The news media are desperately seeking ways to discredit Red States who have dared to buck the narrative and open their doors. But they are strangely silent about a story staring them right in the face.
In February and early March, it was clear from events unfolding in Washington State that retirement homes were particularly vulnerable to this outbreak. This should hardly come as a surprise to anyone familiar with the risk that even more mundane illnesses can trigger life-threatening cases of pneumonia, considering that this virus specifically inflames the lower respiratory tract.
As of March 26th, a letter to the WSJ and a phone call to the Mark Levin Show by a nursing home administrator in New York strenuously protested Cuomo’s new order that obligated nursing homes to accept infectious coronavirus patients into their care.
Tragically, Gov Cuomo later dismissed any objections as financially motivated in his press conferences. At the time, the objection was raised, she was unable to get any New York officials to listen — and unable to contact any parties directly.
The consequences following that fateful order were every bit as devastating as they were predictable.
Janice Dean, Senior Meteorologist at Fox News, shared her story on Twitter — one that puts a personal face on the horrors unfolding in a much-neglected story.
It said:
Dear friends,
As most of you know, both of my husband’s parents died of covid in different nursing/assisted living residences here in New York. Because of this, it’s hard for me to be an objective person when it comes to this story.But the fact is, there aren’t a lot of news outlets covering this tragedy which I believe should be one of the biggest stories of the covid19 pandemic of 2020. So, please forgive me for my raw horror, grief and fury. If there’s anything I can say having lived through this,
is that I will do my best to be a voice for all those who don’t have one. There needs to be a real investigation into how bad decisions and poor preparation let a virus ravage our most vulnerable. They had no way to defend themselves, and it will haunt my family forever.
This is the same Gov Cuomo who looked directly into the camera — two days before that WSJ article pleaded with New York not to send infectious patients into nursing homes — and ironically told us, ‘My mother is not expendable and your mother is not expendable.’
Whether he realized it or not, his own decisions MADE them expendable now, didn’t they?
Somehow New York’s Cuomo — so beloved of the media — and the roundly demonized DeSantis handled their most vulnerable populations quite differently. Unlike New York and a few other states, Florida issued no order compelling nursing homes to accept infectious patients. The doomsday scenario they said would certainly befall Florida never materialized… certainly not on the scale the Chicken Little crowd had predicted.
The Nursing Home fatality statistic has become so humiliating for Cuomo that his administration quietly changed the reporting rules for Nursing Home fatalities so that it wouldn’t reflect so poorly on him. Cuomo’s Officials Caught Cooking The Books On Nursing Home Deaths
It’s curious, isn’t it, that media types so hellbent on attributing the responsibility of each and every death to the President so easily gloss over specific policy choices that endangered — or even ended — so very many innocent lives.
According to NY Times data on nursing homes, the states where "new cases are increasing" have the highest share of nursing home deaths from COVID-19 (52% vs 35%).
Yet we continue to focus on beach activity and blanket lockdowns as opposed to protecting those in nursing homes.
— James Todaro, MD (@JamesTodaroMD) May 20, 2020
Hopefully, stories like the tragic one of Janice Dean’s in-laws perishing in a potentially preventable situation will make this issue personal enough that it won’t be waved away by the ‘mainstream’ press as just another cold statistic.
Sometimes, a personal story is the only way to effectively carry a message through an otherwise noisy news cycle.
If you doubt the truth of that, ask yourself — how many people remember the 10,000 massacred in Tianmen Square. And how many remember that one iconic photo of ‘Tank Man’?
Keep sharing your stories.
And some of us will do what we can to make sure others hear them too. It’s the only way that those lives were endangered by their own government will have their story told, and will see, perhaps, some small measure of justice after the fact.
Related (because this story must be told)…
We expressed concern about the elderly in nursing homes since at least April 8, in this piece…
Ten Ways The World Will Change After The Great Coronavirus Shutdown Of 2020
Cuomo Finally Feeling Heat Over Nursing Home Fatalities
NYC’s COVID Death Rate In Nursing Homes Is Due To Governor Cuomo’s Disastrous Policies
EPIC: DeSantis Takes A BLOWTORCH To The Left’s COVID Narrative (VIDEO)
