The lockdown model sought to flatten the curve by
preparing hospitals for a massive influx of patients by clearing out everyone
including elderly patients, who were sent back to nursing homes. The hospitals,
with a few limited exceptions, were not overwhelmed, but the nursing homes
were.
1 in 3 coronavirus deaths, as of now,
have involved nursing
homes. These deaths were amplified by policies in blue states,
especially
New York and
New Jersey,
compelling facilities to take coronavirus patients, while concealing the number
of deaths at facilities behind
false claims of
resident privacy.
Blue state administrations have tried to blame the
thousands of deaths on mismanaged private nursing homes, and while some nursing
homes are badly run, the worst death tolls were in state nursing homes.
The 5 deadliest outbreaks in nursing homes took place in
New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Three of those facilities, the
Soldiers' Home in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the Paramus Veterans Memorial Home,
and Veterans Memorial Home in Menlo Park in New Jersey, are state run
facilities.
New Jersey's Department of Military and Veterans Affairs
runs 3 homes for veterans. 2 of them had major deadly outbreaks. As of now, the
Paramus home had
72 deaths and
the Menlo Park facility had 55 deaths. But the third, Vineland Veterans
Memorial Home, had recorded only one death.
Paramus has 211 residents and 189 cases which means that
nearly all of the residents are infected. The Menlo Park facility has 167 cases
in a 190-resident facility with an equally bad infection rate. The latter
facility had
repeatedly
come to the attention of federal inspectors who cited it for
not following infection-control procedures and its health violations rate was
four times the state average.
Its
Medicare
rating was ‘Below Average” and its health inspections rating
was ‘Much Below Average’. The Paramus veterans home was
also poorly
rated. The Vineland home, by contrast, was highly rated.
State officials
had
apparently lied about staff not coming down with the virus,
workers were told not to wear protective equipment, and the Paramus facility
wasn’t following CDC disinfection guidelines. At Menlo Park, the
family of a
Vietnam veteran complained that he was wrongly placed with
coronavirus patients leading to his death, and family members of other deceased
residents reported facility failures.
Garden State nursing homes have been ground zero for some
of the worst outbreaks in the country, but even among them, the homes run by
New Jersey have been the worst. Had a Republican been in charge of the state,
instead of a Wall Street donor to the Obama campaign, the media might have
noticed that.
When Governor Murphy was asked who was currently running
the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs,
he replied,
“There’s an acting person who came in from under him. I don’t know that name.”
Murphy didn’t know because, his political appointee had
resigned in the middle of the pandemic
to run for
Congress, infuriated that some members of the New Jersey delegation,
one of whom had a brother-in-law at one of the facilities, had called for a
federal investigation into the breakdown.
The former department boss claimed that he had resigned
so as not "embarrass Gov. Murphy by running against a candidate [he]
supports."
Despite the pretense that blue state politicos cared
about veterans or nursing homes, Murphy
had no clue who
was in charge of veterans affairs or the facilities that had 2 of the 3
deadliest nursing home outbreaks in the state. And he made it quite clear that
he
really didn’t
care.
In Massachusetts, the outbreak at the Soldiers' Home in
Holyoke
with 74
deaths was by far the worst in the state where other facilities
had an average of 10 deaths. Holyoke is one of only two state run facilities
for veterans, the other being the Chelsea Soldiers’ Home where the death toll
is
up to 28.
In New Jersey, two out of three state homes for veterans
had major outbreaks with massive death tolls, and in Massachusetts, it was one
out of two. Statistics like these tell their own story about socialized
medicine.
The United States Attorney’s Office for the District of
Massachusetts and the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division are
investigating the Holyoke facility, and Governor Baker has brought in Mark
Pearlstein, a former DA, to conduct an independent investigation on behalf of
Massachusetts.
The spectacle of dead veterans and investigations of
facilities meant to serve them is not a new one. It is all too likely that what
happened at state facilities is exactly what had been happening at the VA with
an entrenched bureaucracy running the system for its own benefit, not for those
whom it’s meant to serve. The investigations will turn up local mismanagement
and recommend more funding. As they usually do.
The VA, which helps funds the state homes, has claimed
that it conducted inspections and that the facilities met its standards even
as, some like the Paramus facility, were receiving poor Medicare grades.
Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, Governor Murphy's lackey,
launched an investigation meant to focus on private nursing homes, a point he
made clear when he threw around rhetoric about, "profits over
patients." While there may be some truth to that, it's New Jersey's
state-run homes which were some of the worst killing fields in the state. And
any reckoning ought to begin with the state officials responsible.
The death tolls in nursing homes are already being used
to push for more socialized medicine, but it was state medicine that was
responsible for the deadliest outbreaks in nursing homes in America.
The VA scandals of the Obama administration, which may
have claimed the lives of as many as 1,000 veterans, were swept under the rug,
and Senator Bernie Sanders, who had tried to cover up the deaths as chairman of
the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, rebounded with a push for socialized
medicine.
After all this time, socialized medicine is still killing
veterans.
The deaths of hundreds of veterans in state-run
facilities in blue states will be covered up the same way, but they must not,
cannot, and should not be forgotten. The deaths of thousands of nursing home
residents are an outrage. And blue state governors in New York, New Jersey, and
California, among others, should be held accountable for putting lockdown
politics ahead of saving the lives of seniors.
Our nation owes a particular debt to the veterans who
were left to die in Paramus, Menlo Park, and Holyoke. We should remember their
names and honor the debt by telling the truth about their deaths.
Many of them defended our country by fighting socialist regimes
in Korea and Vietnam. Their deaths should not be exploited to promote the big
lie that socialized medicine is the answer.
Socialized medicine is not the answer unless the question
is, “How do we kill more senior citizens?”
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