Posted on 04/23/2020 3:05:36 PM PDT by Mount Athos
One of the most at-risk populations when it comes to the Wuhan coronavirus are those in nursing homes. The first place we really became aware of the virus in this country was at a nursing home in the state of Washington, The Life Center in Kirkland, where there were 3 deaths from the virus before March 11. Since then, at least 24 others have died there.
Governments seem to have grasped that the elderly are most at risk from the virus.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo even named his stay-at-home order after his own mother, Matilda Cuomo, because he wanted to emphasize the importance of protecting the elderly. “My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable and our brothers and sisters are not expendable,” he said in March.
So one would think Cuomo would understand that a nursing home population would be one that you would most want to protect.
But in fact, his administration issued an order requiring nursing homes to admit and readmit people who tested positive for the virus. According to the New York Post, Gov. Cuomo claimed he didn’t know about the policy earlier this week. But his Health Commissioner Howard Zucker confirmed it. “If you are positive, you should be admitted back to a nursing home,” he said. “The necessary precautions will be taken to protect the other residents there.”
The state concedes that 3,448 residents of nursing homes or adult-care facilities are known to have died from the coronavirus, or nearly 25 percent of all deaths in New York. More than 2,000 of the total are in the five boroughs, and officials acknowledge that the real numbers are almost certainly higher. [….]
The COVID-19 readmission policy was adopted March 25 and was contained in a Health Department directive that says, “No resident shall be denied readmission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19,” Newsday reported last month.
The problem was that not only did they order the people back into the nursing homes but then the nursing homes didn’t have the adequate PPE to be able to deal with that, according to people like Assemblyman Ron Kim (D-Queens), who didn’t accept Zucker’s claims that the “necessary precautions” were being taken.
“It’s either he’s lying or they have absolutely no idea what’s going on on the ground,” Kim said.
“The staff, the families, everyone is telling me there’s completely a lack of support and they don’t have the necessary PPE [personal protective equipment] to be safe.”
Arline Mullin wondered why people haven’t been asking questions about this. She wrote a letter and did an interview with Michael Goodwin of the New York Post.
“I am wondering who will hold Gov. Cuomo accountable for the deaths of so many older people due to his reckless decision to place covid19 patients in nursing and rehabilitation homes,” the letter began. “I am writing as a daughter who lost her beautiful 88 year old mother who was receiving physical therapy at one such facility.” [….]
For her part, Arlene Mullin is not satisfied. In an interview Tuesday, the Long Island educator said she has sent four emails to Cuomo’s office on the issue but has never received a response.
“I get it, it’s a crisis,” she said of the pandemic. “But I really want to know why the governor would put that population at such risk.”
Her mom, Diana Mongiello, a great-grandmother, was in a rehab center that had accepted coronavirus patients when she developed a fever on April 5. At 8 a.m. the next day, a nursed called to say Mongiello tested positive. Five hours later, she was pronounced dead.
On top of all that, on Wednesday, when Gov. Cuomo mocked people desperate to work to be able to feed their families and he told them to get jobs as “essential workers,” he made a comment about nursing homes that got less attention. He said that it wasn’t the state government’s responsibility to provide PPE for nursing homes, although it was their responsibility to check on compliance with laws in the use of such equipment.
Technically, that’s legally true. Just like technically, it isn’t really the federal government’s responsibility to provide things to New York which they should have had themselves. But despite that, President Donald Trump covered New York’s back as much as he could. Imagine if Trump had said it wasn’t his responsibility. But when you’ve actually ordered nursing homes to take people who are positive and they don’t have the ability to refuse or send them to the hospital, then saying you have no responsibility for the result is more than a little callous, when you’re the reason they’re in the mess they are in.
On Thursday, Cuomo tried to clean it up, saying the state would be checking on compliance in the nursing homes to see if they are wearing PPE and isolating patients. But at this point, with hospitalizations leveling off, why are still you requiring homes that are not as prepared or as knowledgeable as hospitals to assume that burden and danger? It makes no sense.
What could go wrong.
New York ... cutting future heath care costs.
Must have been too difficult to put them on the subway...
And a directed DNR to EMTs for any flatliners.
Tone-deaf AND malicious. They learn nothing and forget nothing.
“DUH!” as a sarcastic comment is much too mild an expletive to be recognized by the clever managers of the local NYC spread of the COVID-19 Wuhan virus.
If you are a New Yorker you should face the obvious, your Governor wants you dead. Some how, some way, he is making money off of Covid deaths.
Apparently, NJ has been following the same Corona Protocol!
Many nursing homes were responsible, locked down early, temperature checks for staff. They tended to be slow on protective gear and masks, either saying it would scare patients, or not being able to obtain it, or being to cheap to get it, or not enforcing it on the staff. The mask part is better now.
But what good do any precautions do if Covid19 patients are sent in?
I know nursing homes would probably try to unload all their Covid19 patients on the hospitals if they could.
That is how NY is making its money, the more people on ventilators the more money they make..for them ventilators equals a big payday
They have blood on their hands and will answer to God some day for deliberately putting people in harms way.
Which is why Fedzilla has regs to get these facilities to take back their patients.
But Fedzilla also recognized the dangers posed to/with WuFlu patients and changed the regs weeks ago to allow facilities to opt out if necessary.
This is on Cuomo. All of it.
"essential" does not mean you're treated well...
Do not send the sick to petri dishes. They would be better using the money to pay for them all to go on a warm weather cruise for 2 weeks, with social distancing.
I wonder if he would put his mother in one of those nursing homes. I think not
Between lying about the number of ventilators available for use, which in turn forced doctors to make life and death decisions based on a false shortage, ordering EMT's not to conduct resuscitation on cardiac patients, forcing individuals in abusive households to remain in lockdown, and suffer domestic violence, letting criminals out of jail, and putting individuals who tested positive for the Chi-Com virus into nursing homes so they can infect others, I'd say he's done more than his fair share to cut future health care costs.
Repurpose them for coronavirus hospitals. Evacuate all elderly C-19 positive patients to them.
Anyone in a nursing home tests positive, move them there immediately.
If you mix non-viral patients with virals in the same building, you are sentencing them to death.
Dedicated facility, dedicated staff. It's the only way
You are assuming that they think it went wrong. Knowing that the pandemic needs deaths to qualify as a pandemic and not just some epidemic. The more deaths they can claim, the better they can justify shutting down the economy. What better way to increase the mortality rate than to increase mortality? I have to stop short of accusing but damn it sure is gross negligence at a criminal level.
Just you wait, it won’t be too many years hence when someone will try to pitch this “savings” as a reason to vote for them. Or as part of arguing that socialized medicine works.
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