Quote:Grieving family members who lost loved ones in New York nursing homes due to COVID-19 plan to stage a “funeral” for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s “leadership and integrity.”

The relatives will stand outside of Brownstone Brooklyn’s coronavirus-ravaged Cobble Hill Health Center on Sunday at noon — and demand that Cuomo apologize for what they call his botched response in nursing homes during the pandemic, organizers said.

“Ultimately we want an apology and we don’t want it to be buried and hidden and forgotten. Thousands upon thousands of people died — couldn’t have burials,” Daniel Arbeeny, 57, whose father died in the nursing home, told The Post.

Arbeeny, the lead organizer, has been loaned a hearse with a casket that will contain 6,500 torn pages from Cuomo’s newly-released book “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic” to represent those who died in nursing homes as a result of the contagion.

Organizers blame the deaths of their loved ones on a widely scrutinized March 25 mandate by Cuomo’s Health Department barring nursing homes from turning away coronavirus-positive patients.

Cuomo has repeatedly defended the controversial order, despite bipartisan calls for an independent probe into whether the mandate caused more than 6,500 confirmed or presumed COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes statewide.

In April, Arbeeny had four relatives die within a week from COVID-19, including his 89-year-old Korean War veteran father, Norman.

Norman, who had “a number of different illnesses,” Arbeeny said, was hospitalized and then transferred for rehab to Cobble Hill Health Center, which sent him home after several days. While at home, Norman took a coronavirus test, died 12 hours after taking the test and got the positive results 12 hours after his death.

However, Norman’s official death certificate says he died of heart disease, according to a local funeral home director who requested anonymity.

The document was never changed to reflect the positive virus test, the mortician told The Post.

Arbeeny believes his dad caught the bug while in the hospital.

“My father was neglected at the hospital because they didn’t have enough staff,” he said.

The hospital dumped his dad on the nursing home, which was ill-equipped to handle his serious symptoms.

Arbeeny was inspired to stage the mock funeral after spotting the plane flying the banner, “THE GOV KILLED NANA,” over city beaches this summer.

“I was at Riis Park with my girls. I almost hit the floor,” said the dad of four. “I thought it was brilliant.”

“That inspired us to say, ‘OK, we have to do this,’ because it’s getting swept under the rug and the governor is not taking any responsibility for it. It’s time. There are thousands and thousands of families,” Arbeeny said.

Arbeeny also blasted Cuomo for his self-congratulatory new book.

“Now he wrote this book, he’s calling himself great. Taking credit for the good things and blaming everyone for everything else,” Arbeeny said, adding, “In our heart we want him to apologize. Period. End of discussion.”

An online flier for the Sunday gathering reads: “FUNERAL FOR GOVERNOR CUOMO’S LEADERSHIP & INTEGRITY” and “Nursing Home Families demand an apology, NOT a book!”

The Cobble Hill Health Center nursing home on Henry Street had at least 56 confirmed or presumed COVID-19-related deaths, records show.

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi dismissed the protest, echoing the governor’s prior statements blaming Republicans and even The Post for the scandal.

“We mourn with every family who lost someone during this pandemic and hope they look past the misinformation and outright lies that have been manufactured by right-wing ‎agitators and their allies looking to cover for the federal government’s many, many failures,” Azzopardi said.

He added: “The fact remains that every state across the nation is grappling with how to keep nursing home patients safe and tackle the root cause of infections — asymptomatic staffers who through no fault of their own bring in the virus.”

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Cuomo's entire escape plan is to be Biden's AG.

The Democrats believe people are stupid and the bigger the lie the better.

There is NO excuse for letting him go speak at the convention and claim he had done a great job. NO excuse.

To have a funeral for someone or something implies that it ever existed. Not sure Cuomo has ever had leadership, and even more doubtful of his integrity.

Quote:A silver casket was wheeled to the front of a Brooklyn nursing home Sunday — and 6,500 copies of the cover of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s new book were dumped into it in protest of his COVID-19 policies.

The number of covers was equal to the roughly 6,500 people who have been reported killed by the coronavirus in nursing homes in the state — although the ralliers said they believe the figure is much higher.

“My mother-in-law got COVID in an elder-care facility but died in a hospital, [so] her number does not count’’ in New York’s nursing-home tally, said Janice Dean, a meteorologist for TV’s “Fox & Friends’’ who was among the roughly 50 protesters outside the Cobble Hill Health Center.

“At the very beginning, I wouldn’t have blamed anyone,’’ she said of her kin’s death. “We were in the middle of a pandemic.

“But then I saw the governor on CNN and the various talk shows talking about his love life and talking about how he brought the curve down to nothing.”

The first thing he should have said was, “I’m sorry for your loss,’’ Dean said.

Protesters have mainly ripped Cuomo’s March 25 mandate that prevented nursing homes, with their vulnerable populations, from turning away coronavirus-positive patients.

When asked about nursing homes, Cuomo acknowledged at a COVID-19 press briefing earlier Sunday that in hindsight, his administration could have done better to protect people.

“But can anyone say that a virus that targets the weak and the seniors, [that] we can keep them safe? Nobody can say that,’’ he said.

Cuomo said the early spread of COVID-19 in New York nursing homes was the result of asymptomatic workers and visitors. At that time, the federal government was saying the virus was only spread by people with symptoms, he said.

The governor said that to remain unscathed, nursing homes would have to be in “a hermetically sealed bubble.’’

The governor also contended that New York has “the most aggressive nursing-home’’ policy in the country when it comes to trying to prevent the spread of the virus, including mandated weekly testing of every worker.

His book, called “American Crisis” and released Oct. 13, was described in its press release as a “remarkable portrait of leadership during crisis and a gritty story of gut-wrenching choices that point the way to a safer future for us all.”

But Brooklyn protest organizer Peter Arbeeny griped at the rally — where about a dozen people added photos of their lost loved ones to the casket — that Cuomo “hasn’t given us an independent investigation [into the alleged nursing-home debacle] so we can get to the truth.

“The families in front of you deserve to know the truth,” said Arbeeny, whose 89-year-old Korean War veteran father, Norman, was among the at least 56 people to die from COVID-19 at the Brooklyn facility.

“We are all COVID orphans now,” he said.

“And if somebody made a mistake — and with all that was going on, it was a crazy time — we would forgive.

“Maybe somebody wouldn’t forgive, but we would forgive. You get a sincere apology when truth comes out, and then we all know, and then we can move on. And we can celebrate the good things.”

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lol, dude wrote a book.



Looking to profit off the virus. I wonder if he goes into great detail on his decision to send COVID patients to nursing homes?