#Gov. Cuomo gets defensive about his upcoming COVID-19 book

Gov. Andrew Cuomo got defensive Wednesday about his upcoming book on New York’s battle with the coronavirus pandemic — even though he says that the Empire State is only “at halftime” when it comes to the health crisis.

“I announced I’m doing a book on COVID, they say I’m doing a history of COVID. No, my book is not about the history of COVID, because it’s not over,” a ruffled Cuomo said unprompted during a conference call with reporters.

“It is what we have learned, what we should learn, what we must do, how we handled this, and what we need to do in the second half of the game,” said Cuomo, adding, “As we sit in the midst of it today we need to prepare for the second wave.”

The three-term Democrat’s latest tome, titled “American Crisis,” will be released on Oct. 13, it was revealed this week.

It’s retailing for $30 a copy and is already labeled a bestseller by Barnes & Noble.

Cuomo said that any proceeds from the book will be donated to a “COVID-related entity.”

The book’s publisher Crown called the book 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.”

Though there was no indication as to whether the work would include Cuomo’s botched response to COVID-19 in nursing homes where at least 6,400 New Yorkers died as a result of the contagion.

“The book is not the history of COVID — that totally misses the point,” Cuomo again told reporters. “We are very much in the midst of it. We have learned much. We have more to learn. We have done some things right — we have done some things wrong.”

The governor added, “The book is as much about what we need to do going forward, as a retrospective.”

“There is no telling of history when you are at halftime,” he said. “It doesn’t work that way. Now at halftime, should go into the locker room and say: this is what we did right, this is what we did wrong, and now we have to go play the second half of the game and that’s where my mindset is.”

Some state lawmakers and other politicians have criticized Cuomo for penning the book after the virus killed more than 25,000 New Yorkers.

“There have been books written about me and what I did that I didn’t even know about…And I’m on the cover of it,” Cuomo said Wednesday.