31 May 2020: Cuomo Administration Cooks Nursing Home Death Numbers To Mislead Public

Cuomo Cooks Coronavirus Numbers to Defend Controversial Nursing Home Policy

While we've known for weeks that New York's public health officials have been deliberately misclassifying deaths attributed to COVID-19 infections that resulted from the viral exposure of patients in the state's nursing homes to instead attribute them to hospitals, this report describes the Cuomo administration's use of those misleading statistics to try to minimize the appearance of its role in producing the deadly toll that resulted from the administration's policy of forcing nursing homes to admit patients known to have coronavirus infections.

29 May 2020: Other States Copy and Paste NY Nursing Home Immunity Policy

States Are Copying and Pasting Immunity Laws for Nursing Home Executives

This article is not directly about New York but discusses the pay-for-play politics the nursing home industry used to secure its "get out of jail" pass from Governor Cuomo as the coronavirus epidemic raged in New York, where New York's law exempting nursing homes from lawsuits for fatally exposing residents to the viral infection has become the template for similar laws in other states. Corruption, it seems, spreads like a virus.

28 May 2020: Who is COVID-19 Killing?

The Most Important COVID-19 Statistic: 43% Of U.S. Deaths Are From 0.6% Of The Population

The "0.6%" of the population referred to in this headline is the percentage of Americans who live in nursing homes and other assisted-living facilities. This article features some of the better analysis we've seen on the topic and contrasts the approaches taken by the governors of Florida and New York in following the CDC's guidelines as respective examples of what to do and what not to do in protecting residents of nursing homes from viral infections.

The authors note that the "43%" figure in the headline would be considerably higher if New York's public officials were more honest about where patients who were counted as dying in hospitals from COVID-19 were exposed to the virus.

27 May 2020: Cuomo Polls Poorly for Nursing Home Policy, What Laws May Cuomo Have Broken?

New Yorkers disapprove of Gov. Cuomo’s handling of nursing homes: poll

News detailing Governor Cuomo's delinquency in addressing the spread of the coronavirus epidemic in New York and is recent attempts to deflect responsibility for his state's policy forcing nursing homes to admit contagious coronavirus patients by blaming both President Trump and the CDC for it is starting to hurt his standing in public opinion polls.

Andrew Cuomo gave immunity to nursing home execs after big campaign donations

This article from the Guardian, a left-wing UK newspaper, connects the dots between campaign contributions from the state's government-regulated nursing home industry and the immunity from law suits for coronavirus deaths they were awarded just prior to the growing number of coronavirus deaths directly resulting from Governor Cuomo's deadly policies became a major scandal.

How is Gov. Cuomo Not Guilty of Involuntary Manslaughter?

This analysis considers what federal laws Governor Cuomo and New York's chief public health officer, Howard Zucker, may have violated in New York's coronavirus nursing home scandal. Here's the conclusion:

Given the state of knowledge on March 25, when Cuomo and Zucker enacted their policy, it is fair to say that New York’s policy amounted to a death sentence for many nursing home residents — deaths that would not have occurred but for this policy. And it is fair to say that both Cuomo and Zucker knew it. It is also textbook involuntary manslaughter. 18 U.S. Code § 1112, defines the federal crime of Manslaughter as the commission, “without due caution and circumspection, of a lawful act which might produce death.” The President should invite the AG to begin an appropriate investigation.

There's also the matter of how long the policy was allowed to continue after New York passed its peak in hospital resources being consumed because of the coronavirus epidemic, when the faulty reasoning that prompted state officials to initiate the policy no longer applied, which also appears to satisfy the federal legal definition for manslaughter. The sooner a federal investigation is mounted, the better.

26 May 2020: Deadly Directive Scrubbed from NY Department of Health Website

Order Forcing Nursing Homes to Take Covid Patients Scrubbed from N.Y. State Website

This report reveals New York's Department of Health has removed its deadly order mandating nursing homes admit coronavirus-infected patients from its web site (it was linked here). Fortunately, others made a point of preserving multiple copies of the order at the Internet Archive.

