Just the News is reporting the following today:
A Michigan county prosecutor on Thursday laid out his effort to review Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s policies on COVID health-safety policies on nursing homes, in response to a high number of deaths in such facilities over roughly the past year.
An estimated 5,537 people have died in long-term care facilities in the state since the pandemic started about a year ago, which is about 35 percent of all COVID-related deaths in Michigan over that time period.
Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said he’s effectively reviving a roughly 68-year-old review board, formed to protect children, to look into Whitmer’s policies.
Good governance is a matter of life and death. That has been proven in the past year–Florida probably has one of the highest elderly populations in the country and yet managed the virus very well. They protected the elderly and pretty much let the rest of the population go on with their business. Many of the states led by Democrats locked down their states but sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes where the most vulnerable residents of their state lived.
The article notes:
Lucido, following up on statements Monday calling on residents to ask for medical records of family members who died in a nursing home, then file a police report. He said Thursday that residents should give local law enforcement such information as when and where the death occurred. He also said the name of the attending physician should be included.
He said earlier that his efforts have been slowed by such records are protected under so-called HIPAA laws that protect patient information.
Whitmer said amid complaints that her administration has not been forthcoming with data related to virus deaths in nursing homes told a local TV station: “I’m proud of the work that we did. We can parse through different angles of statistics and compare ourselves with other states but … I think that it sometimes can be a fool’s errand because the way that we are congregating data varies from state to state. When there’s never a national strategy, (it’s) hard to really compare apples to apples.”
It is possible that the Governors in the states that sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes did not understand the risk. However, when the risk became apparent, the policies should have been quickly changed. Governor’s who did not change their policy after it became obvious what was happening need to be removed from office.