We know now that this “stabilization” for hospitals involved sending contagious individuals back to nursing homes, where they would infect others. But it wasn’t just nursing homes. Cuomo’s edicts put another vulnerable population in inexcusable peril: New Yorkers with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) living in group homes. A study released in June in Disability and Health Journal titled “COVID-19 outcomes among people with intellectual and developmental disabilities living in residential homes in New York state” found that people with IDD living in residential group homes were more than twice as likely to have severe outcomes and deaths as the state’s general population.

The study’s authors write that “circumstances and decisions made early in the pandemic may have contributed to the higher case rate of people living with IDD in residential group homes. Those who tested positive for COVID-19 or who had presumed infection (during the time of limited testing availability) were required to return to their residential setting with instructions to sequester.” You know that notorious March 25 order, sending contagious nursing-home patients back to their homes from hospitals? Well, it had a twin. An April 10 memo from the Office of People with Developmental Disabilities (OPWDD) to operators of certified residential facilities had identical language to the nursing-home memo, to wit: “No individual shall be denied re-admission or admission to a Certified Residential Facility based solely on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of Covid-19. . . . Additionally, providers of Certified Residential Facilities are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized individual, who is determined medically stable, to be tested for Covd-19 prior to admission or readmission.”