The alarmists claim that Trump has blood on his hands (for some reason) and that anyone DARING to suggest we look for ways to move back toward normalcy are part of a ‘death cult’.
Strong words. And easily spoken.
But are they true?
Americans, and New Yorkers among them, did everything they have been asked to do. (With the exception of a few Quarantine-breaking millionaire TV talking-heads who see rules as things for the ‘little people’.)
What was the point of this whole shutdown we went through? Does anyone still remember?
It was to ‘flatten the curve’.
The principal concern was that hospitals would be overburdened by a spike in cases, they would have insufficient staff and supplies to address the issue, and this would create a cascading effect of mass casualty.
Notice, the claim was not that we could expect to save every life. Or that we would keep the virus from spreading through our much society — early indicators seem to make such a goal somewhere between unlikely to impossible.
The rationale for the pause wasn’t to shield the lives of people from getting sick… people were already getting sick, and there wasn’t much we could do to prevent that.
Flattening the curve seems to have had its intended effect. The hospitals, we are assured, never got beyond their maximum capacity. New York is now sending surplus respirators to other cities where they are needed. It is said the Hospital ship Comfort, sitting mostly empty, will likely be sent home soon.
We should be celebrating, right? No. Anyone suggesting that we look toward reopening the engine of the economy to let people have their lives back gets hit with criticism and abuse. They are evil, and trading dollars for lives, or whatever. Is that criticism fair? Of course not.
Even the original advocates of this shutdown never claimed this could save ALL the lives that this illness might endanger, just those lives already within the reach of medical assistance.
Meanwhile, a different sort of death toll related to this virus is rising. The toll of those paying the price for the panic.
Have the panic-mongers bothered to mention what’s happening with heart attack patients in NYC? They will no longer be resuscitated.
New York state just issued a drastic new guideline urging emergency-services workers not to bother trying to revive anyone without a pulse when they get to a scene, amid an overload of coronavirus patients.
While paramedics were previously told to spend up to 20 minutes trying to revive people found in cardiac arrest, the change is “necessary during the COVID-19 response to protect the health and safety of EMS providers by limiting their exposure, conserve resources, and ensure optimal use of equipment to save the greatest number of lives,’’ according to a state Health Department memo issued last week. — NYPost
Conserve resources? Optimal use of equipment? A freaking HOSPITAL ship is sitting empty, New York is proudly shipping ventilators elsewhere and we learn the city is now treating heart attack victims as unworthy of the effort of saving? Say it was Jerry Nadler or Chuck Schumer having the heart attack, would he be disposable and left to die, too? Or would special status get him special consideration?
Naturally, Cuomo blames Trump for New York’s resource crunch. Lack of leadership and all of the usual rhetoric.
Funny how that doesn’t line up with the evidence we have at hand. With Cuomo walking around with his hand out, Mark Levin dug up a relevant NYPost story from last November that puts all his talk about passing bucks in a very different perspective. The Post has since written several others like it talking about the SIX BILLION dollar hole in Cuomo’s budget. And what did he do to fix that hole? He slashed health care.
More than half of the gap — $4 billion — is linked to a dramatic rise in the state’s Medicaid costs.
In an effort to patch the hole, Cuomo is considering slashing payments to hospitals and nursing homes in the current budget and perhaps next year.
“Savings may include across the board reductions in rates paid to providers and health plans, reductions in discretionary payments, and other actions that can be executed administratively in the current fiscal year,” the report reads. — NYPost
Cuomo acted as though had all kinds of cash to burn through when it came to funding pet projects like his Sanctuary State policies. When his budget was blown, he targeted health care for cutbacks.
Now the breadcrumbs of shortfalls NYC is facing that were supposedly a ‘failure of leadership’ on TRUMP’S part can actually be traced right back to decisions made by Cuomo long before Chinese researchers dropped the ball with their bats.
Now that Blue States can’t hide this overspending by shirking their FEDERAL tax obligations with SALT deductions, their Blue State overspending can no longer be secretly shifted onto the shoulders of taxpayers in ‘flyover country’.
Liberals should be very careful about throwing that ‘blood on his hands’ line around. Someone just might start asking questions about where ‘the buck’ Cuomo likes to talk about should REALLY stop.
