In my previous piece, I wrote about how we handled things in elder care facilities in most of the country. How many of our elderly were isolated from their families and left to die alone. It was meant to shed light on a glaring problem in the way we do things and I’ve suggested ways we can and should do better. But what if I told you in some places, things were far worse, with far more obvious problems, and not only did people deny those problems, they celebrated them?
It’s a story of crime, politics and blatant disregard for human life.
I present to you; a timeline of events and their accompanying coverage from the media.
2020-
March 25th, It all starts with an executive order. A report from the New York Attorney General (written much later) outlines it, on page 36 where it states that, “The Department of Health (DOH) issued guidance providing that “[n]o resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the nursing home solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19. Nursing homes are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or re-admission.”
Having worked in elder care facilities, this was really shocking for me and my colleagues to hear about in the first place. In previous years it’s been extremely common practice to deny a resident’s re-admission to a facility if it’s suspected they have something milder than Covid-19 and far less contagious, such as the flu. The resident was often deemed too high risk and told they’d be re-admitted when their illness was gone. It’s unfortunate, but I understand why the practice is what it is. These facilities frequently contain high concentrations of the most at-risk population in the nation.
So why didn’t you hear more about this? Well, a large part of that is, by design, there wasn’t much to report. Page 37 of the Attorney General’s report says, “Data linking the number of nursing home deaths to the admissions policy contained in the March 25th guidance is obscured by that same guidance, which also prohibited nursing homes from requiring COVID-19 testing as a criterion for admission.” An executive order can’t make you look bad if you’re not collecting data that would indicate negative outcomes to begin with. So now we’re left to piece things together as best we can in the aftermath.
March 26th, Just one day later, the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care (PALTC) Medicine, pens a letter to the administration that reads “We find the New York State advisory to be over-reaching, not consistent with science, unenforceable, and beyond all, not in the least consistent with patient safety principles.”
March 29th, Politico runs a piece titled, “Not for first time, a governor named Cuomo casts an election year shadow.” Where they speculate that maybe he should’ve been the Democrat’s presidential nominee instead of Joe Biden.
March 29th, Another letter is penned by the American Health Care Association (AHCA) and the National Center for Assisted Living (NCAL) as well as the formerly mentioned PALTC. This letter reads, “We are aware that other states may already be adopting a similar approach in order to free up hospital beds. This is a short-term and short-sighted solution that will only add to the surge in COVID-19 patients that require hospital care.” The experts advise the Cuomo Administration that this will add to the Covid issue more than help and yet they are ignored.
April 6th, Governor Cuomo moved to legally cover his actions with another executive order (202.10) called the, “Emergency Disaster Treatment Protection Act (EDTPA).” Which “was enacted on April 6, and provides immunity to health care professionals from potential liability arising from certain decisions, actions and/ or omissions related to the care of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic retroactive to Governor Cuomo’s initial emergency declaration on March 7.”
The Attorney General reports that it is currently “unclear” due to these law changes, who exactly can be held accountable for failings and for which failings they can be made to account for. This follow up executive order, appears to just be a way to reduce legal controversy. Wrongdoing may have happened, but if families couldn’t pursue a lawsuit, it’s less likely for people to hear about it and there won’t ever be an official public record of said wrongdoing. All this on top of the fact that in New York, facilities can, and often do, enter into a “binding arbitration agreement with residents,” meaning to live there, you have to waive your right to a lawsuit to begin with and instead meet with a private arbitrator in the event of wrongdoing.
April 6th, Governor Cuomo asks for the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship stationed in Manhattan, to be allowed to treat Covid-19 patients to relieve the overburdened hospital system. “I’m going to call the president this afternoon and ask him to shift the Comfort from non-COVID to COVID,” Cuomo said. “Then we would have Javits (field hospital) and the ship Comfort as a relief valve. That is the only way we sustain this level of intensity in the hospital system.” The request was granted and the Comfort began treating Covid positive patients.
April 9th, Cobble Hill Health Center (a nursing home in Brooklyn, New York) CEO Donny Tuchman emails the state Health Department asking if there is a way to send suspected covid positive patients to either the pop up hospital in Javits Convention Center or to the USNS Comfort. He wrote, “we don’t have the ability to cohort right now based on staffing and we really want to protect our other patients.” Tuchman worried that his nursing home didn’t have the staff or space to take care of more Covid positive residents. “I was told those facilities were only for hospitals,” he reports. His plea for help was denied.
