George Soros gave Ivanka's husband's business a $250 million credit line in 2015 per WSJ. Soros is also an investor in Jared's business.

Monday, April 27, 2020

Covid-19 makes clear its #1 target group is the elderly with comorbidities, especially those in nursing homes. As to “waiting for a vaccine,” high school biology teaches that vaccination doesn’t work for prospective or mutated new viruses-The New Meaning of Genocide, Stephen Karganovic

Immunological deficiency [eg, the elderly in nursing homes with comorbidities] is the principal condition propitiating the spread of the Corona virus....Mass lockdowns, causing sun and vitamin deprivation, as well as depression and other debilitating psychological conditions, has the effect of increasing instead of reducing the immunological vulnerability.”The fact that dissent within the scientific community isn’t tolerated is “the most persuasive indication of the narrative’s extreme fragility....An alert high school biology student...is well aware that vaccination does not work for prospective or mutated new viruses.On March 23, “soldiers sent to disinfect nursing homes in Madrid discovered dozens of elderly residents dead in their beds.“…Per AP, 40% of US Covid-19 deaths occur at nursing homes. 

4/26/20,The New Meaning of Genocide,Stephen Karganovic, Strategic Culture 

“The Corona virus put-on job has now been exposed for the brazen social engineering scheme, potential vaccination rip-off (and here), and ideologically driven mass population reduction project that it had always been, from the start. 

We now have all the basic facts we require to deconstruct the mendacious, hysteria inducing narrative that was concocted to bludgeon the imprisoned world into submissive acquiescence to its self-destruction. 

The key fact that the Covid-19 virus is a laboratory product and therefore man-made was authoritatively established by French Prof. Luc Montagnier who recently disclosed the results of his laboratory analysis of the virus genome. He found it to be laced with spliced-in HIV sequences, which effectively excludes the possibility of its being the product of a natural process. (Prof. Montaigner put it extremely delicately:in fact, part of the virus, not the whole, has been manipulated”.) Was it manipulated by bats in some Chinese caves? Prof. Montaigner, incidentally, is eminently qualified to speak on the subject as he was in 2008 a recipient of the Nobel Prize in medicine for identifying the HIV virus. The fact that as soon as he let the cat out of the bag he became subjected to harsh denunciation (here and here) by all the right circles lends powerful support to the credibility of his findings. 

Essentially the same conclusions were reached even earlier, in February, by a group of Indian scientists and published in a paper entitledUncanny similarity of unique inserts in the 2019-nCoV spike protein to HI,V-1 gp120 and Gag.”

Reassuringly, under ferocious pressure and ridicule by fake news commissars (and here), the scientists were compelled to withdraw their bold paper, because it appeared to have crossed the line of permissible Corona virus discourse even before Prof. Montaigner came out with his assertions. All the more reason to pay serious attention to the glaringly obvious and undeniably significant implications of these fully congruent findings. 

Underlining the fact that we have been plunged, without consent and mostly without awareness, into a post-truth world, facts have largely been supplanted by narratives. And narratives are essentially politically convenient fairy tales that nobody sincerely believes but practically everyone must publicly adhere to in order to hold on to what little reputation and dwindling benefits they’ve got left. Team player adherence to public lies (sorry, fairy tales) is a test of good global citizenship. 

It is a test that to their moral credit the French professor and the Indian researchers have obviously and perhaps to their lasting professional detriment–failed. 

Fortunately, the ranks of non-team players in the Corona virus controversy, with all the lurking personal perils that poses, have actually been growing, rather than shrinking. 

We are indebted to Dr. Shiva Ayadurai, a brave Indian-American scientist, for making us aware that immunological deficiency is the principal condition propitiating the spread of the Corona virus and that mass lockdowns, causing sun and vitamin deprivation, as well as depression and other debilitating psychological conditions, has the effect of increasing instead of reducing the immunological vulnerability of the human organism. 

Another scientist with impeccable credentials, Dr Rashid Buttar, has argued compellingly that the prevalent Corona virus narrative does not add up. Predictably, this non-team player has also been subjected to brutal media assaults and his public statements have provoked the fury of the political correctness commissariat. In Dr Buttar’s view, anyone who is supporting the use of vaccination to combat COVID-19 is either ignorant or has some hidden agenda or is financially motivated. 

