James issued a damning, 76-page report, stating that some unidentified nursing homes apparently underreported resident fatalities to the state Department of Health and failed to enforce infection-control measures — with more than 20 currently under investigation.
The bombshell findings could push the current DOH tally of 8,711 deaths to more than 13,000, based on a survey of 62 nursing homes that found the state undercounted the fatalities there by an average of 56 percent.
The report further notes that at least 4,000 residents died after the state issued a controversial Cuomo administration mandate for nursing homes to admit “medically stable” coronavirus patients — which James said “may have put residents at increased risk of harm in some facilities.”
While the news from New York is horrific, New York is not alone in either poor policy that arguably caused increased nursing home COVID-19 death, or in efforts to conceal the numbers. Daniel Greenfield, reporter for FrontPageMag began reporting on the story in April, 2020, in a story entitled, "1 in 5 Coronavirus Deaths Could Have Been Prevented by Securing Nursing Homes."
Greenfield's article is partisan, and at times his rhetoric is incendiary, but it is quoted accurately lest one claim that the rhetoric was removed to make it seem less partisan; the reader can discern whether partisanship in whole or part colors the reportage towards inaccuracy. He wrote:
"Over 7,000 of the country’s coronavirus deaths emerged out of nursing homes.
Of the 4,377 coronavirus deaths in New Jersey, over 1,700 died due to infections in nursing homes. That nearly 40% of coronavirus deaths in one of the hardest hit states took place in nursing homes casts a stark light on the misplaced priorities of blue states battling the pandemic by locking down houses of worship and small businesses, while putting few to no resources into protecting nursing home residents.
New Jersey’s coronavirus deaths were part of the coronavirus outbreak in 425 nursing homes. At one nursing home, after an anonymous tip, police found 17 bodies being stored in a shed.
Nearly 7,000 nursing home residents in the state have tested positive for coronavirus.
In neighboring New York, nearly 1 in 4 coronavirus deaths emerged from nursing homes. Those 3,060 deaths are only part of the story and represent an extremely incomplete picture. The Health Department had battled against releasing the information, claiming that it was protecting the privacy of residents. Even when the people pleading for the release of the information were their own loved ones.
In one facility, 17% of the residents have died. In 5 others, more than 10% are dead.
And even now, only data from a fraction of nursing homes in the state has been made public.
Why were New York authorities so reluctant to release the information? Even the partial data makes it all too clear that the severity of the death toll was not due to urban density, but poor oversight and response. If urban density were the issue, Manhattan would have some of the highest numbers. Instead it has among the lowest, while boroughs with sizable nursing homes have the highest numbers.
The actual nursing home death toll in New York may be closer to 3,316.
In New York City, while the official numbers peg it at 688, the actual numbers may be over 2,000.
And the death toll, actual or estimated, is only a part of a bigger picture with 8% of nursing home residents in the state testing positive for the virus. Those numbers make it painfully clear that the dying is likely to continue and that authorities have utterly failed to secure our most vulnerable population.
The Cuomo administration is blaming nursing homes. And while nursing homes often provide poor care and personnel often work in different facilities at the same time spreading the infection between them, it was the state that ordered facilities to accept coronavirus patients returning from the hospital.
Governor Cuomo's Department of Health had issued an order that, "no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19" and also prohibited requiring testing of returning patients. Sending hospitalized patients with coronavirus to the same mismanaged nursing homes was a death sentence for countless seniors in those facilities.
As Betsy McCaughey, the former Republican lieutenant governor, has said, "One Covid-positive patient in a nursing home produces carnage.”
. . .
In Connecticut, 40% of coronavirus fatalities emerged from nursing homes.
In Virginia, the majority of the coronavirus outbreaks have taken place in nursing homes. Like New York, Virginia’s Department of Health is refusing to release the names of the facilities with outbreaks.
That means loved ones have no way to know if their families are at risk.
Governor Ralph Northam's administration is continuing to engage in the cover-up even as a quarter of the population in one facility died of the coronavirus. That outbreak was the deadliest in America.
In Illinois, Governor Pritzker's administration had fought against providing the numbers of deaths and the identity of the nursing homes with outbreaks by claiming that it was protecting the privacy of residents, but finally began putting out some numbers about coronavirus deaths in nursing homes.
1 in 4 coronavirus deaths in Cook County, an area which includes Chicago, took place in nursing homes.
In Michigan, Governor Gretchen Whitmer's administration also refused to release the names of infected facilities. What information reporters have put together indicates that over a third of coronavirus deaths in Wayne County took place in nursing homes. Every nursing home in Detroit is infected.
