New report reveals massive cover-up in New York nursing home scandal

[Jose Garcia]

Source: WTEN-TV

ALBANY, N.Y. (NEWS10/WETM) — According to a report released by the New York Post Thursday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top aide privately apologized to Democratic lawmakers during a phone call for allegedly withholding the state’s nursing home death toll from COVID-19.

The report claims Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa said they “froze” out of fear that the true numbers would be “used against them” by federal prosecutors.

“Basically, we froze,” DeRosa told lawmakers on the call. “Because then we were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, what we start saying was going to be used against us, while we weren’t sure if there was going to be an investigation.”

The Cuomo Administration has been under fire for several months about its handling of nursing homes and the coronavirus pandemic. A January report by the New York Attorney General’s Office found the New York State Department of Health may have undercounted the number of COVID-19 deaths in nursing homes by as much as 50%.

Read more: https://www.news10.com/news/ny-news/new-report-reveals-massive-cover-up-in-new-york-nursing-home-scandal/

[AllaN01Bear]

1. america, the land of the coverup.

[ChazII]

2. Just when I thought nothing else could go wrong.

I remember looking forward to Gov. Cuomo's updates.

[Zoonart]

3. This is what happens when the pandemic is politicized and

State governments do not trust the Federal Government.

[jimfields33]

4. Too bad. Give accurate numbers anyway.

This mess could and should have been avoided. Now it makes it worse like their was a cover up. Nobody wins.

[Zoonart]

6. I'm not justifying this.

I am merely pointing out that it is the end result of mistrust of the Federal response.

Exactly to the point... nobody wins. This is what Trumpism has done to us.

[ansible]

7. This is more on Cuomo being an idiot

He's going to be in deep shit over this

[ancianita]

19. No it's not. And no he isn't. From eight months ago when NO other governors briefed ANYbody:

Go to 2:38

[MichMan]

42. Trump forced Cuomo to lie?

[ancianita]

12. Cuomo couldn't and said why. 70% of the nation's nursing homes are run by private enterprise,

that don't report to state governments.

The whole coverup is on the private sector who, as with ACA insurance premium gouging, point the finger at government for what consumers suffer.

Media is careless and won't give numbers about private vs publicly owned nursing homes.

So this borders on a big lie.

[marble falls]

5. Stupid, stupid, stupid mistake. Trump wanted discounted numbers for Pete's sakes. Who made ...

... stupid move??

[yardwork]

8. Florida did the same thing. I know it for a fact.

A relative died in a Florida nursing home last April. Her symptoms sounded like COVID, including high fever and difficulty breathing. The nursing home refused to consider that she died of COVID, refused to test her, stonewalled. Her death is not recorded as a COVID death. She's probably one of tens of thousands of elderly who died of COVID in Florida whose numbers aren't counted. She died alone.

[Aerator]

9. Ohio reported yesterday that they underreported by almost 35 % to the total death count.

Ohio announced that they will be adding 4000 more deaths to the total over the next few days after someone in a training session discovered that they were not counting the death count properly. The gave no other information where the deaths occurred other than to say they occurred mostly in November and December. This is the second time that they had to add large numbers after mistakes in reporting were discovered.

[LisaL]

11. Yep. I bet that went in other states as well.

Our death count from covid as a country is likely much higher than official numbers.
By the way OH's official count of covid deaths is at ~10,000. So adding 4,000 is a big increase.

[LisaL]

10. They did a very stupid thing in New York early in the pandemic.

Made nursing homes to take in covid patients. Clearly that wasn't going to be helpful in controlling the infection in nursing homes.

[LymphocyteLover]

28. Where were they supposed to put them? Seriously

there were no good options. This would have to be patients who were sent to the hospital and then released while still positive. Way too expensive and not feasible to put them in the hospital.

[pnwmom]

33. Right. The hospitals released them when they no longer needed hospital care.

And for many people at the ending months or years of their life, the nursing home is their home, and the place even Medicaid law says they can return to.

