Bring Grandma-Killing Governors to Justice
In April, Governor Gretchen Whitmer posed and primped on The Daily Show in a “That Woman from Michigan” t-shirt as a narcissistic slam at President Trump. That same month, that woman from Michigan issued an executive order, that the Daily Show and SNL didn’t mention, "protecting" residents of long-term care facilities, by forcing nursing homes to admit patients infected with the coronavirus. Her order dictated that a "long-term care facility must not prohibit admission or readmission of a resident based on COVID-19 testing requirements or results" and told hospitals to discharge coronavirus patients back to the homes they had come from. Some nursing homes were designated as ‘hubs’ and coronavirus patients were transferred into them, even though these facilities had uninfected residents. Despite claims that these ‘hubs’ would carefully separate infected and uninfected patients, that didn’t always happen. While there had been a plan to move coronavirus seniors to the 1,000 bed TCF Center in Detroit which was being used as an overflow hospital for coronavirus patients, they were instead sent to nursing homes. The TCF Center only ended up treating 39 patients before being mothballed. As of now, at least 687 nursing home residents in Michigan have died in the pandemic and 290 coronavirus patients have been placed in Michigan nursing homes. These numbers are incomplete. Next time, Governor Whitmer goes on the Daily Show, she can wear a new t-shirt, “Grandma Killer”.
In New York, Governor Cuomo’s Health Department had issued an order on March 25th to "expand hospital capacity" by forcing nursing homes to "comply with the expedited receipt of residents returning from hospitals to NHs" and warned facilities that, "no resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the NH solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19." It took over 5,000 deaths for Cuomo to partially reverse his grandma-killing policy which had killed 5% of residents of nursing homes in the state. It was a partial reversal, because nursing homes still couldn’t remove infected patients, but hospitals were no longer allowed to discharge infected patients to homes. Cuomo has argued that no one should be prosecuted for nursing home deaths because they would have died anyway. “Older people… are going to die from this virus,” he argued, dismissing the outrage of the families of the dead. “I don't think there's any logical rationale to say that they would be alive today.” "We've tried everything to keep it out of a nursing home, but it's virtually impossible," he falsely claimed. His grandma-killing administration had tried everything, except providing protective equipment, not sending infected patients into nursing homes, or removing infected patients from nursing homes. Cuomo had tried everything to stop killing grandmas, except not killing grandmas.
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/bring-grandma-killing-governors-justice-daniel-greenfield/