“We have a crisis in our nursing homes,” Mayor Mike Duggan admitted, as 35% of nursing home residents tested had the virus.
In California, 29% of the deaths in Los Angeles County have taken place in nursing homes. In nearby Long Beach, it’s as high as 72%. In one Central Valley home, 156 residents tested positive and 8 died.
The Newsom administration, like its blue state counterparts, dragged its feet on releasing nursing home information, until its feet were held to the fire.
Governor Newsom is now claiming that nursing home residents are his top priority. “This state has a disproportionate number of aging and graying individuals, and we have a unique responsibility to take care of them and their caregivers.”
Except that California, like New York, was forcing care facilities to accept coronavirus patients discharged from hospitals. Newsom, like Cuomo, has blood on his manicured hands.
The ten deadliest outbreaks in this country have taken place in nursing homes and care facilities.
While officials around the country shut down churches and synagogues, arrested people for surfing and playing catch, and sent drones flying over their backyards, little was done to secure the estimated 4,100 nursing homes out of over 15,000 in the country where coronavirus was known to have taken root.
Even though the first coronavirus outbreak in this country took place in a nursing home in Washington, and killed 43 people, the CDC failed to track the spread of the virus to nursing homes nationwide.
Instead, the CDC has been relying on "informal outreach" to track the spread and has not updated its numbers since March.
The CDC's estimate of 400 nursing homes is only about 10% of the national total.
The Trump administration took an important step by ordering nursing homes to report coronavirus deaths to the CDC, and to the residents and their families. This move puts an end to the state stonewalling that covered up coronavirus cases and their own malfeasance.
It’s the beginning. Not the end."
Last May, Greenfield revisited the scandal. He wrote:
Greenfield wrote recently, in light of James' report:"While New York had banned testing as a basis for nursing home admission, in Florida, a “COVID-19 test must be negative prior to transfer to a post-acute facility.
Governor DeSantis noted that his ban on sending coronavirus patients to nursing homes is the reason why the nursing home death toll was 13 times higher in New York and 25 times higher in New Jersey.
The media falsely claims that after at least 12,000 dead grandmas and grandpas, Cuomo, Whitmer, Murphy, and Newsom did a wonderful job, and DeSantis did a terrible one. Their measure of success isn’t in grandmas saved, but in small businesses shut down, people terrified, and government power made absolute."
And if the media gets to write the history of the pandemic, that is what our children will be taught."
"This is a story I broke back in the spring. It's steadily gotten worse since then as Cuomo's decision to force nursing homes to accept infected coronavirus patients helped lead to a massive death toll.
New York isn't unique in that regard. A number of Democrat states, including New Jersey and Pennsylvania, whose health secretary, Rick Levine, was picked by Biden as his assistant health secretary, did the same or similar things. But the death toll has been huge in New York and so has the cover-up.
Cuomo has refused to release the true numbers of fatalities. Now AG Letitia James, who seems to specialize in only political investigations, has a preliminary report about the real death toll.
That's an obvious shot at Cuomo and an indication she plans to run against him.
James and her office have very little credibility, but the report is worth looking at nonetheless."
After reciting James' findings, he noted, "[a] more extensive report would line up facilities that had admitted infected patients with those with high death tolls and combine death tolls from facilities and hospitals." More, a comprehensive assessment would consider tracing and identify how many cases owe as their source an infected institutional care resident or worker, or a family member of either.
There are several takeaways from the whole sordid affair, regardless of the underlying debates regarding COVID-19, generally:
- First, health care has become a partisan issue, and the health and well-being of individuals is only one, and not always the primary, objective of partisans.
- Second, where partisanship exists, information must be read and evaluated critically; figures lie, and liars figure.
- Third, in a battle between the individual versus the institution, any single individual is largely powerless against any large institution, especially where that individual is vulnerable, and this is even more profoundly obvious over a short time frame. Although an individual with the right ideas, like Martin Luther King, can effectuate change over time, the individual will rarely see immediate success, and as a result may suffer greatly in pursuing change.
- Fourth, in planning for one's self and loved ones, one should, as much as possible, eschew broad institutional solutions, including those of the legal, health, and financial systems. Generally, these are supposed to, and in most cases, actually do protect the individual, but when they fail, they fail spectacularly.
- Fifth, plan to age in place, and, therefore, implement a legal, health, financial, and social plan to communicate, implement, and empower that objective.
Original Source: New York Post
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