An incredible 43 percent of coronavirus deaths occurred in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities (ALF), reports Forbes.
The 2.1 million Americans who live in nursing homes and ALFs represent just 0.62 percent of the population, but a staggering 43 percent of America’s coronavirus deaths.
Forbes adds that this is almost certainly an undercount:
States like New York exclude from their nursing home death tallies those who die in a hospital. Outside of New York, more than half of all deaths from COVID-19 are of residents in long-term care facilities., even if they were originally infected in an assisted living facility.
In other words, if you remove New York from the tally, the percentage of American nursing home deaths jumps to over 50 percent.
In Minnesota, the number is a breathtaking 81.4 percent.
Washington State: 61.1 percent.
Pennsylvania: 69.2 percent.
Ohio: 70 percent.
Virginia: 62.8 percent.
North Carolina: 63.3 percent.
Massachusetts: 61.9 percent.
New Hampshire: 69.8 percent.
Michigan, which like New York and New Jersey, forced nursing homes to accept patients still infected with the coronavirus, and is refusing to release its number of nursing home deaths.
Gee, I wonder why.
Florida, a state the corporate media have relentlesslyand falsely smeared as irresponsible over its refusal to institute these stupid one-size-fits-all lockdowns, has one of the lowest percentages of nursing home deaths: 43.5 percent — which is even more impressive considering Florida’s abnormally large senior population.
Forbes says the contrast between New York and Florida is no accident:
Contrast the decisions by governors like Cuomo with those of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. In Florida, all nursing home workers were required to be screened for COVID-19 symptoms before entering a facility. On March 15, before most states had locked down, DeSantis signed an executive order that banned nursing home visitations from friends and family, and also banned hospitals from discharging SARS-CoV-2-infected patients into long-term care facilities.
Compare that policy to that of Govs. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), and Phil Murphy (D-NJ), who would not even allow nursing homes to turn down an infected patient.
Here’s what we know…
We locked down the sick and the healthy, the young and the old, and by extension took them out of their schools, shuttered their businesses, and destroyed some 40 million jobs.
But we didn’t stop there, did we?
Oh, no…
Retirees, those who are no longer working, those who are most susceptible to the coronavirus — instead of locking them down away from the coronavirus, Democrat governor after Democrat governor after Democrat governor mandated that the infection be poured directly into the very facilities that house those most at risk.
And it’s not as if these Democrat governors did not know this. By the time the virus hit America, we already knew this was a virus that devastated seniors, especially seniors in nursing homes. We learned that from Italy.
Think about that…
We’re hit with a virus that primarily kills retirees, so the government locked up all the students and working people who aren’t at any real risk, and then forced infection into the homes of retirees who are.
Imagine how different everything would look had these states protected their seniors. Imagine how much lower the death count would be. Imagine how much lower the infection and fatality rates would be… Imagine how many fewer lives would have been shattered had we been guided by the science instead of panic — had we not locked down those who were never in any real danger…
What a debacle.
As far as domestic policy goes, the government reaction to the coronavirus is the biggest and most deadly debacle in American history.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
Editor’s note: We have removed a statement comparing COVID-19 to the seasonal flu. Coronavirus appears at this time to be more deadly that the flu in the vast majority of demographics.
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