The basic fundamentals of how the human body works are, he argues, ignored and in the process, and while ostensibly treating patients infected by the virus, basic neurological, physical, virological and medical principles are being violated or simply put aside. Not without reason, Dr Buttar points out that people with expert knowledge are silent either because of social pressures or fear of losing their license. 

The concerted effort to blot out every opinion, no matter how qualified, which does not conform to the narrative, on the specious pretext that it “violates YouTube’s terms of service” or the mysteriously undefined “community guidelines,” is undoubtedly the most persuasive indication of the narrative’s extreme fragility. While some competent critiques still manage to squeak through the “bodyguard of lies” (herehere, and here), all the algorithms have been activated to keep non-conforming, question and doubt-provoking opinions off the table and out of the purview of the immature and irresponsible masses…. 

What is the meta-script...behind this impressive global production? The dark intimations that in “elite” circles there may be an intense interest in reducing the excessive number of useless eaters to a smaller and more docile cohort of helot-like servants are not without empirical basis. Why the fanatical insistence on mass vaccination on a global scale, for our own good of course, although the concept would not even pass the scrutiny of an alert high school biology student, who is well aware that vaccination does not work for prospective or mutated new viruses? Or are we all expected now to fall prey precisely to Covid-19 and be vaccinated willy-nilly against its ravages? On whose authority are wealthy private individuals with no medical training but close financial ties to the pharmacological industry announcing public health policy measures and determining the particulars and duration of their application? 

What arcane foreknowledge enabled them to presciently predict the current pandemic several years ago and then suspiciously again, last year several months in advance of its appearance? May the health and welfare of billions of human beings be safely entrusted to self-proclaimed “philanthropists” whose actions are driven entirely by the profit motive, in its various financial, ideological, and perhaps even occult forms? Will billions of people succumb to a corporate media induced mass hysteria and allow profit-making unknown substances to be injected into their bodies, in complete disregard of the fact that on previous occasions similar forms of “relief” had wrought devastation and havoc throughout Asia and Africa, and wherever else they had been administered? 

Humanity has good reason to fear and tremble, not so much at the dreaded disease as at its potentially terrifying cure, which we are told is in the making (perhaps in the same laboratories where the disease was concocted) and undoubtedly will soon be unveiled.”





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Sunday, April 26, 2020

UK virus advisor to US colonists, Neil Ferguson, contracted Covid-19 himself-Washington Times, 3/26, Leaders League 4/15

Subject of UK Monarchy, “Neil Ferguson...received an OBE [Order of the British Empire] for his work on the 2001 UK foot and mouth disease epidemic. Prof Ferguson advises the UK and US governments, WHO and the EU on emerging infections and modelling.”…Sadly Ferguson has contracted coronavirus, also reported here on 3/26.
 
The Queen awarded Ferguson Order of the British Empire for 2001 work. Today Ferguson advises UK government, US colonists, and WHO.….Neil Ferguson image via Leaders League
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4/15/20, “Ultimately,  he [Ferguson] has come out of the crisis well, though at the cost of his own health–he himself contracted coronavirus in the process [reported 3/26/20 below], the virus having run rife in Westminster.In an article for Lancet Infectious Diseases [in 2009], he [Ferguson] published an article named “Closure of schools during an influenza pandemic, which looked at – among other things – the economic effects such a closure would have, estimating that a 12-week closure could cost up to 1% of GDP.”…
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3/26/20, “U.K. epidemiologist radically lowers his predicted coronavirus death toll," Washington Times, James Varney 

“A British epidemiologist who earlier predicted the U.K. could suffer up to 500,000 coronavirus deaths has now testified the actual figure may be less than 20,000 and that the U.K. should have sufficient intensive care units to handle it. 

Neil Ferguson who is at Imperial College London and who has now contracted COVID-19 himself, made the startling turnaround in parliamentary testimony Wednesday, according to multiple reports. All of his statistics are derived from computer modeling.... 

Nationwide the nation should be able to cope with the emergency, which he expects will peak in the next two to three weeks, he said. 

Mr. Ferguson delivered his most recent assessment via video with Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee. 