At the time of Cobble Hill Health Centers request, 134 out of 1,000 were occupied at the Javits center. On the USNS Comfort, just 62 beds were occupied out of the possible 1,000.
April 9th, CNN runs the story “President Andrew Cuomo? Maybe.” praising his leadership and TV press conferences. His brother and lead CNN reporter Chris Cuomo jokes with him about it.
April 27th, The term “Cuomosexual” enters the mainstream as TV show hosts Ellen DeGeneres, Stephen Colbert and Trevor Noah use it to describe themselves and others. Listen to Ellen and Trevor here,
as they talk about how “inspiring and refreshing” it’s been to see “a leader like Cuomo.” Trevor goes so far as to say “everyone should be a Cuomosexual in that way, you should love a leader who engages the people and remembers that they are serving the people as opposed to the people working for them.” “People are just falling in love with people who are doing their jobs the way they should right now.” Comments are now turned off for the video but it remains public.
Stephen Colbert says, “Governor Cuomo has projected an air of much needed competence during the epidemic and the people Are. There. For. It.” He also reports that #PresidentCuomo was trending on Twitter, offering more evidence to the governors widespread popularity before then speculating if the Governors nipples are pierced or not but ultimately, he decides, “who cares, the governor is doing a good job.”
April 30th, The USNS Comfort departs New York City after treating a mere 182 patients, with approximately 70% of those being Covid-19 patients. “I believe Comfort not only brought comfort, but also saved lives.” Governor Cuomo stated after agreeing its services were no longer needed, despite a nursing home just 21 days ago requesting its aid in caring for patients.
May 5th, Rolling Stone puts Governor Cuomo on the cover and issues the story “Andrew Cuomo Takes Charge.” The subtitle sums up the article quite well in saying, “The governor of New York found himself at the center of a deadly crisis. His response has helped guide the nation.”
May 10th, Governor Cuomo’s original executive order is replaced by a new one that states “a hospital cannot discharge a person who is COVID positive to a nursing home.”
The governor and his administration then go on to defend the original order stating, in a video here (at 3:55), that “it was their (nursing home operators) obligation to inform and it is their obligation to call the Department of Health and say ‘you have to come get this person, I can’t care for them.’” But not only does the original executive order not say anything to that effect, when Cobble Hill Health Center attempted to do just this on April 9th, they were denied.
A journalist (at 4:18) prompts “can we get some recognition though, the idea of sending covid positive people from hospitals back into nursing homes may have been flawed, that that may have been a mistake?” Governor Cuomo answers, “no, no. First of all, if you look at the facts, which is always fun, you can test your hypothesis on what’s “flawed” (in air quotes). Look at how many residents we have in nursing homes, look at the percentage of our deaths in nursing homes vis a vie in other states, we’re down by like number 34, so whatever we’re doing has worked on the facts.”
I’d like to again gesture at the New York State Attorney General’s report from the beginning of my piece, that states, “data linking the number of nursing home deaths to the admissions policy contained in the March 25th guidance is obscured by that same guidance, which also prohibited nursing homes from requiring COVID-19 testing as a criterion for admission.” So, we’re not collecting proper data on those deaths, so of course New York is down “by like number 34.” Every other State also counts Covid deaths in a hospital from a nursing home patient as a nursing home death, New York is the only state that did not.
Governor Cuomo then goes on in the press meeting, to talk about how hospital beds were a “commodity” when the original executive order was written but, to that I’d gesture to the April 30th entry of this timeline where the USNS Comfort, the ship deployed to help with overflow from hospitals and to open up more beds, left the city after treating only 182 patients. Hospital beds may have been a commodity but not an especially precious one apparently given resources made available to preserve them were hardly used at all.
May 21st, A CNN clip of Governor Andrew Cuomo goes viral as his brother teases him about his appearance and being tested for the virus. No mention of the elderly by the governor, no questions asked about it.
May 22nd, The Associated Press reports that over 4,500 Covid-19 patients were sent to nursing homes in New York thus far.
