As reported by the Western Journal:
In what is emerging as one of the biggest untold stories of the coronavirus crisis, the media is starting to pay attention to the fact that the carnage of COVID-19 in nursing homes in New York state not only took place on Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s watch but was actually facilitated by an order from his state government.
https://twitter.com/marklevinshow/status/1254387236638019586
This matters because, whether you believe the Trump administration’s coronavirus response was good or bad, the fact is he isn’t responsible for state-level decisions like this; governors are — and in this case, the governor is Andrew Cuomo, the same one who, early on, criticized Trump then begged him to send supplies like ventilators and a U.S. Navy hospital ship.
And Levin is making that clear because, without a doubt, COVID-19 won’t be the last pandemic we have to deal with (from China, for sure, but elsewhere as well).
As Michael Goodwin of the New York Post noted in a recent column, a directive issued March 25 by the New York Department of Health essentially instructed nursing homes in the state to take in patients who were infected with coronavirus, which brought the disease in close contact with a population most at risk of dying from it — elderly people and those with preexisting medical conditions.
The results of this stupidity were predictable: A spike in nursing home deaths.
In fact, as The New York Times reported, deaths in nursing homes from coronavirus are a national problem. These homes for the infirm and aged account for about one-fifth of all coronavirus deaths, as of this writing.
But it’s Cuomo that is being touted as the Democratic answer to President Donald Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings — when in fact, he was the one who guided the policy.
Nursing homes and rehabilitation centers nationally accounted for about 10,500 fatalities attributed to the coronavirus — about a quarter of all coronavirus deaths.
As of his writing, Goodwin noted that about 3,500 deaths in New York occurred in nursing homes, or about one-quarter of the total in the state at the time.
“There is no way to know exactly how many died as a result of the state order, but the number is certainly not zero. The cause and effect relationship is obvious,” Goodwin wrote.
Except to those in charge of making the decision, apparently.
On March 26 during his program, Levin took a call from a woman who said she is from New Rochelle, N.Y., and she was alerting him to the nursing home order.
“Why would you send someone who has this virus into a population that can kill people?” Levin asked, incredulous, according to the Western Journal. (Related: Factories in China have poor sanitation and quality standards … will you trust them to make your masks?)
Who knows? Does Andrew Cuomo even know? What about the ‘experts’ at the NY Health Department? Did they push back on the order, or did they blindly follow it like a Nazi SS concentration camp commander during World War II?
Here’s also why this matters: Cuomo the ‘genius governor’ has been mentioned regularly as a potential replacement for Joe Biden as the 2020 Democratic presidential nominee. And yet, he can’t even make the correct decision to protect older residents in his state from a disease known to attack older Americans more harshly?
Late to the party, the ‘mainstream media’ is finally taking notice, as Levin pointed out in a tweet.
New York, New Jersey, and California all ordered nursing homes to take coronavirus patients, exposing their frail and elderly patients to the virus with deadly consequences. This is a huge scandal. https://t.co/7rI3gXc7xL
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) April 26, 2020
“I’m waiting on Democrat leader Pelosi to say they have ‘blood on their hands,’” one Twitter user noted.
Don’t hold your breath.
Sources include: