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COVID-19: The Nursing Home Disease
Townhall.com ^ | June 24, 2020 | Phil Kerpen

Posted on 06/24/2020 4:04:09 AM PDT by Kaslin

I recently testified before the House Select Coronavirus Subcommittee on the meltdown in nursing homes, which excluding New York (which deliberately underreports) now account for over 55 percent of deaths with COVID. The House Democrats' goal was to blame these high death rates on President Trump - but the blame should belong squarely to the handful of governors who presided over these disasters.

More than 60 percent of both nursing home deaths and total COVID-19 deaths occurred in just seven blue states with about 20 percent of the U.S. population: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Illinois, and Michigan. The governors in each of these states ignored federal guidelines and pursued some version of the policy of admitting infectious patients to nursing homes as soon as they were clinically stable.

Nationally about 2 percent of the long-term care population has died with COVID-19 - but over 12 percent in Connecticut, 10 percent in New Jersey, 9 percent in Massachusetts, and about 4 percent in Illinois. Even New York's dishonest underreported number is 4.4 percent of the state's long-term care population.

Carnegie Mellon and University of Pittsburgh mathematicians showed back in March that efforts to shelter everyone would lead to a far higher death total than efforts focused on the elderly, but the liberal governors chose to ignore that reality - even as we've seen over 80 percent of COVID deaths among seniors.

New York's policy was implemented via a March 25 advisory that said: "No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. [Nursing homes] are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission."

The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine warned in response: "Unsafe transfers will increase the risk of transmission in post-acute and long-term care facilities which will ultimately only serve to increase the return flow back to hospitals, overwhelming capacity, endangering more healthcare personnel, and escalating the death rate."

This caution was ignored and the policy stayed in effect until May 10. New York presently reports 6,413 deaths physically in long-term care facilities. Adding hospital deaths, which the state refuses to report, would likely double or triple that number.

Similar policies in New Jersey, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania - where the state health secretary moved his own mother out of a nursing home while sending infectious patients in - produced similar outcomes.

As Dr. Anish Koka described it: "Two weeks into the lockdown, Philadelphia hospitals had been emptied waiting for a New York-style surge that never came... But nursing home patients were treated like patients from the community who were too well to be admitted to the hospital - they were sent home. The consequences of keeping these patients at the nursing home meant the health system had to eventually deal with the entire nursing home being infected."

Pennsylvania now reports at least 4,345 long-term care resident deaths; all others are at least 2,054.

It isn't just state size. California nearly adopted substantially the same policy as the meltdown states, but reversed it just two days later - they didn't ignore the backlash. With a markedly different policy in place, including sending COVID-negative nursing home residents out of Los Angeles area facilities to the USN Mercy hospital ship to establish COVID-only facilities, the state so far has lost only 1.1 percent of its long-term care population, fewer total deaths in this cohort than little Connecticut.

By prohibiting readmission without effective infection control and deploying the national guard, adequate testing, and PPE, Florida reported long-term care COVID deaths at 1,664 as of June 21 - a quarter of New Jersey's, and 1.1 percent of the state's large long-term care population. Texas has fared even better, with less than half its COVID-19 deaths in long-term care and presently at only 0.6 percent of that population.

Most states are now finally making serious efforts to test their entire long-term care population.That's great, but if the CDC does not fix its definition counting any death in the presence of the coronavirus, nursing home residents with mild or asymptomatic infections will still show up in the count when they die of other causes. The median nursing home stay before death is just five months. If this definitional problem isn't fixed, deceptive counts will add to the problem of misperceived public fear.

We need honest reporting and counting to understand the risk of serious illness or death with COVID, and we need policies targeted to protect the vulnerable - not to scare the public. And the governors who presided over the carnage need to be held to account.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; News/Current Events; US: New Jersey; US: New York; US: Pennsylvania
KEYWORDS: chinavirus; covid19; knucklehead; murphy; nj; nursinghomes; snaggletooth
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1 posted on 06/24/2020 4:04:09 AM PDT by Kaslin
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To: Kaslin

Tranny-in-Charge: "they had to die.
they were Republicans.
But it was not all bad. i got my mother out."

2 posted on 06/24/2020 4:14:56 AM PDT by Diogenesis
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To: Kaslin

It wasn’t just the readmissions.

Until about mid-May, Cuomo allowed positive employees to continue working in their facilities.


3 posted on 06/24/2020 4:17:39 AM PDT by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
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To: Kaslin

Isn’t it strange how since the beginning of this year no economist or policy wonk has been writing about the pending Social Security Crisis caused by too man Baby Boomers retiring?

For years we had been hearing about the “demographic bubble” of that generation straining the entitlements.

So—which curve was flattened?


4 posted on 06/24/2020 4:17:52 AM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: Kaslin

“And the governors who presided over the carnage need to be held to account”

Absolutely. The relatives of those who died in nursing homes need to sue.


5 posted on 06/24/2020 4:27:06 AM PDT by nuconvert ( Warning: Accused of being a radical militarist. Approach with caution.)
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To: Kaslin

Unforgivable.


6 posted on 06/24/2020 4:27:19 AM PDT by HighSierra5
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To: Diogenesis

That picture needs to come with an advanced warning & a bucket of eye soap


7 posted on 06/24/2020 4:27:45 AM PDT by nuconvert ( Warning: Accused of being a radical militarist. Approach with caution.)
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To: Kaslin

They took care of a triple problem for them, trump supporters eliminated, medical care burden eliminated, retirement payout eliminated


8 posted on 06/24/2020 4:31:21 AM PDT by ronnie raygun (SOY Mouth)
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To: Kaslin
... House Democrats' goal was to blame these high death rates on President Trump ...

If their plan was to deliberately hike up the death rate merely to blame all deaths on Trump there is a word for that: murder. Murder One. This is pure evil, right up there with war crimes and genocide. A horror as great as this dare not be brushed aside without consequences.

9 posted on 06/24/2020 4:32:58 AM PDT by Nateman (If the left is not screaming, you are doing it wrong.)
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To: nuconvert

The only known antidote and proven eye-wash is a picture of our most lovely FLOTUS.


10 posted on 06/24/2020 4:34:22 AM PDT by lightman (I am a binary Trinitarian. Deal with it!)
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To: Nateman

This is likely less about getting Trump, for once, than Medicaid costs.


11 posted on 06/24/2020 4:34:29 AM PDT by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
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To: Nateman
....where the state health secretary moved his own mother out of a nursing home while sending infectious patients in - produced similar outcomes.

That certainly suggests malice of forethought here. There must be some Federal law, like that which was used against the Nazi's, to pursue these wicked people.

12 posted on 06/24/2020 4:41:56 AM PDT by Nateman (If the left is not screaming, you are doing it wrong.)
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To: mewzilla

Whatever the motive was, killing innocent people simply to move forward some agenda is evil. If this was done on purpose the perpetrators need to be brought up on charges.


13 posted on 06/24/2020 4:46:59 AM PDT by Nateman (If the left is not screaming, you are doing it wrong.)
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To: Nateman

The nursing home directors who gave in to Cuomo will never be held accountable by NYS. The legislature and Cuomo gave them both civil and criminal liability.


14 posted on 06/24/2020 4:51:45 AM PDT by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
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To: Nateman

Immunity from civil and criminal liability, rather.


15 posted on 06/24/2020 4:54:46 AM PDT by mewzilla (Break out the mustard seeds.)
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To: mewzilla

Pursue Coumo under some war crimes act. He is obviously the mastermind behind these murders.


16 posted on 06/24/2020 4:58:00 AM PDT by Nateman (If the left is not screaming, you are doing it wrong.)
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To: Kaslin
Wow! excluding New York (which deliberately underreports) now account for over 55 percent of deaths with COVID. I wonder how this compares with deaths from ( or with) Covid in other countries. If the ages of people who died are similar to ours, then perhaps it just means that we have more elderly frail people in nursing homes while in other countries they still live with family as they near death.

Full disclosure of the stats on deaths from Covid are needed.

17 posted on 06/24/2020 5:16:58 AM PDT by Freee-dame
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To: Kaslin

“””Nationally about 2 percent of the long-term care population has died with COVID-19 - but over 12 percent in Connecticut, 10 percent in New Jersey, 9 percent in Massachusetts, and about 4 percent in Illinois. Even New York’s dishonest underreported number is 4.4 percent of the state’s long-term care population.”””


Finally, we are getting some reports that include data on how many people are in nursing homes in the various states and the number of people in those nursing homes who have died.

In Florida I know we have something like 4,400 nursing homes and we have had something like 1,500 deaths in those nursing homes. At this point I am not sure if any data has been published on how many people were in those 4,400 nursing homes in Florida. But I would estimate there are likely 500,000 people in Florida nursing homes. If these numbers are close, then .03% of the residents in Florida nursing homes have died from covid. That Florida death rate is much, much lower than the 12% death rate for Connecticut.

And by the way, Florida has a Republican governor who early on did not return covid positive patients to their nursing home.


18 posted on 06/24/2020 5:23:03 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
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To: ronnie raygun

“””They took care of a triple problem for them, trump supporters eliminated, medical care burden eliminated, retirement payout eliminated”””


The Democrats relied upon their old playbook to ‘never let a crisis go to waste’.


19 posted on 06/24/2020 5:26:17 AM PDT by Presbyterian Reporter
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To: Freee-dame
Most states are now finally making serious efforts to test their entire long-term care population.That's great, but if the CDC does not fix its definition counting any death in the presence of the coronavirus, nursing home residents with mild or asymptomatic infections will still show up in the count when they die of other causes. The median nursing home stay before death is just five months. If this definitional problem isn't fixed, deceptive counts will add to the problem of misperceived public fear.

The insistence by the CDC to count as a Covid death anyone who died and had tested positive or was even suspected of having Covid without a test has a big part in the USA seeming to have such a large number of Covid deaths.

Look at a graph of deaths on each day and you still see the huge spike the day that New York added 2700 to reflect people who had died over a long period of time at home (with family, homeless, single occupancy hotel room occupants, etc.) without ever being tested. Who has a vested interest in making the USA look bad?

20 posted on 06/24/2020 5:36:51 AM PDT by Freee-dame
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