The remarkable change in Mr. Ferguson’s predictions came about due to new data that suggests the virus, which first infected people in Wuhan, China, last year, moves much faster than originally thought. Researchers at Oxford have now tentatively concluded that potentially half the U.K. population has already been infected, in a story first reported by The Financial Times. 

Consequently, that would mean coronavirus is far less lethal than early death rates suggest…. 

On March 17, he and his colleagues issued catastrophic predictions that if the U.K. did nothing more than 500,000 citizens would die from coronavirus, and that even with some mitigation efforts it “would still result in about 250,000 deaths and completely overwhelm intensive care in the NHS,” the BBC reported.”
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Added: Heist of $2.2 trillion US tax dollars miraculously coordinated to take advantage of 3/17 much scarier Ferguson prediction of 2.2 million US deaths. On 3/25, one day before Ferguson drastically lowered his virus death predictions (3/26/20), the US Senate passed a $2.2 trillion virus bailout bill based on the much worse 3/17 prediction of 2.2 million US deaths: 

Tues. 3/17/20-Per NY Times, Ferguson predicted 2.2 million US deaths: Behind the Virus Report That Jarred the U.S. and the U.K. to Action,” NY Times, Mark Landler, Stephen Castle…”American officials said the report, which projected up to 2.2 million deaths in the United States from such a spread, also influenced the White House to strengthen its measures to isolate members of the public.With ties to the World Health Organization and a team of 50 scientists, led by a [mathematical biologist] prominent epidemiologist, Neil Ferguson, Imperial is treated as a sort of gold standard, its mathematical models feeding directly into government policies.”
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Wed., 3/25/20One day before Ferguson’s 3/26 announcement that he’s radically lowering his virus death estimates, the US Senate passes a $2.2 trillion US taxpayer funded Coronavirus bill based on Ferguson’s earlier, catastrophically higher 2.2 million US death estimates reported March 17, 2020. 
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Thurs., 3/26/20-Ferguson new virus computations radically lower UK death estimate from 250,000-500,000 to 20,000.
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Fri., 3/27/20, US House passes and Trump signs $2.2 trillion Coronavirus bill passed by Senate on 3/25.



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Saturday, April 25, 2020

Up to half of Europe’s Covid-19 deaths occur in nursing homes. Tough decisions should not be based on a single criteria like age, says WHO specialist in long-term care-Washington Post, 4/23/20

Authorities may have allowed the pandemic to rage among some of their most vulnerable populations.”…On March 23, “soldiers sent to disinfect nursing homes in Madrid discovered dozens of elderly residents dead in their beds."….Per AP, 40% of US Covid-19 deaths occur at nursing homes. 

4/23/20, “Nursing homes linked to up to half of coronavirus deaths in Europe, WHO says," Washington Post, Michael Birnbaum, William Booth, Brussels 


A “deeply concerning picture” is emerging about residents of homes for the elderly, Hans Kluge, the WHO’s top official for Europe, told reporters at a news conference Thursday. According to countries’ estimates, he said, “up to half of those who have died from covid-19 were resident in long-term-care facilities. This is an unimaginable human tragedy.” 

Kluge’s warning was focused on Europe, but the United States also has struggled with the pandemic inside homes for the elderly.Washington Post analysis this week found that nearly 1 in 10 nursing homes in the United States have reported cases of the novel coronavirus, with a death count that has reached the thousands. 

Many European countries have banned family visits to nursing homes, an attempt to shelter the residents from the spread of the virus, since it is far more lethal among older people and those with preexisting conditions. But those bans, though well-intentioned, may have deprived the elderly of advocates as conditions swiftly deteriorated. 

He and other WHO officials who spoke Thursday said they did not have enough data to say conclusively that people in nursing homes were being transferred to hospitals less often than they should be, or that they were being discharged from hospitals prematurely — fears raised by advocates in Britain and elsewhere. But the WHO officials hinted strongly that those factors might be contributing to the high death rates. 

“It is important that the decisions, the very tough decisions that have to be made, are not based on a single criteria like age,” said Manfred Huber, a WHO specialist in long-term care. 

Measuring and comparing coronavirus death rates can be difficult, because some nations are testing more suspected coronavirus cases than others are, and each country is using a different accounting method as it records cases and deaths. 