[LymphocyteLover]

34. and the CDC did say it was ok with the proper safetey protocols

[pnwmom]

35. The problem for NY is that they were the first hard hit, after Washington.

People forget there were no tests at the beginning. No one even knew exactly how it was spread.

So there wasn't clear information for the nursing homes or even the hospitals at first.

[LymphocyteLover]

38. that is true... they were flying blind early on and not by choice

[MichMan]

41. The temporary hospitals that lay unused?

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/07/829091975/new-yorks-temporary-overflow-hospitals-remain-underused-despite-covid-19-crisis

[MichMan]

43. Not back into the most vulnerable population

Surely any other option would have been better

[pnwmom]

32. I don't think it was stupid. It was following the Medicaid law, and the majority of patients

in long term care in nursing homes are on Medicaid.

The law requires nursing homes, after a patient is released from a stay in the hospital (the number of days varies by state), to accept them back into the nursing home they came from -- which for many is their permanent home. They have no other home to return to. That's why they're living permanently in the nursing home.

That law is still in effect and recovering people are still sent back to nursing homes. The difference now is that these homes have a better handle on quarantine, testing, etc.

[ancianita]

13. New York didn't do a coverup. It's privately run nursing homes that did that. Same for other states.

Now the corporate PR hype is that the governments did it.

That is BOGUS.
States' undercounts are because of private corporate run nursing home undercounts.

[former9thward]

14. Nope.

Cuomo ordered nursing homes to take infected patients. That lead to other people in the nursing home getting infected and dying. Do you think Cuomo's top aide is lying about this?

[FreeState]

17. Nice mostly false rightwing talking point

https://khn.org/news/is-cuomo-directive-to-blame-for-nursing-home-covid-deaths-as-us-official-claims/

Our Ruling

In a tweet, the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs said that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “forced” nursing homes across the state to admit COVID-positive patients and that this policy fueled the spread of COVID-19 that led to thousands of deaths in the nursing home population.

Although nursing homes felt pressure to accept COVID-positive patients, they were not actually forced to do so. State regulations require nursing homes to accept patients only if they can care for them, and they could have refused them on those grounds.

In addition, it’s unclear the extent to which the governor’s policy was responsible for nursing home COVID-19 deaths. Infection control is a long-standing problem in nursing homes, predating the pandemic, and a report showed peak numbers of nursing home deaths came prior to the peak influx of patients as a result of Cuomo’s advisory. While the introduction of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on infection spread, Caputo’s statement suggests it was solely responsible. That’s not what the evidence shows.

We rate this Mostly False.

[mdelaguna]

20. Yep the Republican opposition is riding this hard

Media happy to share their talking points. Cuomo will survive it. And the issue is nuanced- states fighting against federal roadblocks for help. And NY had to suffer through this first, with no models to follow.

[former9thward]

22. Tell that to NY AG James.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration confirmed Thursday that thousands more nursing home residents died of COVID-19 than the state’s official tallies had previously acknowledged, dealing a potential blow to his image as a pandemic hero.

The surprise development, after months of the state refusing to divulge its true numbers, showed that at least 12,743 long-term care residents died of the virus as of Jan. 19, far greater than the official tally of 8,505 on that day, cementing New York’s toll as one of the highest in the nation.

Those numbers are consistent with a report released just hours earlier by state Attorney General Letitia James charging that the nursing home death count could be off by about 50%, largely because New York is one of the only states to count just those who died on facility grounds, not those who later died in the hospital.

The 76-page report from a fellow Democratic official undercut Cuomo’s frequent argument that the criticism of his handling of the virus in nursing homes was part of a political “blame game,” and it was a vindication for thousands of families who believed their loved ones were being omitted from counts to advance the governor’s image as a pandemic hero.

https://www.snopes.com/ap/2021/01/29/ny-data-show-nursing-home-deaths-undercounted-by-thousands/

Better yet tell that to the families.

[LymphocyteLover]

29. where were these patients supposed to go if they were too healthy to be in the hospital?

Seriously-- what were the options?

This was always a dumb, political argument.