Betsy McCaughey: Cuomo nursing home scandal – Deaths likely closer to 10,000 and it gets worse

The former lieutenant governor of New York and the current chair of Committee to Reduce Infectious Diseases, a public advocacy group who seeks to reduce the incidence of preventable infections at U.S. hospitals, who has been serving in that role for several years, estimates the death toll from New York's deadly coronavirus nursing home scandal could be around double the state's current figures if the number of patients who were transferred from nursing homes to hospitals before dying were correctly added to the state's official death toll from nursing homes.

25 May 2020: Governor Cuomo Blames Bad COVID Models for NY Nursing Home Deaths

“We All Failed”— The Real Reason Behind NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Surprising Confession

It took until Memorial Day for Governor Cuomo to acknowledge the models he and other public officials relied upon in setting policy was wrong. Here are excerpts from Cuomo's comments at the news briefing that took place on the U.S.S. Intrepid museum in New York City (emphasis ours):

"Now, people can speculate. People can guess. I think next week, I think two weeks, I think a month. I'm out of that business because we all failed at that business. Right? All the early national experts. Here's my projection model. Here's my projection model. They were all wrong. They were all wrong.

"There are a lot of variables. I understand that. We didn't know what the social distancing would actually amount to. I get it, but we were all wrong. So, I'm sort of out of the guessing business, right?”

Unfortunately, much of Governor Cuomo's more recent actions are consistent with his seeking to muddy the waters in a deliberate efforts to avoid personal responsibility for costing the lives of thousands of elderly New Yorkers, where a full accounting of nursing home residents impacted by his decisions based on the models would cover over 10% of the names listed on the front page of the 24 May 2020 Sunday edition of the New York Times to represent all the COVID-19 deaths in all the U.S.

23 May 2020: Cuomo Blames CDC Guidance for NY Nursing Home Deaths

Cuomo still defends policy of filling nursing homes with coronavirus patients

This article details Governor Cuomo's continued attempts to avoid taking personal responsibility for the deadly order mandating nursing homes admit patients known to be infected with the coronavirus by blaming both President Trump and guidance provided by the CDC for his administration's actions.

22 May 2020: How Many COVID-19 Patients Were Dumped Into NY Nursing Homes?

AP count: Over 4,500 virus patients sent to NY nursing homes

This article delves into just how many contagious patients New York officials transferred from hospitals to nursing homes, where they would infect staff members, and subsequently, highly vulnerable patients.

21 May 2020: Cuomo Cheerleader CNN's Credibility Enters Rapid Phase of Collapse

Chris Cuomo teases brother Andrew with giant test swab

It's utterly amazing that anyone professing to be a serious journalist, editor, or manager at CNN thought the following clip from their Cuomo Prime Time news broadcast of 21 May 2020 was a good idea.

This featurette took a lot of prep time to execute. Things had to be purchased to fabricate the props. Higher-ups at CNN had to sign off on the expenses and the commitment of labor to produce it. Coordination with Governor Cuomo had to occur to enable it.

In short, CNN didn't shred its journalistic credibility by accident. It was an inside job by those who were all to willing to make themselves the servants of the "Cuomo the hero" narrative they were trying to push.

20 May 2020: Cuomo Blames President Trump for Nursing Home Deaths

Gov. Cuomo: ‘Ask President Trump’ about nursing home deaths

This article reports on Governor Cuomo's attempt to blame President Trump for nursing home deaths that occurred as a direct result of his state's policy. He claims the guidance the CDC issued is at fault, but if that were true, we would have seen COVID-19 infected patients transferred from hospitals to nursing homes in all states, instead of just a handful, like New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Illinois, to name the worst offenders.

Meanwhile other states following the exact same CDC guidelines adopted effective safeguards to prevent the contagion from spreading into nursing homes. New York Representative Elise Stefanik provided a rather complete refutation of Governor Cuomo's claim.