Many countries in Europe have essentially ignored coronavirus testing in nursing homes to focus their testing capacity on hospital patients and hospital staffers. In Italy, for instance, a recent national health service report indicated that people dying in nursing homes were overwhelmingly unlikely to have been tested for the virus. 

Many countries have not been carefully tracking deaths outside of hospitals, either. 

“The challenge is we don’t have very good information for people in care homes,”said Adelina ­Comas-Herrera, a researcher at the London School of Economics. 

Comas-Herrera and colleagues reported last week that covid-19 deaths in nursing facilities in Belgium, Canada, France, Ireland and Norway might account for half of all coronavirus deaths in those countries. 

She noted that most care homes for the elderly were never designed to serve as acute care hospitals. Many do not even have a nurse on duty.

A first grim glimpse of Europe’s nursing home situation came on March 23, when soldiers sent to disinfect nursing homes in Madrid discovered dozens of elderly residents dead in their beds. Spain’s defense minister pledged that the government would be “unrelenting and forceful” in finding those responsible. As of this week, public prosecutors are investigating some 86 nursing homes throughout Spain for hundreds of deaths. That probe includes 40 facilities in the Madrid region, which has outpaced the rest of the country in deaths. 

Spain has not included deaths in nursing homes in its official counts, although authorities say that 10 to 20 percent of residents might be infected…. 


“We have not had enough testing capacity in the past to confirm all of them in the laboratory,” said Steven van Gucht, the head of viral diseases at Belgium’s public health institute, at a news conference this week. “But that does not mean that those cases are less real.” 

Kluge and others say that now is the time to pour resources into group homes for the elderly — to provide more testing of staffers and residents, to supply caregivers with proper protective gowns and visors, and to give them quick training to protect themselves and residents. Some employees have complained that they have been offered little or no equipment. 

Many facilities are staffed by people with scant medical training or none at all. 

Despite the vulnerability of most residents of the facilities, Kluge said, good medical care ought to be able to prevent many deaths.

“Even among very old people who are frail and live with multiple chronic conditions, many have a good chance of recovery if they are well cared for,” he said. 

Italian authorities have said some of the worst outbreaks at nursing homes might have been preventable, and they have launched investigations into malpractice at a number of facilities, including one of the largest in the country: the 1,000-bed Pio Albergo Trivulzio in Milan. Italy’s ANSA news service reported that 200 elderly residents had died at that facility. 

In France, one of the earliest coronavirus restrictions was an urging by President Emmanuel Macron that people stop visiting elderly relatives in assisted-living centers [as is the case in the US]. But there’s been concern about the psychological toll of that decision. 

Nursing home resident Jeanne Pault, 96, lamented in a televised interview this week that she hasn’t been able to eat properly and that she said she is no longer able to converse with her neighbor, much less her family. “Is this a life, at age 96?” Pault said. 


Visits will be limited to two family members per resident and can happen only after safety measures are in place. 

In Germany-where about one-third of the country’s 5,000 deaths have been among residents of care centers, according to data from the Robert Koch Institute — Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday said she was particularly “burdened” by what those in nursing and assisted-living facilities “have to endure.” 

“It’s cruel that, aside from the staff doing their best, no one can be there for those nearing the end of their lives, their strength ebbing,she said.”…



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Nassau County, NY, population 1.4 million, has more Covid-19 deaths than entire state of California, population 40 million. US is closed for one metropolitan area, won’t have 330 million tests for years. The goal isn’t to eliminate all risk, it’s to live reasonably with it-NY Times, Bret Stephens

4/24/20, America Shouldn’t Have to Play by New York Rules," NY Times, Bret Stephens, opinion 

“A national lockdown is bad medicine and worse politics.”… 

It is stunning to contemplate the extent to which the country’s Covid-19 crisis is a New York crisis — by which I mean the city itself along with its wider metropolitan area…. 

As of Friday [4/24], there have been more Covid-19 fatalities on Long Island’s Nassau County (population 1.4 million) than in all of California (population 40 million). There have been more fatalities in Westchester County (989) than in Texas (611). The number of Covid deaths per 100,000 residents in New York City (132) is more than 16 times what is in America’s next largest city, Los Angeles (8). If New York City proper were a state, it would have suffered more fatalities than 41 other states combined….[One third of the nation’s 10,217 virus related nursing home deaths occurred in nursing homes located in NY State]. 