[ancianita]

18. Thanks for your post. She's not lying. But she made a decision that Cuomo's getting the hit for.

When Republican governors "omit" numbers, nothing is said by the press, When Democratic governors "omit," and even take the time to explain why, it's a big "oh noes!" coverup.

While this report might be narrowly right in one fact, it is not accurate about the whole picture.

It's another of the reasons not to believe private sector hype about how bad government does things, because, as in Florida, private sector nursing homes all over the country hid the numbers by policy, and now the papers want to blame the Democratic state governors for messing the numbers up.

Can you see that's happening beyond this narrow gotcha report, right?

I'll try to locate the videos where Cuomo explained, last year, what the state's involvement was with private sector nursing homes. He might even review all that today during his MWF covid briefing.

[MichMan]

44. Why did Cuomo's own chief of staff admit they did not disclose the true numbers intentionally.

The NY AG James reported the same thing before the administration admitted doing so.

[ancianita]

45. Why depends on the dates, and when they knew their decision didn't work, doesn't it.

Admission of one mistake is not the whole picture. To intentionally not fix it is the implication here.

When the decision was seen to be a mistake, the entire system of handling private nursing home infections and transfers was changed, because Cuomo had to literally get Albany to pass a law to give him statewide power over private nursing homes monitoring and supervision. Otherwise, their corporate owners would have just passed off blame for all further deaths to the state.

Focusing on Cuomo is another example of how we eat our best leaders whose accomplishments far and away outshine their mistakes. Focus on Cuomo to blow this one state's leadership all out of proportion to the intentionally bad leadership of all the other, mostly smaller states with even greater numbers of nursing home deaths -- that helps the right's "both sides do it" BS.


We admit a mistake within a context, and then what, move on to the next media fingerpointing?

[Initech]

15. It's the New York Post, it's where facts go to die.

Remember the Hunter Biden laptop story and how badly that failed? I would hopefully consider this just as sketchy.

[bucolic_frolic]

16. i doubt this is just New York

Was there much testing of the deceased back in April to June of last year? From what I read, no, but there was more than an uptick in mortality of nursing home populations.

[ancianita]

21. For all the latest hype, NY was #34 in total, not per capita, nursing home deaths, yet it has

the greatest number of nursing homes of any state.

[LymphocyteLover]

30. exactly-- even per capita they weren't bad either

this whole nursing home thing was just a way for Repubs to go after Cuomo, who was perceived as a being a better leader on COVID19 (which he was)

[Evolve Dammit]

23. Cuomo should have called out the private nursing homes for suppressing data. Did he?

I don't expect any less than lies from DeSatan in FL, but I believed Gov. Cuomo was shooting straight with the daily conferences.

[clementine613]

24. Damn Rethugs Can't Even Report on Death Honestly...

They can't even honor the dead properly by properly reporting on the numbers. They had to lie to the governor and other officials to make him look bad. Why do we even allow the Rethugs in government at all?

[Chakaconcarne]

25. Is this way to oust Como to make things easier for Trump?

I have no idea......

[Larissa]

26. The old adage still rings true

Three may keep a secret if two are dead. ~ Benjamin Franklin

[whistler162]

40. The old adage - Never trust the New York Post

[jb5150]

27. Doesn't this create an odd irony for the Covid deniers?

I mean .... Can you continue to rave that Covid is a "liberal" hoax, while also loudly gloating that "liberal" states also lied about the number of Covid deaths?


Is it possible to hold these two thoughts in your head at once?

[LymphocyteLover]

31. I suspect this story is way overblown and being misrepresented by the NYPost, FoxNews-style

[dustyscamp]

36. Reactionary social media grifters with bus loads of followers will eat this up

Making things worse

[JI7]

39. That's all right wing trash does

their allies in the media just have to put out some shit and it doesn't matter if people fully understand what is going on . Just give talking points to the idiots to spread among each other and they will post it all over comments sections on every social media, forum etc.

[Steelrolled]

37. "they froze out of fear that the true numbers would be used against them by federal prosecutors"

I can't believe secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa said that. How much more incriminating can you be?