19 May 2020: New York Wasn't Counting Nursing Home Resident COVID Deaths

NY didn’t count nursing home coronavirus victims for weeks; then, a stumbling rush for a death toll

There's an old saying among quality engineers: "What gets measured gets done". This article reveals that New York's public health officials weren't measuring COVID-19 infection at nursing homes and other long term care facilities in the state, which is to say they were blind to their plight (because they weren't even asking until 17 April 2020) and to the deadly crisis they had unleashed within them. Bureaucracy kills through negligence.

The article also presents a chart showing New York's coronavirus deaths by age group. Here's our adaptation of the chart:

17 May 2020: "Who Can We Prosecute For Those Deaths? Nobody."

Cuomo says "nobody" should be prosecuted in N.Y. for deaths caused by coronavirus

Here's the video from CBS News:

Perhaps by "nobody", he's referring to himself, his administration, and the state's public health officials, who he already effectively exempted from investigation back on 7 May 2020. On the other hand, if he's wondering what state law might apply to the people involved, we would suggest New York Penal Law Section 125.10, for criminally negligent homicide, might be somewhat relevant, if not Section 125.20 (manslaughter in the first degree).

A deadly coronavirus infestation of New York's nursing homes certainly wasn't "inevitable". Not until the Cuomo administration's policy went into effect.

15 May 2020: Cuomo Administration Confirms NY Is Miscounting Nursing Home Deaths

EXCLUSIVE: New York Admits Knowingly Undercounting Nursing Home Deaths After Quietly Changing Reporting Rules

There is no longer any question of whether New York has been deliberately understating the number of deaths related to the Cuomo administration's coronavirus nursing home scandal:

New York’s coronavirus tracker “currently does not include out of facility deaths,” NYSDOH spokeswoman Jill Montag told the DCNF. “Deaths of nursing home and adult care facility residents that occurred at hospitals is accounted for in the overall fatality data on our COVID-19 tracker.”

In other words, New York’s nursing home and adult care facility coronavirus deaths tracker omits any individuals who contracted coronavirus while living at a long-term care facility but died in a hospital.

The DCNF has confirmed our observation from 9 May 2020 (see above). Or if you don't want to scroll up that far, check out the chart with 12 May 2020's entry. Based on what other states in the northeast are reporting for the infection rate within their nursing homes and long term care facilities, we think New York's count for the number of confirmed coronavirus cases within its elderly care facilities are off by a factor of about 5.

12 May 2020: Charting New York's COVID Deaths

Here's an annotated chart showing the rolling 7-day total of confirmed cases and deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the state of New York. Here is the source for the referenced data for nursing homes cases and deaths.

Why a rolling 7-day total? The daily data shows a cyclical pattern, with the numbers dipping every seven days, coinciding with weekends when many state and local government officials aren't working. Presenting the rolling 7-day counts smooths out that source of day-to-day volatility in the reported data.

Meanwhile, there are new calls for an independent investigation of the Cuomo administration's policies by state legislators, including calls for a federal investigation, which would resolve the conflict of interest issues inherent in the state attorney general's limited investigation.

11 May 2020: New York City Is U.S. COVID Ground Zero

The Real Center of the Pandemic

This article reveals nursing homes to be the true 'ground zero' of the pandemic in the state of New York, accounting for 22% of confirmed cases despite representing less than 1% of the state's population.

10 May 2020: Cuomo Orders COVID Testing for Nursing Home Staff as Deadly Directive Is Finally Rescinded

Cuomo orders biweekly coronavirus tests for nursing home workers

This article reveals that Governor Cuomo has finally acted to make COVID-19 testing of nursing home staff a regular practice. Wait, what? Why wasn't this done in any of the 64 days that have elapsed since the governor declared a state of emergency for the coronavirus epidemic in New York and began block family members from visiting nursing home patients?

Andrew Cuomo FINALLY Reverses Order Forcing Nursing Homes To Take COVID Patients, Demands Testing For Care Workers

Meanwhile, 46 days after the Cuomo administration's infamous order was issued, which proved to be the equivalent of throwing lit matches on "dry grass", Governor Cuomo has decided to stop it. Governor Cuomo has officially overruled the state's Department of Health 25 March 2020 directive by executive order, though the Department of Health has not yet issued its own new directive or guidance for nursing homes to follow it, we presume state officials will comply with it.

