When Kathy Hochul first took over as the Governor of New York in August of 2021, she came into office promising a full and thorough investigation into the state's response to the COVID pandemic, which was only just then beginning to recede into the background. This was welcome news to the voters because the state's handling of the crisis had been nothing short of disastrous in many ways, producing very negative outcomes for many people. She commissioned a study by an outfit called The Olson Group at a cost of millions of dollars. Nearly three long years later, the study was finally completed and released last month. (You can read the massive report here if you have a lot of time on your hands. It's more than 250 pages long.) To put it mildly, the study is insufficient at best. It is full of mischaracterizations and errors, leaving many of the most glaring questions that the public had unaddressed. The New York Post editorial board took Hochul and the study's authors to task this week, demanding that a more competent analysis be conducted.

More than four years after the eruption of the 2020 COVID pandemic, New Yorkers still have no reliable, independent assessment of how well their leaders responded.

Which is why state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli is right that New York still needs an independent commission to review the state’s response.

In a recent Times Union op-ed, DiNapoli ripped a $4 million report by the Olson Group, which Gov. Hochul commissioned, as riddled with errors and inadequate in helping the state prepare for the next pandemic.

Without such a comprehensive report, it’s hard to hold anyone accountable for failures and to better prepare for the next epidemic.

This study was touted as being an exploration of the lessons learned from the state's response to the pandemic. What measures were effective and which ones went awry? Most importantly, virtually every medical expert agrees that another pandemic is on the way. We don't know what disease it will be or when it will come, but it always happens sooner or later. Will we be prepared? The study is nearly useless in seeking these answers.

Let's take a brief stroll down memory lane to put all of this in context. You may recall that Hochul only ascended to the Governor's mansion after former Governor Andrew Cuomo (former CNN anchor Chris Cuomo's brother) was driven from office in shame, largely because of the numerous accusations of sexual impropriety against him, but also because of his handling of the response to the pandemic. Many of the sexual assault/abuse charges against Cuomo were eventually dropped or pleaded down, but his record on the pandemic remained crystal clear. He was the one who decided to order the state's nursing homes to continue taking in new patients and either not test them for COVID or accept them even if they tested positive to avoid placing any sort of "stigma" on them."

The new report also continued to repeat inaccurate Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data related to nursing home deaths from Cuomo's tenure. The report also failed to even attempt to provide an accurate accounting of the total number of people who died in the nursing homes and the causes of death that were cited. The state Comptroller deemed the report to be a whitewash and a "monumental waste of money" and time. It makes the state no better prepared for the next pandemic.

The report completely fails to address the way that pandemic deaths were counted and whether or not that data was accurate or used in a productive fashion. New York was hardly the only state to suffer from these shortcomings, but the mistakes were flagrant in hindsight. Like most of the country, New York was testing the remains of everyone who died during the pandemic under any circumstances for COVID. If they tested positive, they were reported as "a COVID death," driving up the numbers and increasing levels of hysteria in the media and the severity of the government's response. If someone with no symptoms died in a motorcycle crash and tested positive, that was a COVID death. It seems almost certain that some portion of the infected people in nursing homes actually did die of COVID because the elderly are more susceptible, particularly if they have other, underlying medical and respiratory issues. But how many of them were already nearing death's doorstep and wouldn't have survived anyway? Should they have been counted? Those questions are unanswered in this study, as is the issue of ordering the nursing homes to accept them in the first place rather than sending them to a hospital ICU.

The state Comptroller is correct. New York should either demand a refund of the money spent on this flawed study or make Kathy Hochul pay for it herself. This was supposed to be a matter of critical scientific and public safety interest. It wasn't supposed to be a political coverup for the shortcomings of the Governor's office.