Yikes: New York Admits They Have Been Deliberately Undercounting Nursing Home Deaths

RedState ^ | May 15, 2020 | Nick Arama

[sickoflibs]

Remember when some in media were touting Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a possible presidential contender, perhaps even a replacement if needed for the failing confused presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden?

Since then so much information has come out about what a horrible job New York did in dealing with the virus and especially with nursing homes, that it’s hard to believe that any could still be holding onto that idea.

This new report might just finish off anyone still holding any hopes about Cuomo.

Cuomo has come under fire this month because of an order on March 25 requiring nursing homes to accept people who had tested positive for the virus, despite nursing homes being one of the chief populations at risk across the country. That order is believed to have contributed to a number of nursing home deaths. Cuomo didn’t rescind that order until May 11.

Over 5,433 people have reportedly died at nursing homes and adult care facilities as of this week. That’s the most in the nation.

But that number isn’t quite right.

Because up until April 28, according to the New York State Health Department (NYSHD), they counted people who lived in nursing homes as dying in the nursing home as a nursing home death, even if in the last stages that person went to the hospital and died there.

But in early May, the reports the NYSDOH was putting out began omitting nursing home residents who died in the hospital thus obscuring a number of nursing home deaths. So there are actually even more than 5,433.

From Daily Caller:

But the department made a subtle change to its disclosures beginning around May 3, according to web archives. The NYSDOH told the DCNF its disclosure now only reports coronavirus deaths for long-term care patients that died while physically present at their facility.

New York’s coronavirus tracker “currently does not include out of facility deaths,” NYSDOH spokeswoman Jill Montag told the DCNF. “Deaths of nursing home and adult care facility residents that occurred at hospitals is accounted for in the overall fatality data on our COVID-19 tracker.”

In other words, New York’s nursing home and adult care facility coronavirus deaths tracker omits any individuals who contracted coronavirus while living at a long-term care facility but died in a hospital.

Thus, obscuring the very important fact that they got it in the nursing home and throwing off the stats. The difference left off at least 479 deaths, according to the Daily Caller.

New York is only one of the top nine states for nursing home coronavirus deaths to have this new creative count.

Spokespeople for the health departments of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Maryland and Massachusetts confirmed to the DCNF that their disclosures include coronavirus deaths of long-term care residents regardless of their place of death.

The health departments of California, Connecticut and Georgia all make clear in their reporting that their disclosures of long-term care residents who died of coronavirus includes those who died in hospitals. Connecticut’s reporting of nursing home deaths, for example, specifically “includes residents currently in-house, in the hospital, or who are deceased.”

According to the Daily Caller, the decision to change their reporting procedure, interestingly, came on the same day that it came out that there were 1700 other deaths in nursing homes previously undisclosed. This was also as Cuomo was coming under a lot of fire for the deaths. In other words, it sure looks like they playing games with the numbers to reduce the scandal and deflect fire away from New York and Cuomo.

The president of the National Association of Medical Examiners, Sally Aiken, told the DCNF that “from a public health point of view, tracking the possible location of exposure to COVID-19 is important.”

“It is important to track possible exposures, and not doing so accurately interferes with appropriate public health response,” Aiken said.

Betsy McCaughey, a former Republican lieutenant governor of New York and current chairman of the patient advocacy group Committee to Reduce Infection Deaths, told the DNCF that New York should rejoin other states and resume disclosing the deaths of all long-term care patients, regardless of whether they died at a hospital.

“It would be a more accurate reflection of the peril at nursing homes,” McCaughey said. “If you look at the more accurate figures reported by other states, it’s reasonable to conclude that half of all deaths in the United States are among nursing home residents and that rather than shutting down the economy they could have focused resources on nursing homes.”

Of the other top nursing home death states, the percentage of those deaths to the states’ total deaths ranges between 36-66%. New York on the other hand is at 20%. Is that because they are undercounting the deaths? One has to think that at least plays a part. And how do you just miss the other 1700 deaths to begin with? Can we expect we’ll find even more coming?