Gov. Cuomo admits he was wrong to order nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients

If you've followed the links above, the New York Post has largely owned the story on the Cuomo administration's coronavirus nursing home scandal. In this editorial, they recap the coverage that forced Governor Cuomo to end his deadly policy. They've left one question unasked as yet: What compelled Governor Cuomo and his administration to completely contradict their previous statements and adopt it knowing the likely consequences of it in the first place? Our working hypothesis for answering that question is presented above.

9 May 2020: Damning Death Toll in NY Nursing Homes

NY’s Cuomo criticized over highest nursing home death toll

This PBS News Hour article provides some damning figures, which to put into perspective, we'll note that Johns Hopkins is reporting a total 77,180 deaths for the entire United States through 8 May 2020, with 26,243 of them in the state of New York. Here's an excerpt:

Of the nation’s more than 25,000 coronavirus deaths in nursing homes and long-term care facilities, more than a fifth of them — about 5,300 — are in New York, according to a count by The Associated Press, and the toll has been increasing by an average of 20 to 25 deaths a day for the past few weeks.

“The numbers, the deaths keep ticking up,” said MaryDel Wypych, an advocate for older adults in the Rochester area. “It’s just very frustrating.”

Across the U.S., the 25,000+ deaths attributed to COVID-19 that have occurred in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities represent at least 32% of the nation's total death count, with deaths in the state of New York's nursing homes resulting from Governor Cuomo's policies alone contributing nearly 7% of the national total.

These figures are almost certainly underestimates, where we suspect they do not fully reflect deaths that occurred among New York's nursing home patients who became infected thanks to the Cuomo administration's policies, who were subsequently transferred to hospitals where they passed away. One nurse describes Governor Cuomo's policies as "irresponsible, negligent, and stupid".

Meanwhile, at least 38% of all 9,116 lab-confirmed COVID-19 deaths in New Jersey occurred in that state's nursing homes and long term care facilities. Having followed the Cuomo administration's lead in forcing the state's nursing homes to admit infected patients beginning on 31 March 2020, the state has seen 97% of its coronavirus-confirmed deaths in the period since. Following Governor Cuomo's lead in exposing high-mortality risk patients to the coronavirus is proving especially deadly.

7 May 2020: Cuomo Administration to Investigate Itself

Cuomo's Nursing Home Investigation May Present "Conflict Of Interest"

This article discusses the inherent conflict of interest that exists in how Governor Cuomo's investigation of nursing homes has been set up.

The investigation will be a joint affair between the state attorney general, a member of Governor Cuomo's political party, and the state's Department of Health, which oversees and regulates the state's nursing homes, and which is being exempted from being a target the investigation despite its role in forcing nursing homes to admit contagious coronavirus patients and in allowing infected nursing home staff to remain on the job contributed to the large and growing death toll at the state's nursing home facilities.

6 May 2020: Peak Cuomo Arrives

On 6 May 2020, Governor Cuomo was at or near the peak of his popularity. That was in no small part due to the efforts of his brother, CNN's Chris Cuomo, who turned his hour long evening news broadcast into cheerleading propaganda outlet for the Governor. On 6 May 2020, Peak Cuomo arrived. It's been downhill for both Cuomos ever since.

To understand why 6 May 2020 marked the top for the Cuomos, you have to see the following excerpt from CNN's Cuomo Prime Time broadcast that evening:

We can't recall any other media outlet purporting to present objective news coverage shredding its reputation the way CNN did by featuring 1. Clear conflicts of interest, 2. Outright propaganda, 3. Whatever else it is you call this clip. And this nonsense went on for months, begging the question of whether CNN employs any serious journalists, editors, managers, or executives.

6 May 2020: Evidence Appears NY Is Undercounting COVID Nursing Home Deaths

SEE IT: At least 20 bodies removed from Harlem nursing home during coronavirus pandemic, though state data only shows five COVID-19 deaths

This article (and video) suggests the death toll in New York's nursing homes is being greatly understated by state officials. It also points out that many deaths being reported in hospitals may be traced to infections that occurred in the state's nursing homes, which understates the extent to which nursing home patients are contributing to the state's coronavirus death toll.

