Thursday, March 26, 2020

26 March 2020: Anticipation of Deadly Results from a Deadly Directive

New York Mandates Nursing Homes Take Covid-19 Patients Discharged From Hospitals

The pushback from nursing homes fearing harm to their resident patients from the Cuomo administration's 25 March 2020 directive was immediate, as this article confirms. Here's a short excerpt:

A group representing doctors who work in nursing homes, known as AMDA, the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, said in a recent resolution that “admitting patients with suspected or documented Covid-19 infection represents a clear and present danger to all of the residents of a nursing home.”

“We’ve got an extraordinarily vulnerable population on our hands,” said Christopher Laxton, executive director of the group. Nursing homes’ older, often frail residents are particularly susceptible to the virus. Many nursing homes have also long struggled with infection control, according to federal inspection records and researchers.

The deadly risks of the Cuomo administration's COVID-19 nursing home policy were well known at the time the directive was implemented.

FLASHBACK, March 2020: Caller To "Mark Levin Show" Explains Cuomo's "Unbelievable" Nursing Home COVID Policy

We weren't aware of this news item until 12 March 2021, but we're inserting it into the timeline where it belongs, since it captures the contemporary reaction of a nursing home employee who understood what the Cuomo administration was forcing upon New York's elderly, sick, and highly vulnerable nursing home residents.

Here's the 'flashback' of the excerpt from the 26 March 2020 edition of the Mark Levin radio broadcast:

Here's a partial transcription of the broadcast:

During a March 2020 edition of the Mark Levin Show, a caller who says she is a medical director at a nursing home tried to get the word out about New York's policy with respect to COVID patients being placed in nursing homes.

"Are you pulling my leg, seriously?" host Mark Levin asked, sounding amazed. "Why would you send someone who has this virus into a population that can kill people. Are you serious? Why would he order this? It doesn't make any sense."

"I will point out that nursing homes are in the habit of accepting [patients] from hospitals to continue their care," the caller said.

"But they must realize the most vulnerable people here are the elderly, and people in nursing homes already have issues?" Mark Levin wondered. "What is the point of this?"

"I'm looking at a [directive] from Andrew Cuomo [and Howard Zucker] dated March 25 that is ordering nursing homes to comply with the [expedited] receipt of resident from hospitals, if they are deemed appropriate to go into the nursing homes by the hospitals and they can not discriminate on the [presence] of COVID," the caller explained.

There is absolutely no question that everyone in a position to know better knew the 25 March 2020 directive would be bad news for New York's nursing home residents from the very beginning. That includes hundreds, if not thousands, of people employed by the state government of New York who would be charged with ensuring the directive was enforced, who transported COVID patients from hospitals to nursing homes, who were doctors, nurses, and other health care workers and administrators who discharged COVID patients to nursing homes, and those in the media who chose not to pursue the story as it was breaking because it didn't fit the politically biased narrative they wanted to push at the time.

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