It isn’t hard to guess why. New York has, by far, the highest population density in the U.S. among cities of 100,000 or more. Commuters crowd trains, office workers crowd elevators, diners crowd restaurants…. 

No wonder so much of America has dwindling sympathy with the idea of prolonging lockdown conditions much further....Hospital systems haven’t come close to being overwhelmed; Americans have adapted to new etiquettes of social distancing. 

Many of the worst Covid outbreaks outside New York (such as at Chicago’s Cook County Jail or the Smithfield Foods processing plant in Sioux Falls, S.D.) have specific causes that can be addressed without population-wide lockdowns. 

Yet Americans are being told they must still play by New York ruleswith all the hardships they entail despite having neither New York’s living conditions nor New York’s health outcomes. This is bad medicine, misguided public policy, and horrible politics. 

On Friday, I spoke with Tomislav Mihaljevic, C.E.O. of the widely admired Cleveland Clinic, and an advocate of the need to use “tailored and discriminating solutions” that also recognize regional differences. At the moment, he says, We’re using the methodology from the 14th century to combat the biggest pandemic of the 21st century.” It can’t go on. 

Dr. Mihaljevic acknowledges the necessity of the lockdowns to contain the virus, along with the urgent need for ramped-up testing and ongoing monitoring. But, he adds, “we cannot hold our breath forever.” The U.S. will not soon be able to test 330 million people. Effective therapies or vaccines may be long in coming [if ever, there’s no guarantee.]. Covid-19 will be a disease we have to learn to live with.” 

That means accepting that the immediate goal of public policy cannot be to eliminate the risk of Covid-19. It is to mitigate, manage and frame expectations for it while not losing sight of other priorities. In Ohio Dr. Mihaljevic says that Covid patients take up just 2 percent of hospital capacity, and the curve of new infections has been flat for more than two weeks. Yet there has been a dramatic decline in people seeking care for heart attacks, strokes, or new cancers, presumably out of fear of going to hospital. 

“The public conversation needs to be about the value of human life in its totality,Dr. Mihaljevic says. That includes fewer restrictions on activity for people at the low end of the risk spectrum, while taking additional care of those on the high end.

Right now, there’s a lot of commentary coming from talking heads (many of them in New York) about the danger of lifting lockdowns in places like Tennessee. Perhaps the commentary needs to move in the opposite direction. Tennesseeans are within their rights to return to a semblance of normal life while demanding longer restrictions on New Yorkers.    

I write this from New York, so it’s an argument against my personal interest. But I don’t see why people living in a Nashville suburb should not be allowed to return to their jobs because people like me choose to live, travel and work in urban sardine cans.

Gina Raimondo, the Rhode Island governor, was on to something when, a few weeks ago, she wanted to quarantine drivers arriving from New York. The rest of America needs to get back to life.”…



 



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If Trump doesn’t lead soon, his voters will seek leadership elsewhere. Trump voters are where they’d be if Obama or Joe Biden were president-Angelo Codevilla

"The political equation could not be clearer: the ruling class...sees the pandemic as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break ordinary people’s resistance to its power...to design a “a new normal," while ordinary people yearn to recover their freedoms.

4/24/20, “Trump Still Seems to Be Forgetting Politics 101,” Angelo Codevilla, American Greatness 

“If the president does not lead soon, his people will find leadership elsewhere.”
 
“As Georgia Governor Brian Kemp announced plans this week to let restaurants and other businesses reopen, President Trump told a national TV audience that he “strongly disagreed, and as ordinary folks around the country were being vilified and arrested for protesting mayors’ and governors’ orders to stay indoors, the president remained silent. 

On April 7, I noted that Trump, by subordinating his judgment to Dr. Anthony Fauci, et al. on when and how to reopen the country, had “placed himself on a path that the fundamentals suggest leads to political suicide.The fundamental question of all politics was, is, and will always be: who is on whose side? Or, as Lenin put it, “who, whom?”

While any number of aspects of the current viral pandemic remain uncertain, the political side of the matter is crystal clear, shining, and flashing. 

