I recently testified before the House Select Coronavirus Subcommittee on the meltdown in nursing homes, which excluding New York 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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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