5 May 2020: Nursing Homes Go Without PPE as COVID Death Toll Share Rises

Another 1,700 Virus Deaths Reported in NY Nursing Homes

According to this article, 4,813 nursing home residents have died from COVID-19 in New York overall since 1 March 2020, or about a quarter of the 19,415 deaths in the state at this point.

Coronavirus Toll: ‘Absolutely Horrifying’ Surge Of 98 Dead At NYC Nursing Home

This article puts paid to Governor Cuomo's claim (see entry for 26 April 2020) that state officials only put coronavirus-infected patients into nursing homes filled with high-mortality risk elderly patients if they had sufficient resources to care for them and could protect patients from exposure to the coronavirus. Here's an excerpt:

“Isabella, like all other nursing homes in New York City, initially had limited access to widespread and consistent in-house testing to quickly diagnose our residents and staff,” Audrey Waters, a spokeswoman for the nursing home, wrote in an email. “This hampered our ability to identify those who were infected and asymptomatic, despite our efforts to swiftly separate anyone who presented symptoms.”

Isabella also encountered staffing shortages, prompting it to hire from outside agencies and early challenges securing personal protective equipment for employees. Waters said the home finally is “getting more access to testing” now.

Apparently, nursing homes needed more than a week's supply of masks and gloves that state officials would seem to have believed was all that was necessary to care for the COVID-19 patients the state mandated they admit into their facilities.

4 May 2020: Pataki Calls for Independent Investigation

Pataki slams Cuomo, calls for investigation into nursing home deaths amid coronavirus

The former governor is calling for an independent investigation of the scandal, the Cuomo administration is resisting.

3 May 2020: Cuomo Gifts Immunity to Nursing Home Operators

Faced with 20,000 dead, care homes seek shield from lawsuits

This article looks at the lobbying effort nursing homes have launched to protect themselves from lawsuits related to the coronavirus deaths they have incurred, which total nearly a third of all deaths attributed to COVID-19 in the U.S. The portions of the article that address New York are telling:

At least 15 states have enacted laws or governors’ orders that explicitly or apparently provide nursing homes and long-term care facilities some protection from lawsuits arising from the crisis. And in the case of New York, which leads the nation in deaths in such facilities, a lobbying group wrote the first draft of a measure that apparently makes it the only state with specific protection from both civil lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

Why is New York so different in protecting nursing homes from criminal prosecution? The article goes on to describe Governor Cuomo's relationship with the nursing home industry after describing the efforts of the industry to gain immunity protections in recent years, which looks like the industry's lobbyists have been actively engaged in providing funds to support the governor's political priorities:

Nowhere have the industry’s efforts played out more starkly than in New York, which has a fifth of the nation’s known nursing home and long-term care deaths and has had at least seven facilities with outbreaks of 40 deaths or more, including one home in Manhattan that reported 98.

New York's immunity law signed by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo was drafted by the Greater New York Hospital Association, an influential lobbying group for both hospitals and nursing homes that donated more than $1 million to the state Democratic Party in 2018 and has pumped more than $7 million into lobbying over the past three years.

New York's immunity law, the Emergency Disaster Treatment Protection Act (EDTPA), was enacted on 20 April 2020, just as New York's coronavirus nursing home scandal began blowing up in the news. Since New York is uniquely alone in the nation at this point in shielding nursing home operators from prosecution for coronavirus-related deaths resulting from criminal negligence, it looks like the industry lobbyists have successfully used the additional leverage that the Cuomo administration's scandalous actions have provided them to get something they haven't been able to get elsewhere.

Since New York wasn't the only state that allowed the practice, it will be interesting to see what happens on this count in the others, such as New Jersey and California.

1 May 2020: Not Just New York

States ordered nursing homes to take COVID-19 residents. Thousands died. Here’s what happened

New York wasn't the only state that forced nursing homes to admit known coronavirus-infected patients without ensuring they were equipped to handle them. This article counts up the associated deaths and describes a large number of actions now being taken that should have been implemented from the beginning.