May 27th, the original March 25th executive order is removed from the state of New York’s website. Instead, the user gets an error message stating “we’re sorry, the page that you are looking for is not found,” thus removing it from public view. The page still looks like this and contains a broken link. (See it for yourself here.)
July 6th, The New York State Department of Health issues a report that declares “nursing home admissions from hospitals were not a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities,” and that the real cause is infected staff who are asymptomatic. This, of course, ends up being false, as we’ll get to shortly.
The report also claims that “approximately 6,326 COVID-positive residents were admitted to facilities between March 25, 2020 and May 8, 2020.” I think it’s worth mentioning that the Associated Press corroborates this number and adds that at this time “more than 6,400 deaths have been linked to the coronavirus in New York’s nursing home and long-term care-facilities.” I couldn’t find more data on this section but it’s interesting to me how close those numbers are.
August 3rd, The Empire Center for Public Policy files a Freedom of Information Law request, for daily tallies of the number of nursing home residents who have died of COVID-19 in hospitals after being sent in for treatment and are told the data won’t be available until November 5th. The Empire Center responds by claiming they are “hiding” the numbers in order to “claim that New York’s nursing home response was better than most other states.” A total of 62 different requests for various data sets has now been made with a total of 8 being answered at the time of writing this article.
August 3rd, The state legislature holds a hearing on nursing homes where the Commissioner of Health Howard Zucker is bombarded by questions about Covid deaths in elder care facilities. He refused to provide a tally of deaths claiming the state was still auditing that information. The same day, the state also rolled back some legal immunity for nursing home operators.
August 10th, The Associated Press begins to get suspicious. They check in with Riverdale Nursing Home which has had 4 Covid deaths according to the state, the nursing home claims they’ve had 21 deaths to the journalist. The AP writes, “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.” Democratic State Senator Gustavo Rivera, put voice to these concerns, “It seems, sir, that in this case you are choosing to define it differently so that you can look better.” The accusation being lobbed at Health Commissioner Howard Zucker.
The Associated Press goes on to note that the State Health Department surveys show 21,000 empty beds in nursing homes, which is 13,000 more than expected.
They speculate that the true number of deaths could be closer to 11,000. This is nearly double the state’s current count of 6,600.
August 20th, Governor Cuomo tries to dismiss concerns about undercounted deaths, saying “if you die in the nursing home, it’s a nursing home death. If you die in the hospital, it’s called a hospital death.” Despite the federal government and every other state with major outbreaks, not counting Covid deaths this way. This is important in tracking the effectiveness of specific policies and for the sake of comparison. It’s easy to claim you’re doing better than most other states when you aren’t counting all the deaths that every other state would be.
August 26th, The Department of Justice opens a preliminary inquiry into the coronavirus nursing home policies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Michigan that says these policies “may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents.” The Department of Justice starts by requesting data from the Governors of these states, data that ends up being purposefully delayed until after the presidential election.
September 30th, Governor Cuomo tries to claim that criticizing the states handling of elder care facilities is just politicizing people’s deaths. “Having someone who lost a loved one, saying to them, well, this was a government mess up, this was unnecessary, your father could be alive, your mother could be alive, your grandmother could be alive, that's just untrue, and frankly, it's mean.” “It just never happened that we needed a nursing home to take a Covid positive person.”
October 11th, Axios writes “Buzz Grows Around Cuomo As Biden’s Attorney General Pick.” In the article, they say “Democrats are so convinced that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo could be considered for Joe Biden's attorney general that aides at the National Governors Association, which Cuomo chairs, are looking into contingencies for replacing him.” Axios also says, “The AG would be among the most politically sensitive and high-profile jobs in a Biden administration. The Justice Department will face pressure to investigate Trump-era officials and perhaps Trump himself for wrongdoing in office.” It’s alarming to me that we could have potentially had such a corrupt person in charge of such high-level investigations.
October 13th, Penguin Random House, one of the largest book publishers in the world, signs a $5.1 million dollar book deal with the governor. The topic? Leadership. American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic, as it’s titled, became an instant New York Times Best Seller, selling more than 11,800 copies in release week. The book currently sits at 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon, one of the worlds largest book retailers, with 5 star reviews like “I watched almost every briefing CNN covered during the first couple of months of the pandemic and wondered why nobody in the US Government listened to the wisdom and common sense Cuomo spouted daily!” and “I wish the other states leadership, that now have become epicenters, would have read this and instituted the plan Cuomo put forth. That’s why it was written to save others, unfortunately they had to play politics with people lives! Thanks again to a great governor!” There are bad reviews as well, 11% (which translates to 187 negative reviews,) but these are massively outweighed by positive reviews at 75% (translating to 1273 reviews).
