Over 6,000 people have died in New York’s nursing homes during the coronavirus outbreak. A major factor in this was Governor Andrew Cuomo’s bizarre mandate in March that forced nursing homes to accept COVID positive patients that have been discharged from the hospital.
Which brings us to Monday’s round of testimonies relating to the nursing home debacle. This is the second round of testimony, the first having been held last week.
Janice Dean, Fox News’s senior meteorologist, lost both her in-laws in a New York nursing home, and directly blames Cuomo’s mandate for this avoidable tragedy. According to Townhall, Dean was eager to share her testimony, and sent in her formal request last week.
However, just hours before the hearing, Dean was dropped from the list.
Of course, though, Cuomo’s Department of Health conducted an “investigation” that concluded that the governor’s mandate did not have a significant impact in terms of fatalities. The department, clearly trying to protect Cuomo and New York Health Commissioner Howard Zucker, shamelessly blamed family members and staffers who unknowingly brought the virus into these nursing homes.
However, several witnesses to last week’s hearing can attest to the obvious fact that the mandate did have an impact, particularly because of the lack of PPE.
From Townhall:
“Given the lack of PPE in many facilities, it is very difficult to believe that adding more positive residents to a given facility did not contribute to more spread,” John Dalli wrote.
Another witness, Frank Kolbmann, told Zucker in no uncertain terms that he is involved in “a disingenuous cosmetic attempt to cover up for your current boss’ immense crime.”
It’s absolutely disgusting that Cuomo and his administration is seemingly able to escape scrutiny and shamelessly uses its own investigation into itself as proof that the administration did nothing wrong.
Dean is calling for a real, independent investigation into the connection between Cuomo’s nursing home mandate and the massive number of nursing home fatalities, and that anything else is “a waste of time.”
We couldn’t agree more.