The political Left and the ruling class which it leads sees the pandemic as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break ordinary people’s resistance to its power. Accordingly, they—Democrats, all—have used their near monopoly of mass communications as well as the commanding heights of the professions, corporations, and government to frighten the people into obedience and dependency. 

Having identified themselves as the saviors from the virus by right of “science,” they try to delegitimize opposition to their plans to consolidate their new powers. They want more money to distribute to favorites as well as to hire more people to enforce more restrictions. 

The political equation could not be clearer: the ruling class is on the side of enduring and growing control of ordinary people’s lives, to design a “new normal,” while ordinary people yearn to recover their freedoms. 

Hence, the basic political question is inescapable: Whose side are you on? Trump tried to escape it by striking what he thought was a good faith bargain with Fauci on a staged reopening of the country based on criteria that remained in Fauci’s power to define. Hence, he has condemned or declined to defend people on his side while hinting broadly that he is acting against his own better judgment. Not incidentally, Fauci et al. take every opportunity to discredit or to decline to defend him. Thus does he fulfill the dictionary definition of tragedy. 

Fact is, trying to evade Politics 101 is a fool’s errand. 

Who are the people who are getting arrested for walking in the park, or swimming in the sea, or playing with their kids, or for protesting outside the offices and homes of autocratic officials? For whom does anyone think that these people voted in the last election? 95 percent for Trump? More like 100 percent. And why does anyone suppose they voted for him? Could it be because they were hoping to elect someone who would protect them from having their livelihoods and freedoms taken away by power-hungry officials? 

These people were not thinking that the ruling class would use the latest pandemic to come out of China, manipulate the numbers concerning it, and use it as a pretext. No. But they voted for Trump because they felt, in their bones, that the ruling class would use any pretext to do precisely something like this. That is why Trump is president of the United States: because these are his people. 

Regardless of what Trump or anyone around him might think, these people don’t belong to Trump. It’s the other way around. Trump is the person for whom they voted because they expected that he would be on their side to protect them in situations like this. Now, the casus foederis having arisen, the wolves being at the door, they are on their own. Trump is not protecting them. 

His reasoning, any reasoning, is irrelevant. Trump’s voters are where they would be were Obama in charge, or maybe even Joe Biden. 

By nature, Politics 101 (who is on whose side, whose side are you on?) is a tenuous, two-sided relationship. The ruling class’s power grab has left millions of Americans powerless. They hunger for political leaders to take up their cause, to lead a resistance against the powerful poltroons who presume to choke ordinary life in the name of science. 

For more than a month, President Trump has basically played second fiddle to Fauci and Birx and their models. He has not challenged the ruling class’s incompetence, let alone its mendacity about the pandemic’s mortality, or even their most ridiculous assumptions (whoever heard of staying out of the fresh air and sunshine to counter a virus?). 

Again, whatever Trump’s reasoning may be, it does not supply a powerless people’s demand for leadership. If he does not lead soon, they will find leadership elsewhere.”






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Friday, April 24, 2020

It’s truly shocking that while we were locked up, prevented from assembling to provide checks and balances on government, Trump still conducted H-1B and diversity visa lotteries-Daniel Horowitz

4/23/20, “It is truly shocking how over the past few weeks, while we were locked up, they still conducted the H-1B and diversity visa lotteries. This is not a just government.”



4/23/20, “It is truly shocking how over the past few weeks, while we were locked up, they still conducted the H-1B and diversity visa lotteries. This is not a just government.” RMConservative twitter



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Cuomo said Covid-19 in nursing homes is like “fire through dry grass,” yet he insists nursing homes accept patients with active virus. How is Cuomo or anyone who forces nursing homes to accept infected persons not guilty of genocide or at least mass murder?

AP: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo…has described COVID-19 in nursing homes as “fire through dry grass.NY State is home to a third of the nation’s 10,217 virus deaths at nursing homes.…A Cuomo spokesman “vowed state officials were “going to get to the bottom” of the high death count in nursing homes, where Cuomo has said COVID-19 spreads “like fire through dry grass.””
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Nursing homes have ‘no right’ to reject coronavirus patients, Cuomo says,” NY Post, 4/23/20 

4/23/20, Coronavirus patients admitted to Queens nursing home–with body bags,” NY Post, Gabrielle Fonrouge, Bernadette Hogan, Bruce Golding 

“The first coronavirus patients admitted to a Queens nursing home under a controversial state mandate arrived along with some grim accessories–a supply of body bags, The Post has learned. 

