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News Clash

New York Nursing Home Deaths Are ‘A Significant Undercount’ But Gov. Cuomo Doesn’t Want An Independent Investigation

Photo of K. Walker K. WalkerAugust 11, 2020
44 5 minutes read

The COVID death toll from Cuomo’s nursing home order could be nearly DOUBLE the already devastatingly high number that has been reported.

Governor Andrew “Grandma Killer” Cuomo(D-NY) said at the beginning of the pandemic “the buck stops here” but that’s not how he’s behaved regarding his deadly nursing home order. He has pulled a Hillary blaming everyone but himself for this outrageously bad policy. Governor Cuomo has blamed God/nature, the federal government, the CDC guidelines (that’s an outright lie), nursing home residents, and nursing home staff for the devastation of his policy forcing long-term care facilities to take COVID-positive patients while simultaneously preventing facilities from sending them to the barely used Javits Center or the 90% vacant USNS Comfort.

The Associated Press is reporting that as many as 5,000 more nursing home residents died in hospital from COVID but, consistent with the atrocious behavior of the Cuomo administration, they weren’t even counted. 

Remember, this is the administration that sent body bags with COVID-positive patients returning from hospitals. What is worse, sending COVID patients to infect the most vulnerable population along with several body bags or having them die in hospitals as a result of contracting COVID in a nursing home and not counting that as a nursing home death?

AP reports that a Bronx nursing home on paper seemed to have gone through the worst of the pandemic relatively unscathed–but the truth is they didn’t. Riverdale Nursing Home is a 146-bed facility and the official state count of deaths sits at just four. Riverdale’s administrator Emil Fuzayov says that isn’t accurate. Fuzayov says that the home lost 21 residents but most of these were transported to hospitals before they died from COVID.

“It was a cascading effect,” administrator Emil Fuzayov recalled. “One after the other.”

New York’s coronavirus death toll in nursing homes, already among the highest in the nation, could actually be a significant undercount. Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.

That statistic could add thousands to the state’s official care home death toll of just over 6,600. But so far the administration of Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo has refused to divulge the number, leading to speculation the state is manipulating the figures to make it appear it is doing a better than other states and to make a tragic situation less dire.

(Emphasis Added)

Counting residents that died in hospitals makes a helluva big difference.

How big a difference could it make? Since May, federal regulators have required nursing homes to submit data on coronavirus deaths each week, whether or not residents died in the facility or at a hospital. Because the requirement came after the height of New York’s outbreak, the available data is relatively small. According to the federal data, roughly a fifth of the state’s homes reported resident deaths from early June to mid July — a tally of 323 dead, 65 percent higher than the state’s count of 195 during that time period.

Even if half that undercount had held true from the start of the pandemic, that would translate into thousands more nursing home resident deaths than the state has acknowledged.

Another group of numbers also suggests an undercount. State health department surveys show 21,000 nursing home beds are lying empty this year, 13,000 more than expected — an increase of almost double the official state nursing home death tally. While some of that increase can be attributed to fewer new admissions and people pulling their loved ones out, it suggests that many others who aren’t there anymore died.

Source: Associated Press

But it’s not just that–the New York Daily News reports that at least 1,600 facilities may be unaccounted for.

Unlike other states, New York has only included in its tally deaths that occurred inside nursing home themselves. Why? How many nursing home residents died after being transferred to hospitals for treatment? Experts believe at least 1,600 fatalities may be unaccounted for.

ClashDaily has been covering Killer Cuomo’s atrocious handling of COVID in nursing homes for months. Here’s a tiny selection.

Despite all of this, Governor Douchebag has been taking a sick victory lap and even issued a completely tone-deaf and just really sick commemorative poster that New Yorkers can buy from the state with an image of a mountain representing the deaths. It’d be like selling posters of the planes crashing into the World Trade Center after 9/11. It’s seriously gross. Still, the Governor is trying to show that New York handled the pandemic well and even has the audacity to compare his state’s nursing home death toll to those in other states.

Governor “Grandma Killer” Cuomo has the chutzpah to call criticism “politics.”

“Look at the basic facts where New York is versus other states,” Cuomo said during a briefing Monday. “You look at where New York is as a percentage of nursing home deaths, it’s all the way at the bottom of the list.”

In another briefing last month, he touted New York’s percentage ranking as 35th in the nation. “Go talk to 34 other states first. Go talk to the Republican states now — Florida, Texas, Arizona — ask them what is happening in nursing homes. It’s all politics.”

Source: Associated Press

Dear Governor Cuomo:

Meanwhile, Governor Cuomo says that there’s no need for an independent investigation into New York’s nursing home deaths from COVID because it’s a “political” hit.

“I wouldn’t do an investigation whether or not it’s political, everybody can make that decision for themselves,” Cuomo said. “I think you’d have to be blind to realize it’s not political.”

He went on to say, “Just look at where it comes from and look at the sources and look at their political affiliations and look at who wrote the letter in Congress and look at what publications raise it and what media outward networks raise it.”

He added: “It’s kind of incredible.”

Source: Fox News

Political?

Sure. It’s political. Democrat governors bungled this from the get-go.

Fox News meteorologist, Janice Dean, who lost both of her in-laws in two separate New York nursing homes wasn’t allowed to give testimony at the New York nursing home hearing and she thinks the order came straight from the top. Dean has been a vocal critic of Cuomo’s deadly nursing home order issued on March 25 that lasted for 46 days. 

Janice has spoken out about this with her Fox News colleagues several times.

Check out her interview with Brian Kilmeade:

She was on Fox & Friends this morning talking about it again.

I guess Governor Cuomo is afraid of a strong, conservative woman with a voice.

This whole thing kinda makes Dr. Fauci’s praise of New York seem pretty stupid, doesn’t it?

Photo of K. Walker K. WalkerAugust 11, 2020
44 5 minutes read
Photo of K. Walker

K. Walker

ClashDaily's Associate Editor since August 2016. Self-described political junkie, anti-Third Wave Feminist, and a nightmare to the 'intersectional' crowd. Mrs. Walker has taken a stand against 'white privilege' education in public schools. She's also an amateur Playwright, former Drama teacher, and staunch defender of the Oxford comma. Follow her humble musings on Twitter: @TheMrsKnowItAll and on Gettr @KarenWalker