attack patients missed their only chances for treatment, some dying and many now facing permanent disability.

Cuomo’s callous words are particularly bitter to the families of the nursing home residents his administration sentenced to death by requiring those with COVID-19 not be denied admission to them. Cuomo said he didn’t know, but it’s the job of this know-it-all to know. Maybe, like a New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said of the Bill of Rights, such knowledge is above his pay grade. Arguably, that fiasco makes Gov. Cuomo New York’s latest and greatest serial killer:

New York’s health commissioner on Monday defended a directive that requires nursing homes to readmit residents who’ve tested positive for the coronavirus -- as Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed he didn’t know the policy was in place.

Cuomo was asked about the state’s policy on admitting or readmitting to nursing homes people who’d tested positive for COVID-19. 

“That’s a good question, I don’t know,” the governor said.

Cuomo’s startling admission came days after the state revealed last week that at least 3,316 people in nursing homes and adult care facilities had died of coronavirus at their residences or in hospitals across the state.

Cuomo, the great health care expert and governor extraordinaire, didn’t know. But it is his job to see to the well-being of his people first -- particularly the most vulnerable. He didn’t. Few people know, and Cuomo doesn’t tell them, that a quarter of New York deaths have occurred in nursing homes he wasn’t paying attention to. If he had been he would have been aware of the death sentence his administration gave many vulnerable seniors:  

…look at the now-infamous March 25 directive from the New York State Department of Health that orders those homes and rehabilitation centers to admit and readmit patients sick with the coronavirus. The devil comes in the first sentence of the fifth paragraph:

“No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.” …

The disease has claimed more than 3,500 souls in nursing and rehab centers, or nearly 25 percent of the total known deaths in the state. There is no way to know exactly how many died as a result of the state order, but the number is certainly not zero. The cause and effect relationship is obvious.

Not only are a significant number of New York’s dead neglected seniors, but also consider that New York, and neighboring New Jersey and Connecticut, constitute the major part of nationwide deaths and infections:

Compared as a separate country, the New York area would rank, by far, as No. 1 for deaths per capita.

The New York-New Jersey-Connecticut tri-state area accounts for approximately 60 percent of all US deaths.

So why should the entire country be treated, and locked down, as if it were New York? Before the Wuhan virus spread, New York was a basket case. Subtract out the New York nursing homes and New York itself and see how “the curve” flattens out nationally. To flatten the curve, we didn’t have to flatten the economy, just quarantine New York and Andrew Cuomo.

Daniel John Sobieski is a former editorial writer for Investor’s Business Daily and freelance writer whose pieces have appeared in Human Events, Reason Magazine, and the Chicago Sun-Times among other publications.