The Washington Post pens a glowing review concluding, “American Crisis provides an impressive road map to dealing with a crisis as serious as any we have faced.”
The Guardian goes a step above praising the book, saying “there is buzz of a prospective appointment in a Biden-Harris administration as attorney general. Through that lens, American Crisis is best viewed as a job application.”
October 28th, The Department of Justice announces that it’s expanding its inquiry into New York because it’s the only state in the country not to include death totals for nursing home residents who transferred to hospitals. Rich Azzopardi, Cuomo’s Senior Advisor calls this, a “scummy abuse of power.” As a reminder, the inquiry was started on August 26th and related to the questionable policies surrounding nursing homes.
November 20th, It’s announced that Cuomo is getting an Emmy Award, “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic.” Specifically, the “Founders Award” he received is for “crossing cultural boundaries to touch our common humanity.”
2021-
January 28th, The report I’ve often pulled from in this article, the New York State Attorney Generals Report, comes out on this date reporting mass undercounting of deaths. Democratic State Senator Gustavo Rivera says, “Families who lost loved ones deserve honest answers. For their sake, I hope that this report will help us unveil the truth and put policies in place to prevent such tragedies in the future.”
January 28th, New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Howard Zucker amends the death count, changing the total from 8,711 deaths to 13,297 deaths, that number increases when factoring in other adult care facilities held to the same rules, to 15,049 deaths. Though Zucker took issue with the word “undercount” being used. The Associated Press approximates those deaths were being undercounted by as much as “65%.”
January 29th, Cuomo responds to the Attorney General’s Report, claiming “this started as a political attack from prior administrations… who said we had more nursing home deaths in New York because of something the State Health Department did.” He goes on to say that “if they (nursing homes) took a person they could not care for, a covid-positive person they violated the law.”
I’d like to direct you back to the AG report, which says “data linking the number of nursing home deaths to the admissions policy contained in the March 25th guidance is obscured by that same guidance, which also prohibited nursing homes from requiring COVID-19 testing as a criterion for admission.” That’s a quote directly from the same report he’s pulling from. The nursing homes were not legally allowed to figure that out. I’d also like to remind you that nursing homes normally turn people away that have the flu due to the danger it presents and Cuomo’s order made it illegal to turn away Covid-19 positive residents if the only reason for them being turned away was the Covid positive diagnosis.
Part of the same press release, Governor Cuomo states “who cares? 33, 28 died in a hospital, died in a nursing home, they died.” No remorse, no apology, just a, “who cares?”
Thankfully, we finally start to get a sense of the real picture as the Cuomo administration’s narrative continues crumbling.
February 3rd, A New York State Judge rules that the state has illegally withheld nursing home data that the Empire Center asked for in a Freedom of Information Law request. “Its continued failure to provide petitioner a response, given the straightforward nature of the request … goes against FOIL’s (Freedom of Information Law) broad standard of open and transparent government and is a violation of that statute.”
February 6th, The state’s Department of Health website is finally updated to include more nursing home deaths, officially raising the tally to 13,163.
February 10th, Cuomo’s administration privately meets with Democrat lawmakers who later released the letter the administration gave them at this meeting, raising the death toll again to 15,049.
February 11th, Siena College concludes a poll studying Governor Cuomo’s approval rating on his handling of Covid, finding 83% of Democrats approved of his handling thus far as opposed to 52% of Independents and 25% of Republicans, making for an overall approval rating of 61% vs a disapproval rating of 34%. The year before Covid, Governor Cuomo actually hovered around 44% to 52% overall, making his new overall approval rating at this time of 61%, a large increase in popularity.
February 11th, Governor Cuomo’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, confirms the contents of a recording of a September conference call with Democratic state legislators, in which she admits that the governor's office withheld the true numbers of elderly Covid deaths due to concerns they would "be used against us" by the Justice Department under President Donald Trump.