New York and Andrew Cuomo, this is just shameful.

[sickoflibs]

Coumo:"They were going to die anyway so it didn't matter what we did"

[Brilliant]

Cuomo is God. He can do anything he wants and the NY Dems will still worship him.

[chris37]

I don’t believe a single thing New York says.

[Da Coyote]

Q: What difference is there between NY/OR/CA govts and Chinese govt?
A: The spoken language.

[Mozilla]

Cuomo has been lying and scamming the people of New York. He ain’t getting bailed out of this scandal. He purposefully infected nursing homes, bot hed data and lied about his state’s situation. Many faciliates and that US warship went virtually empty when people were dying in nursing homes and he was sending more sick there way not places like the Gavits Center.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Conspiracy Theory #1: New York is purposely overcounting deaths in order to get more money from the feds and make Trump look bad by keeping the economy in lockdown.

Conspiracy Theory #2: New York is purposely undercounting deaths in order to make Cuomo look good as a potential replacement for Biden.

Reality: Politicians and journalists continue to be incompetent, biased, and untrustworthy. Our so-called experts also seem to have slipped into idiocracy territory.

[Gratia]

Il Duce can do anything he wants, including corrupting the stats to hide his abject incompetence.

[freefdny]

The only thing missing from Cuomo’s press conference yesterday was someone singing “Dust in the Wind”. His old people die and there’s nobody to blame statement in light of what he did is amazing.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7CP0fSJfhuI

[Grampa Dave]

While Cuomo has very publicly professed his love for his 88-year-old mother, even using her safety as justification for his prolonged shutdown, he has no problem killing other people’s moms.

Out of the 21K+ deaths from the virus in New York State, New York still leads the nation

5,433 reported deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday.

Pearl Harbor American Military killed: 2,300 killed!

9/11 fatalities: 2,996!

Total killed at Pearl and on 9/11: 5,396

Como killed 5,433 people in Nursing homes & adult care facilities as of Wednesday.

So Como killed more Americans in NY nursing homes & adult care than at Pearl and 9/11!

Silent genocide of the elderly, by NY Govt decree. (8 posted on 5/15/2020, 1:51:59 PM by silverleaf)

[Boardwalk]

Death cult!

[1Old Pro]

Cuomo has been an unmitigated disaster. When Obama was going on about people with fancy (Governor) titles who failed our country, he was thinking about Cuomo and the WHO.

[WilliamWallace1999]

Please dig past the headline. NY was doing both! Shifting deaths statistics from long term care facilities to the acute care facility in which the final breaths were taken.

[combat_boots]

I wonder if any of those sent back to the Nursing home realized they were being sent with their body bag.

[Vermont Lt]

People focused on counting how many beans are in the jar are wasting their time and energy.

There is no “extra” benefit for someone dying in a nursing facility. Any miscounting is due to incompetence or bad directions.

And in the end, the only information that is valid is Deaths this year - Deaths for an average of past years.

But..there are those who are focused on deaths. These people seem to think the administrators in public health are more competent than any other administrators in the world. They hold governments to a standard they are never held to themselves.

[Grampa Dave]

Cuomo has been an unmitigated disaster.

So have most of the left wing democrat governors across America.

Many are still harming and probably still killing innocent American with their shelter and cower programs.

[1Old Pro]

shelter and cower programs.

Facts do indicate clearly that staying at home is more dangerous that going to work.

[Tawiskaro]

[Fido969]

Undercounting/Overcounting.

Can you people make up your minds?

[faucetman]

“Remember when some in media were touting Gov. Andrew Cuomo as a possible presidential contender,”

Remember when some in media were touting Gov. Andrew Cuomo as “The Nursing Home Killer”, wait.....

[Pearls Before Swine]

I could see the political incentive to damp down nursing home COVID deaths because shoving infected into the homes was so stupid.

But, at the same time, isn’t there an incentive to overcount COVID deaths in hospitals, because they get paid more for COVID treatments? Isn’t there something like a $13,000 bonus from government insurance? I think I read that.