That Was Then, This Is Now

On April 19th Townhall reported the following:

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo was asked on Sunday whether or not he has faith in President Trump when it comes to handling the Wuhan coronavirus. Gov. Cuomo made it clear that he not only trusts the president but that what Trump and his administration have done was nothing short of a “phenomenal accomplishment.”

“What the federal government did working with states was a phenomenal accomplishment,” the governor marveled. “We bent the curve. We flattened the curve. Government did it. People did it, but government facilitates people’s actions, right?”

Gov. Cuomo has consistently praised the president for helping New Yorkers while the state quickly emerged as an international hotspot of the Wuhan coronavirus. Only on the issue of ventilators, when Gov. Cuomo anticipated New York would need some 40,000 ventilators, were the president and the governor at odds. Trump expected the actual number of ventilators New York needed to be much lower, and Trump was right. Instead of 40,000 ventilators, New York needed about 5,000. The state now has so many ventilators they have begun sending them to other states.

“We had to double the hospital capacity in New York State,” Gov. Cumo recalled on Sunday. “That’s what all the experts said. The president brought in the Army Corps of Engineers. They built 2,500 at Javits … It was a phenomenal accomplishment. Close to a thousand people have gone through Javits. Luckily, we didn’t need the 2,500 beds. But all the projections said we did need it and more … so these were just extraordinary efforts and acts of mobilization, and the federal government stepped up and was a great partner, and I’m the first one to say it. We needed help and they were there.” 

That was then.

This is now.

Yesterday The Washington Free Beacon reported:

In his remarks, Cuomo blamed the Trump administration for its failure to anticipate the pandemic’s magnitude. But like the Trump administration, the governor himself downplayed the threat of the virus as it was beginning to spread across the United States, telling New Yorkers in early March that it was “a manageable situation” and didn’t “merit the hysteria.” Weeks later, his state became the center of the U.S. outbreak.

For Governor Cuomo it’s not about doing the right thing–it’s about politics. The Democrats have chosen to ignore the fact that the Governor sent coronavirus patients into nursing homes after other facilities were made available. For those who lost loved ones because of that decision, this is not a small matter. His speech last night at the Democrat convention was a disgrace.

How Is This Legal?

Yesterday The Conservative Treehouse posted an article about new regulations put in place by Governor Andrew Cuomo in New York State. New York State had one of the highest death rates due to coronavirus because the Governor required nursing homes to admit coronavirus patients that had been discharged from the hospital. The Governor did not send those patients to the Javits Center, which had been refitted to handle coronavirus patients or to the hospital ship which had also been refitted. Instead he sent them into nursing homes where the population that was at the highest risk of dying from the disease lived. Now the Governor has chosen to overreact totally to the disease and issue a regulation that should be struck down immediately.

The article reports:

Comrade citizens, those who travel in the Northeast zone should beware, Minister Cuomo is going all-in with the COVID compliance mandates. All travelers into New York from “high-COVID” states, must provide their papers upon arrival or face a summons and $2,000 fine.

Is this even legal?

A Very Costly Decision

The decision to send coronavirus patients into nursing homes was a very expensive decision. In early June The New York Post reported that nearly one fourth of the deaths from the coronavirus occurred in nursing homes. More recent statistics show a higher percentage. A number of states required nursing homes to accept patients with the disease after they were discharged from the hospital. In New York, this is particularly aggravating because beds were available at the Javits Center and the hospital ship that was docked in the harbor. Both had been refitted to allow them to take patients with the virus. There was also the hospital set up by Samaritan’s Purse in Central Park. There were other options than nursing homes. The decision to send the coronavirus patients back to nursing homes in New York was made by Governor Cuomo.

Yesterday The New York Post posted an article about Governor Cuomo’s decision.

The article reports on Governor Cuomo’s latest efforts to avoid responsibility for that decision:

His latest bid is simply scandalous. Cuomo has the nerve to blame grieving family members and heroic nursing-home staffers, charging they were the ones who infected and killed as many 12,000 elderly and helpless residents.

Desperation is no excuse. This is shamelessness on stilts. And it is heartlessly cruel to blame the victims.

The outrageous claims came in a report released by state Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker, along with hospital administrators. Conveniently, the report they prepared absolves all of them of any responsibility. What a coincidence!

Coverups don’t get any more brazen. Or less credible.

The fact remains that Zucker wrote, with obvious hospital ­input, the March 25 order forcing all nursing homes to take people infected with the coronavirus. It ultimately resulted in 6,326 sick patients being transferred from hospitals to nursing homes between March 25 and May 8.

The homes and other long-term-care facilities were given no warning, advice or help in preparing to receive those patients. There were no inspections to learn whether the facilities had space and staff to segregate COVID patients from the long-term residents, most of whom were especially vulnerable to the virus.

The order was so flawed that it even blocked the facilities from asking if those being transferred had tested positive for the virus. All those demands run counter to federal recommendations and requirements.

The article continues:

While there may have been isolated cases of infected, asymptomatic visitors, the fact remains that the nearly 600 facilities involved did not have significant numbers of coronavirus cases and deaths until the days and weeks following the March 25 order. Some had zero cases until then.

The insistence that the order played no role won’t wash. For one thing, Cuomo’s office claims the Zucker report was “peer reviewed,” but only by organizations that have a stake in its conclusions.

