It’s bad enough that Gov. Andrew Cuomo implemented hazardous policies that forced nursing homes and long-term care facilities to admit coronavirus patients against their will.
It’s bad enough that this policy seems to have led to the rapid spread of the coronavirus in New York nursing homes and, tragically, thousands of deaths in these facilities.
It’s bad enough that it took Cuomo weeks of denials, deflections and histrionics before he finally re-evaluated the policy and only partially reversed it.
It’s bad enough that Cuomo the office quietly “disappeared” rules posted on the New York State website to pretend this deadly misfortune never happened at all.
It’s bad enough that Cuomo’s bumbling brother chose to grill the governor in primetime CNN interviews rather than press him about the obvious failures his administration has engineered in the Empire State.
All this is bad.
Even worse and frankly inexcusable is Michigan continues the same type of policy and refuses to publish any statistics showing the number of Covid-19 deaths linked to nursing homes and politics.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer hasn’t had a great time in the Great Lake State.
It has issued over 100 executive orders related to Covid-19, completely dwarfing neighboring states such as Ohio, Indiana and Illinois.
If it seems @GovWhitmer signed an extraordinary number of confusing and often contradictory orders during the crisis, and that’s because she did. pic.twitter.com/4vfRG2DQmC
— Senator Mike Shirkey (@SenMikeShirkey) May 26, 2020
To make matters worse, these executive orders were so arbitrary and draconian that they inspired some of the largest and fiercest stay-at-home protests relatively early in the spring. Whitmer then called the protests “racist” and even part of the way refused to meet with citizens, not even allowing them to plant seeds.
Recently, Whitmer has been embroiled in an embarrassing narrative in which her husband is trying to “take out” a local boating company with a classic “you don’t know who I think I am” move, trying to pressure the tiny company into violating his wife’s orders and dumping the Governor’s boat into the lake, even though ordinary Michigan commoners were not allowed to do so.
Whitmer described this blatant hypocrisy as a “failed attempt at humor” and that’s where it ends, as reporters seem to lose all sense of curiosity when a tyrannical, ineffective, corrupt governor has a (D) after her name, has a matching set of “X” chromosomes, and is on Joe Biden’s shortlist for Veep.
But none of these failures of leadership compare to Michigan’s deadly nursing home policy. Read Guy Benson’s wonderful article today highlighting the research of Avik Roy, who focused like a laser beam on a nursing home tragedy.
The surprising conclusion from the statistics is this: 0.6% of Americans live in nursing homes, but 42% of Covid-related deaths occur in these facilities.
Allow. This. Sink. IN.
Guy’s article goes even deeper into the statistics and heaps appropriate praise for Roy’s great work.
I suppose great minds think alike, because I interviewed Mr. Roy yesterday on this very topic and realized that his research breaks down nursing home deaths by state, but Michigan doesn’t show any numbers.
New @FREOPP: Updated report on #COVID19 deaths in nursing homes according to the latest data from Friday. https://t.co/ylZ5EqAzWY Nursing homes and assisted living facilities now account for 42% of all coronavirus deaths — up from 40% earlier this month — and 52% outside New York state. pic.twitter.com/78N6vD5Afp
— Avik Roy (@Avik) May 26, 2020
Why is this?
“At least Andrew Cuomo, even though he finally doubled down on his policy – under enormous pressure and opposition – finally backed away from it partially in mid-May,” Roy told me. “But in New Jersey and Michigan they are still forcing nursing homes to admit these patients.”
“Michigan doesn’t even release statistics on the percentage of nursing home deaths,” he added.
Whitmer’s failures are starting to leave a mark, even among members of her own party.
Yesterday, Democratic state Rep. Leslie Love of Detroit called on her.
“I don’t understand why Michigan State chose this path,” Love said. “It seems like the most idiotic thing we could come up with.”
“This is a reckless disregard for human life,” said state Sen. Pete Lucido. “It is negligent to allow this to continue, but at this stage it is intentional.”
Lucido is a Republican and a member of the Senate Oversight Committee. There will undoubtedly be legislative work and hearings examining all of the governor’s actions in the fall.
Whitmer said last week that she had been talking to Biden’s team about potentially joining the mandate. I’m not a fortune teller, but I’m from Michigan. Let’s make a little prediction: If Whitmer is the favorite, Biden loses the Wolverine state.
Which leads to my next prediction: Whitmer will do it NO be on the ticket.