DeRosa goes on to say, “right around the same time, (President Trump) turns this into a giant political football, “he (President Trump) directs the Department of Justice to do an investigation into us." "And basically, we froze, because then we were in a position where we weren't sure if what (numbers) we were going to give to the Department of Justice or what we give to you guys ... was going to be used against us," DeRosa tells the legislators. "We weren't sure if there was going to be an investigation."
DeRosa goes on to apologize, not for hiding the data, not to the families who lost loved ones, but to her fellow Democrats for the political inconvenience it caused. “So we do apologize,” she says. “I do understand the position that you were put in. I know that it is not fair. It was not our intention to put you in that political position with the Republicans.”
Fellow Democrat and Assembly Health Committee Chairman Richard Gottfried said, in rejecting the apology that, “I don’t have enough time today to explain all the reasons why I don’t give that any credit at all.”
Assemblyman Ron Kim, a Democrat from Queens who was part of the call stated DeRosa’s explanation sounded “like they admitted that they were trying to dodge having any incriminating evidence that might put the administration or the [Health Department] in further trouble with the Department of Justice.” “That’s how I understand their reasoning of why they were unable to share, in real time, the data. They had to first make sure that the state was protected against federal investigation.” Kim also didn’t accept the apology as his own uncle is presumed to have died of COVID-19 in a nursing home in April. “It’s not enough how contrite they are with us. They need to show that to the public and the families — and they haven’t done that.”
Another Democrat, State Senate Aging Committee Chairwoman Rachel May lamented, not about the thousands of dead elderly people, but how hard it made her re-election, as the nursing home details were a large point of contention at the time. “And the issue for me, the biggest issue of all is feeling like I needed to defend — or at least not attack — an administration that was appearing to be covering something up.”
You were never supposed to know any of this either, the public wasn’t, it was a private call that still has yet to be made public. To their credit, it seems to have been leaked by Democrats who refused to go along with the plan.
February 15th, Cuomo addresses the scandal saying, “the truth is everybody did everything they could.” He apologizes, not for the administration’s actions, but for the “void” of information they created by not accurately reporting deaths. “The void allowed misinformation and conspiracy, and now people are left with the thought of, "Did my loved one have to die?" And that is a brutal, brutal question to pose to a person. And I want everyone to know, everything was done.”
February 16th, Nine Democrat members of the New York State Assembly draft a letter accusing Governor Cuomo of obstruction of justice and seek to strip him of Covid emergency powers. Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim was quoted as saying, “he cares more about his own political and personal well-being than the most vulnerable members of our community.” Cuomo’s Senior Advisor Ruch Azzopardi, weighed in on the accusations offering up more excuses, “this move just plays into the hands of Republicans and their politics of division and reckless false accusations.”
February 17th, Assemblyman Ron Kim tells CNN that Governor Cuomo called him and threatened him, "Gov. Cuomo called me directly on Thursday to threaten my career if I did not cover up for Melissa (DeRosa) and what she said. He tried to pressure me to issue a statement, and it was a very traumatizing experience." Kim says that Cuomo also told him, “We’re in this business together and we don't cross certain lines and he said I hadn't seen his wrath and that he can destroy me.” “No man has ever spoken to me like that in my entire life. At some point he tried to humiliate me, asking: 'Are you a lawyer? I didn't think so. You're not a lawyer.' It almost felt like in retrospect he was trying to bait me and anger me and say something inappropriate. I'm glad I didn't.”
CNN goes on to say that Assemblyman Kim isn’t the only one. Three other Democrat lawmakers in New York reported “fierce pushback and even threats from Cuomo and his top aides since last week.” Each of the three only spoke anonymously, citing fear of retribution from the Governor. CNN says, “A New York state senator who said they had not been contacted by Cuomo but heard directly from multiple colleagues whom Cuomo had reached out to, said the governor threatened those colleagues with retaliation -- including warning some that he could ruin their political careers if they supported weakening Cuomo's executive powers.”
No legal action has been taken, related to these allegations, at this time.
February 17th, The FBI and US Attorney in Brooklyn launch a new probe “focusing on the work of some of the senior members of the governor's task force,” relating to the nursing home issues. The updates on this at my time of writing are that they’re looking into how legal immunities for nursing home operators made it into the state budget, and have subpoenaed some top aides in trying to find out “whether state resources were used to unlawfully assist in crafting or promoting the book,” of course referring to Governor Cuomo’s best seller “American Crisis: Leadership Lessons From The Covid-19 Pandemic.”
