Was Killing Seniors By Putting Coronavirus Patients Into Low-Rated Nursing Homes in “Good Faith”?
Was Killing Seniors By Putting Coronavirus Patients Into Low-Rated Nursing Homes in “Good Faith”?
By Daniel Greenfield
Democrats keep calling for a reckoning over the 200,000 coronavirus death toll figure. They deserve to get it.
Cuomo, Whitmer, Newsom, Murphy, Wolf, and other Democrat governors in the worst hotspots in the country forced nursing homes to accept coronavirus patients killing tens of thousands of seniors. And if Republicans weren’t so inept at basic messaging, that’s what we would have been talking about for the past 6 months.
Speaking of Whitmer.
State Sen. Ed McBroom, R-Vulcan, pointed out the consequences, including a third of all state coronavirus deaths, of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s decision to utilize long-term care facilities as overflow capacity for positive patients.
The mistakes, however, were made “in good faith,” said McBroom, the head of the Senate Oversight Committee to members of the Joint Select Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic.
Rep. Matt Hall, R-Marshall, and other Republican legislators questioned McBroom and Dr. Betty Chu, co-Chair of the Michigan Nursing Homes COVID-19 Preparedness Task Force at the Sep. 9 session. The Democrats on the bipartisan committee either didn’t ask questions or didn’t attend.
Totally good faith behavior.
And the Democrats prove their good faith by essentially ignoring or boycotting the hearing about why thousands of seniors died. Meanwhile these same Democrats are happy to blame President Trump for the death toll without any mention of good faith.
While McBroom told his fellow Republicans that the lack of time for planning led to bad decisions, future recommendations can’t include allowing nursing home with low health ratings to be used as “hubs” for COVID-positive patients.
“Why did we ever choose some of the single-star rated facilities as hubs,” he asked. “What are our statistical differences in deaths and infections that occurred in facilities that were single star versus those that were four or five-star?”
Good faith.
We stacked seniors and infected patients in some of the worst facilities in the state, which, among other things, meant facilities that didn’t care about patient safety, that had poor cleanliness and sterilization, and that was likely to have staff move between infected and uninfected patients while working extended shifts… in good faith.
But five-star facilities would have been the least likely to agree to be hubs. The facilities with the lowest standards would have wanted the money most.
All in good faith.
The presumption of good faith doesn’t apply when your actions had easily foreseeable consequences. They’re at best a sign that you don’t care or at worst, deliberate.
“I put grandma down in a pool of kerosene, decided to smoke, and then tossed the match over my shoulder… in good faith.”
This focus on mistakes made in nursing homes is just the GOP “continuing to waste time pointing fingers, not looking for solutions,” tweeted Sen. Adam Hollier, D-Detroit, during the hearing.
All this focus on how our girl killed thousands of senior citizens is just finger pointing. What we need are solutions like locking down the state while Governor Grandma-Killer goes boating.