An executive at the facilitywhich was previously free of the…disease [which is deadly for the elderly]said the bags were in the shipment of personal protective equipment received the same day the home was forced to begin treating two people discharged from hospitals with COVID-19. 

“My colleague noticed that one of the boxes was extremely heavy. Curious as to what could possibly be making that particular box so much heavier than the rest, he opened it,” the exec told The Post Thursday. 

“The first two coronavirus patients were accompanied by five body bags.” 

Within days, three of the bags were filled with the first of 30 residents who would die there after Gov. Cuomo’s Health Department handed down its March 25 directive that bars nursing homes from refusing to admit “medically stable” coronavirus patients, the exec said. 

Like clockwork, the nursing home has received five body bags a week–every week–from city officials. 

“Cuomo has blood on his hands. He really does. There’s no way to sugarcoat this,” the health care executive added. [Fine, but who will stop him? No one].   

“Why in the world would you be sending coronavirus patients to a nursing home, where the most vulnerable population to this disease resides?”Since March 25, the Queens nursing home has admitted 17 patients from hospitals who tested positive for coronavirus….Those who have died passed away without a test or while awaiting the results from one. 

“The rest of the people are dropping like flies–literally like flies–and most of them have been with us for years,the exec added. 

COVID-19 has killed at least 3,540 residents of New York’s nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday, according to the most recent state Health Department data.

The Queens story is painfully repeating at a Manhattan nursing home. 

Administrators there told The Post they’ve also received body bags in weekly shipments of supplies, which City Hall confirmed the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene was distributing to nursing homes. 

One of the Manhattan administrators said the state’s admission mandate came with no warning or even time to prepare facilities for an influx of coronavirus patients, who the state says must be quarantined inside nursing homes and treated by separate staffers. 

“By the time I even got to the work the next day, I had phone calls, emails from just about every hospital in the area,” the administrator said. Previously, the person added, the facility had required “two negative test results before we’d even consider taking someone into the building. 

Officials at both nursing homes declined to have their names published because they feared retribution from Cuomo, who regulates them. The Post reviewed emails, state regulatory orders, other public documents and spoke to five employees across the two facilities to confirm their stories. 

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi called the “blood on his hands” comment about the governor “disgusting” and accused nursing home operators of “trying to deflect from their failures.” 

He vowed state officials were “going to get to the bottom” of the high death count in nursing homes, where Cuomo has said COVID-19 spreads “like fire through dry grass.” 

Earlier, Cuomo said that if a nursing home can’t properly quarantine and treat the patients they were supposed to move them to other facilities or ask the Health Dept. to arrange a transfer. 

But the March 25 mandate does not detail how and state Health Commissioner Howard Zucker said he was not aware that DOH had received any transfer requests….
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Added: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has described COVID-19 in nursing homes as “fire through dry grass.””...New York State is “the leader in nursing home deaths."....Per AP,  NY State is home to a third of the nation’s 10,217 virus deaths at nursing homes. 

4/23/20, “Nursing homes plead for more coronavirus tests," AP, New York 

After two months and more than 10,000 deaths that have made the nation’s nursing homes some of the most terrifying places to be during the coronavirus crisis, most of them still don’t have access to enough tests to help control outbreaks among their frail, elderly residents. 

Neither the federal government nor the leader in nursing home deaths, New York, has mandated testing for all residents and staff. An industry group says only about a third of the nation’s 15,000 nursing homes have ready access to tests that can help isolate the sick and stop the spread. And homes that do manage to get a hold of tests often rely on luck and contacts. 

“It just shows that the longer that states lapse in universal testing of all residents and staff, we’re going to see these kinds of stories for a very long time,” said Brian Lee of the advocacy group Families for Better Care. Once it’s [the virus] in, there’s no stopping it and by the time you’re aware with testing, too many people have it. And bodies keep piling up.” 

That became clear in some of the nation’s biggest nursing home outbreaks. After a home in New York City’s Brooklyn borough reported 55 coronavirus deaths last week, its CEO acknowledged it was based entirely on symptoms and educated guesses the dead had COVID-19 because they were unable to actually test any of the residents or staff. 

