Over and over, again and again, as we have been reporting each week since the coronavirus hit Italy in late February, the vast majority of the people dying from the virus are those suffering from pre-existing chronic health conditions such as Type 2 diabetes, obesity, heart disease, lung and respiratory ailments… and people in elder care homes.
Previously, we had quoted Dr. Leora Horwitz of NYU Langone Medical Center who concluded, “Age is far and away the strongest risk factor for hospitalization.” And, as noted by Dr. Scott Atlas:
“In New York City, an epicenter of the pandemic with more than one-third of all U.S. deaths, the rate of death for people 18 to 45 years old is 0.01 percent, or 10 per 100,000 in the population.
On the other hand, people aged 75 and over have a death rate 80 times that. For people under 18 years old, the rate of death is zero per 100,000.
Of all fatal cases in New York state, two-thirds were in patients over 70 years of age; more than 95 percent were over 50 years of age; and about 90 percent of all fatal cases had an underlying illness. Of 6,570 confirmed COVID-19 deaths fully investigated for underlying conditions to date, 6,520, or 99.2 percent, had an underlying illness.
As for New York’s nursing home-related virus deaths, according to an AP report, “Unlike every other state with major outbreaks, New York only counts residents who died on nursing home property and not those who were transported to hospitals and died there.”
No Facts from Cuomo
To date, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has refused to reveal the real number, “leading to speculation that the state is manipulating the figures to make it appear it is doing better than other states and to make a tragic situation less dire.”
Under federal regulation, all states are required to report data on COVID-19 deaths every week regardless of whether the death actually occurred in the elder care facility or in a hospital. But this regulation came well after New York experienced its highest rates of death, and, according to federal data, only about 20 percent of New York’s elder care facilities reported resident fatalities during the period from the beginning of June through to the middle of July.
The probabilities are, therefore, that New York State has undercounted the number of deaths in elder care facilities by the thousands.
Also raising doubts about the lack of oversight in New York to protect residents in these facilities is the fact that according to state department research, some 21,000 nursing home beds have been empty this year, which the health department reported was 13,000 more than it had expected to find.
AP notes Governor Cuomo continues to claim success regarding COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes. On 10 August, he stated, “You look at where New York is as a percentage of nursing home deaths, it’s all the way at the bottom of the list.” Specifically, he cited that only 20 percent of his state’s deaths from the virus were in nursing homes compared 68 percent in Pennsylvania, 64 percent in Massachusetts, and 44 percent in New Jersey.
Last month, he chided reporters questioning him on the topic by telling them “Go talk to 34 other states first… Go talk to the Republican states now – Florida, Texas, Arizona – ask them what is happening in nursing homes. It’s all politics.”
The fact remains that New York is playing fast and loose with the data. AP officially has been denied nursing home data by the state health department. Dr. Michael Wasserman, President of the California Association of Long-Term Care Medicine, went on record to say not counting elder care residents who died in hospitals after being transported there was unethical. “From an epidemiological and scientific perspective, there is absolutely no reason not to count them.”
There remains Governor Cuomo’s order on 25 March to send those in hospitals testing positive for COVID-19 to elder care facilities to make more room, which spiked outbreaks in those facilities and led to more deaths.
Whatever the political games being played, the fact remains that deaths in elder care facilities across the country account for a minimum of 44 percent of the total COVID-19 deaths. It ranges around 50 percent globally.
Beyond New York, as we have detailed in previous issues of the Trends Journal, the true number of nursing home deaths has been clearly underreported. (See our 2 June article “NURSING HOME NEGLIGENCE”.)
“Everybody is doing it however they feel like doing it. We don’t have very good data. It’s just all over the place” said Toby Edelman from the Center for Medicare Advocacy, which represents the interests of nursing home residents whom AP quoted.
Dr. Michael Wasserman, President of the California Association of Long-term Care Medicine, told AP it was unethical for New York to not count those taken from nursing homes who died in hospitals: “From an epidemiological and scientific perspective, there is absolutely no reason not to count them.”
TRENDPOST: These facts regarding the Cuomo administration being accused of falsifying the number of nursing homes victims who died of the virus is virtually unreported in the mainstream media.
Instead, he is lionized by the media and worshiped as a hero by the majority public for fighting the COVID War for which 33,000 died… three times more than #2 California, with a population of 40 million and 11,300 virus victims.
Indeed, in Governor Cuomo’s address last night at the Democratic National Convention, he didn’t mention the virus death rate yet bragged that New York “has gone from one of the highest infection rates to one of the lowest,” and that “we climbed the impossible mountain, and right now we are on the other side.”
His speech was lauded by the media. CNN (a.k.a. the Cartoon News Network), said, “The New York governor became one of the most recognizable figures in the country thanks to his daily coronavirus press conferences in the spring, as New York City fought the worst Covid-19 outbreak in the country,” and “If Biden doesn’t win or doesn’t run for a second term… his speech was an effective affirmation of his image as a gifted bureaucrat at a time when the country needs that.”
Again, ignored by CNN is New York’s virus death count. Instead, the morons applaud him with the oxymoron, “as a gifted bureaucrat at a time when the country needs that.”