February 22nd, Just 11 of the 450 members of the state Democratic Party Committee introduce a resolution to censure Governor Cuomo over his handling of nursing homes and the subsequent cover up. New York Republicans propose a bi-partisan impeachment commission around the same time, stating, “The Legislature has a responsibility to hold this administration accountable. Rolling back the governor’s emergency powers is important, but doesn’t begin to scratch the surface of what’s needed.” This was however, met with resistance from State Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs, who said, “I think it’s outrageous that the Republican leadership in the Assembly would speak to politicize the pandemic, the work of the governor and the state health authorities on the handling of the pandemic.”
March 4th, The New York Times and Wall Street Journal report, “Top aides for New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo rewrote a June nursing home report from state health officials to hide the higher Covid-19 death toll among the state's nursing home residents.” Six anonymous sources provided documents and interviews attesting to this, lowering the initial death toll in nursing homes by nearly half.
So-
Did hiding all this data until after a presidential election pay off?
July 23rd, All civil rights probes by the Department of Justice into Nursing Home deaths as a result of policy decisions are ended in a decision not to investigate further. No justice for the families. No accountability. No investigation. No consequences. The Department of Justice, now under President Biden just decides not to look into the issue any further.
Wrap up- There is still a chance that accountability will come from the FBI but I hope you understand when I say that hope is slim in the wake of how much our “leaders” and lawmakers have cared until now. The deaths of these people apparently weren’t worth a censure or impeachment. Their deaths weren’t worth the Department of Justice properly investigating and pursuing action. I fail to see why the FBI would suddenly decide to go against the grain and come to the conclusion that these thousands of deaths mean anything in the eyes of the government that was supposed to protect them.
As of March 25th 2021, 75% of New York Democrats still approved of Cuomo’s handling of everything. These thousands of elderly people’s lives just aren’t a priority at the end of the day to the partisan mind, they’re just an unfortunate blunder to be overlooked, lest we give “gasp” Republicans some sort of win by admitting that superstar Governor Cuomo did something seriously wrong.
I must admit, I went into this piece very wrong about something myself. I thought that the more mainstream media sources just didn’t cover this scandal, because no one seemed to care, and while the media propped up the governor with dozens of frivolous pieces and heaped on praise regardless, most media outlets actually did cover the deaths of the elderly. It just didn’t make a difference in what many people thought. It didn’t change minds. Those thousands of people, didn’t matter enough. These fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives, didn’t matter, as the praise kept being heaped on and approval numbers actually rose.
It can’t be overstated how popular this man is. These products are still being sold.
These elderly people, and they are people despite not being treated like it, have just been viewed as pawns to be shuffled around the board in a greater political game where the only thing that matters is winning more power. Power, that was only lost after numerous accusations of sexual assault were made against Governor Cuomo ultimately resulting in his resignation. This is because people cared about that and got outraged. I’m not at all saying they shouldn’t, it is extremely important, but he never should have even made it that far. The death of thousands should’ve been enough to have him removed from office well before some of these crimes even took place.
I hurt for the families above all. I’ve heard multiple excuses in researching this subject, “those people were old and going to die anyway.” “Why does it matter where or how they died, they died.” “Why should we care?” My short answer is, they didn’t have to die like this. State Senator Alessandra Biaggi, a Democrat who serves the Bronx district of New York said,
“You’re only sorry that you all got caught. Because of your decisions, thousands of people died who did not have to die.”
Families still gather to hold vigils for lost loved ones and demand accountability.
It’s our responsibility, as a people, to take care of the most vulnerable members of our society. In the future we must prioritize making responsible and humane decisions regarding the elderly, consulting with experts, families and when possible, elderly patients themselves.
I’d like to recognize, now that it’s mostly said and done, that the New York Post and Associated Press both diligently reported this story, put in a lot of footwork, did the digging to get to the bottom of things and all their efforts are massively appreciated.
Vivian Zayas, who lost her mother to Covid in a New York nursing home, started the organization Voices for Seniors to advocate for accountability and reform to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. Support them here or at the donation link below.