At a nursing home in suburban Richmond, Virginia, that has so far seen 49 deaths, the medical director said testing of all residents was delayed nearly two weeks because of a shortage of testing supplies and bureaucratic requirements. By the time they did, the spread was out of control, with 92 residents positive. 

Mark Parkinson, CEO of the American Health Care Association, which represents long-term care facilities, says “only a very small percentage” of residents and staff have been tested because the federal and state governments have not made nursing homes the top priority. 

“We feel like we’ve been ignored,” Parkinson said. “Certainly now that the emphasis has gone away from hospitals to where the real battle is taking place in nursing homes, we should be at a priority level one.” 

Two-thirds of U.S. nursing homes still don’t have “easy access to test kits and are struggling to obtain sufficient resources, said Chris Laxton, executive director of The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. 

“Those nursing home leaders who have developed good relationships with their local hospitals and health departments seem to have better luck,” said Laxton, whose organization represents more than 50,000 long-term care professionals. “Those that are not at the table must fend for themselves.” 

Public health officials have long argued that current measures like temperature checks aren’t sufficient. They can’t stop workers with the virus who aren’t showing signs from walking in the front door, and they don’t catch such asymptomatic carriers among residents either. What is needed is rigorous and frequent testing — “sentinel surveillance,” White House virus chief Deborah Birx calls it — to find these hidden carriers, isolate them and stop the spread. 

The U.S. is currently testing roughly 150,000 people daily, for a total of 4.5 million results reported, according to data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project. Public health experts say that needs to be much higher. “We need likely millions of tests a day,” said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. 

The federal Health & Human Services Department told The Associated Press that ”there are plenty of tests and capability for all[obviously this isn’t true as this article and others document, the US simply has few if any tests: “C.D.C. Labs Were Contaminated, Delaying Coronavirus Testing, Officials Say," NY Times, Sheila Kaplan, 4/18/20. US purchased tests that were contaminated with virus and sent the diseased tests out to facilities across the country, adding another month to our imprisonment] priority categories and that all should be tested. The agency noted that federal help has been dispatched to some nursing homes. 

Only one governor, West Virginia’s Jim Justice, appears to be mandating testing for all nursing homes without conditions. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan ordered tests at all 26 nursing in the city, using new kits that can spew out results in 15 minutes.

Massachusetts abruptly halted a program to send test kits directly to nursing homes this week after 4,000 of them turned out to be faulty. New Hampshire teamed with an urgent-care company to test care workers. Several states including Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Tennessee and Wisconsin have dispatched National Guard testing strike teams….
 

While the federal government promised this week to start tracking and publicly releasing nursing home infections and deaths, which could help identify hotspots, that work was only beginning. In the meantime, The AP’s own tally from state health departments and media reports put the count at 10,217 deaths from outbreaks in nursing homes and long-term care facilities nationwide. About a third of those are in New York. 

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has described COVID-19 in nursing homes as “fire through dry grass, said he would ideally like to see any resident, staffer or visitor seeking to enter a nursing home take a rapid test that would come back in 20 minutes. But, he said, “that’s millions of tests.” 

Dr. Roy Goldberg, medical director of a nursing home in New York City’s Bronx borough that this past week reported 45 deaths, said his facility still can’t test asymptomatic patients because of shortages that have limited testing to those showing fever or a cough. 

“This isn’t what anyone signed up for,” Goldberg said. “It just breaks my heart that the long-term care industry is going to end up being totally scapegoated on this.”… 

Their plans for testing at 19 such facilities are aimed at trying to head off hotspots by quickly identifying and containing cases. In conjunction with ramped-up capacity for tracing contacts of patients, it’s considered an important prerequisite to reopening he economy.”  

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Comment: The US needs at least 500 million test kits immediately to meet the “prerequisite to reopening the economy.” Then, each test must be checked to make sure it's not laden with virus as the CDC tests were. It will take a few years for the US to accumulate the hundreds of millions of tests it needs. Thus, the economy will remain “closed” for a few years.




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I'm the daughter of an Eagle Scout and World War II Air Force pilot born in Brooklyn, finally settling in New Jersey.