MESSAGE
| DATE | 2020-10-02 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Dr Death
|
nypost.com
‘It never happened’: Cuomo denies causing 6,500 nursing home deaths
By Bernadette Hogan
7-8 minutes
ALBANY — Gov. Andrew Cuomo denied this week that his state Health
Department’s controversial March 25 order saying nursing homes could not
bar admission or readmission to a resident based on a positive COVID-19
test had nothing to do with the over 6,500 deaths in those facilities
related to the virus.
“That’s not why they lost a loved one in a nursing home. Your question —
the premise of your question is just actually wrong. People were lost in
nursing homes, were lost because that’s where the virus preys.
“The virus preys on senior citizens,” insisted Cuomo, reprimanding a
Finger Lakes News Radio reporter during a phone conference call with
other members of the media on Wednesday.
“There’s a whole report done with data. The way the virus got into
nursing homes was from two possible carriers — before we even knew about
it,” continued the governor, ignoring the seeming impossibility of
infected staffers at one nursing home having any impact on all the others.
“The staff, working staff, at the nursing home brought in the virus, or
potentially family members before we stopped family visits brought in
the virus and this happened at a time back in February when we didn’t
even know the virus was circulating in New York State, that’s how the
virus got into the nursing home,” he added.
Cuomo has defensively pointed to an internal report conducted by his own
state Health Department and widely criticized by medical experts,
politicians and family members who lost loved ones in facilities to the
virus.
Experts like Catherine Troisi, an epidemiologist with the University of
Texas Health Science Center at Houston, ripped the DOH-issued report
released in July, arguing the analysis lacked sufficient information
including data on nursing homes that were free of the deadly disease
before being forced to admit infected patients.
Enlarge ImageA patient arrives at the Cobble Hill Health Center in
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn.
A patient arrives at the Cobble Hill Health Center in Cobble Hill,
Brooklyn.Gregory P. Mango
“Would this get published in an academic journal? No,” Troisi told the
Associated Press at the time.
Cuomo however reversed the policy on May 10, announcing hospitals could
no longer send patients into nursing homes with a positive coronavirus
case following a visit.
At the time, he argued the former policy was put into place to prevent
discrimination against sick patients upon admission or readmission by
facilities.
Presently, 6,484 nursing home residents have died in facilities since
March of suspected or confirmed COVID-19 cases, according to the latest
DOH data published Oct. 1. An additional 304 individuals succumbed to
the disease in adult care facilities.
“If you’d actually like to understand some facts, I’ll have them send
you a full report that was done and then you can help people with the
facts,” Cuomo added cheekily to the upstate-based reporter.
“Ignorance doesn’t help grieving people. The rule that the State had
which was from the CDC guidance, right? The State didn’t make it up,
they were following the CDC guidance. Now you can say, well, State
Health Department was stupid to follow the federal guidance and you may
have a point there,” he added.
“But the rules said the nursing home can’t discriminate on the basis of
COVID. The law also said a nursing home cannot accept a person who they
cannot treat effectively while protecting the other residents. That’s
the law.”
“We never scrambled for beds and we never needed nursing home beds
because we always had hospital beds so it just never happened in New
York where we needed to say to a nursing home we need you to take this
person even though they’re COVID-positive,” Cuomo added.
Enlarge ImageEmpty hospital beds at the Jacob Javits Center this past March.
Empty hospital beds at the Jacob Javits Center this past March.Daniel
William McKnight
“It never happened. We had extra beds. We had extra beds at Javits. We
had extra beds at emergency hospitals that we put up all across the
state so it just never happened that we needed a nursing home to take a
COVID-positive person. It never happened that we needed a nursing home
to take a COVID positive person. It never happened.”
Critics have argued however that the state’s order went beyond federal
guidance, and that it was not clear that facilities had the choice to
send sick patients to other facilities as a plan B if they were unable
to cohort infected individuals or provide adequate.
The DOH denied a desperate request from Cobble Hill Health Center in
Brownstone Brooklyn CEO Donny Tuchman in April, when he emailed the
agency asking if there was “a way for us to send our suspected COVID
patients” to the Jacob Javits Center, or the US naval hospital ship USNS
Comfort — but the request was denied.
Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Flushing) — a frequent critic of the governor’s
policy and chief sponsor of legislation that would authorize an
independent probe into the state’s handling of the crisis in these
facilities was not convinced.
“The governor and his administration are stuck trying to figure out
which lies they need to defend and how best to gaslight the public to
believe that they did everything to save nursing home lives,” he said.
“We need the governor to tell the truth and own up to his mistakes.”
Senior advisor to the governor, Rich Azzopardi, bit back: “Anyone who
bothered to read the transcript would know the Governor was crystal
clear and was saying what didn’t happen was the crunch on hospital beds
that every projection especially the federal government’s projections
predicted.
“Separately the law has always been that nursing homes could only accept
residents that they could adequately care for. None of that has changed.
Those who continue politicize this issue in a shoddy attempt to deflect
from the federal government’s incompetent and disastrous pandemic
response should be ashamed of themselves and every media organization
should hold them accountable for what they are trying to do.”
Enlarge ImageAssemblyman Ron Kim
Assemblyman Ron KimBernadette Hogan
Meanwhile, good government group the Empire Center for Public Policy
filed a lawsuit arguing the DOH is illegally withholding information
about the number of nursing home residents who died of COVID-19 in
hospitals so it can intentionally undercount deaths.
And even CNN fact checked the governor’s claims.
“Cuomo’s assertion that ‘it never happened’ is false,” the fact-check
read. “According to a report from the New York State Department of
Health, ‘6,326 COVID-positive residents were admitted to [nursing home]
facilities’ following Cuomo’s mandate that nursing homes accept the
readmission of Covid-positive patients from hospitals. Whether or not
this was ‘needed,’ it did in fact happen.”
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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