For another, in addition to The Post, which first recognized the lethality of the order, numerous other media outlets have independently confirmed the consequences. In this case, that’s peer review worth the name.

Indeed, it became so obvious that the March 25 order was a fatal blunder that Cuomo effectively rescinded it on May 10. Then, with a quick pivot and a grinding of gears, he shifted into an ­unconscionable hunt for scapegoats.

And hasn’t stopped. Some days, there is more than one. Trump is a frequent target, with Cuomo saying recently that the president “makes up facts, he makes up science.”

He also accused the president of being in “denial of the problem” and added, “He is facilitating the virus, he is enabling the virus.”

If that sounds familiar, it’s because many people say exactly the same things about Cuomo.

It is understood that Governor Cuomo wants to run for President. I don’t know how he could pull that off in 2020, but we can expect to see him on the Democrat ticket in 2024. He needs to put the nursing home death scandal behind him before he runs. I am not sure that a biased report by the State Health Commissioner can accomplish that.

The Truth About Covid-19 Begins To Emerge

Yesterday Just the News posted an article about Colorado health officials beginning to correct the number of deaths reported to have been caused by Covid-19.

The article reports:

Colorado health officials this week implemented a more precise coronavirus data metric to measure deaths from the virus in that state, one that sent confirmed COVID-19 fatalities tumbling by a full 25%.

Public health officials in the state elected to start distinguishing between individuals who died directly from the disease and those who simply died with the virus in their systems. Authorities in that state had faced criticism this week for classifying as a COVID-19 death a man whose blood-alcohol content registered an astronomical .55.

With the new system in place, confirmed coronavirus deaths in Colorado plummeted from 1150 to 878, a drop of almost 25%.

…The state’s coronavirus dashboard lists 21,232 confirmed cases of the virus there as of Saturday afternoon, with over 3,800 hospitalizations. Over 90% of deaths in the state were of individuals 60 or older. Deaths appear to have peaked there on April 25. 

I suspect an honest counting of deaths due to Covid-19 would be very different from the numbers that have been reported. One thing we do know is that people in nursing homes or extended care facilities need to be protected from the disease. Allowing patients with the disease to be placed in these facilities is very dangerous to the residents who are already there.

On May 12th, I posted an article stating that a new study reveals that 39% of all US coronavirus deaths occurred in nursing homes. These are the people who need to be protected. Florida is the gold standard for protecting the elderly. Florida has a large elderly population and has not had nearly the number of cases and deaths as New York. It’s time to protect the vulnerable and send the rest of us back to work.

Who Is Really At Risk?

Yesterday The Gateway Pundit posted an article reporting the statistics on American deaths due to the coronavirus.

The article reports:

A new study reveals that 39% of all US coronavirus deaths occurred in nursing homes.

That comes out to 31,900 Deaths in Nursing Homes!
That is a really shocking number!

49,895 deaths were outside of nursing homes.
Which is what you might expect from a typical flu season.

Italy also saw 40% of their coronavirus deaths in nursing homes.

At least 4,900 seniors have died in New York State nursing homes from the coronavirus so far this year. Around 20 percent of all New York state deaths were in nursing homes.

New York State, the UK and Italy all had laws that encouraged infected coronavirus patients to be sent back to nursing homes.
And now thousands of seniors are dead from the virus.

Please follow the link to the article–it includes maps showing the percentage of deaths in each state that occurred in nursing homes and residential care facilities. To purposely send a coronavirus patient into a nursing home or residential care facility is a death sentence for many of the residents already there.

Something To Pay Attention To

The drug hydroxychloroquine has somehow become political. It shouldn’t be, but it is. But meanwhile there are reports of amazing results with the drug. On Friday, Hot Air posted an article about a coronavirus outbreak in a nursing home in Texas. Nursing homes seem to be one of the most dangerous places to be at this time.

The article reports:

Dr. Robin Armstrong faced one of the largest outbreaks in the Houston area when 83 people tested positive for COVID-19 at the 135-bed facility in Galveston County. At the time, I wrote that he was treating 30 patients with hydroxychloroquine. Apparently those numbers have shifted. Now it is being reported that 39 elderly people gave Armstrong permission to treat them with hydroxychloroquine. Fifty-six residents contracted the virus.

Armstrong wasn’t willing to watch 15% of the nursing home die without doing something. Using President Trump’s line of reasoning – what the hell do you have to lose? – he prescribed the drug. “I thought the risk of seeing 15% of that nursing home die was just not acceptable,” he said of the residents at The Resort at Texas City.

Now that the five-day trial is completed, Dr. Armstrong was interviewed this week about the results. At first, he couched his answer by saying “most” of the patients have done well. “And, you know, and I think that that is suggestive that the medication is helpful,” he said. When the reporter pressed him on “most” patients, he explained. “We’ve got one patient now that kind of goes back and forth,” said Dr. Armstrong, “He’s an older gentleman, but we’re kind of nursing him through the process, but he’s getting better.”

The article concludes:

Dr. Armstrong reminded the reporter that hydroxychloroquine is not a cure for COVID-19. He said in his experience, though, it does reduce the severity of the symptoms.

I’m not sure we need a cure if we can simply reduce the symptoms so that people get better.