By Matt Rooney
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The “woman who needs no introduction” – Murphy’s Health Comissioner Judith Persichilli – put long-term care facilities in a bind, Save Jerseyans. She directed them to admit residents regardless of whether they were COVID-19 positive, a decision which has undoubtedly directly led to hundreds if not thousands of deaths.
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“No patient/resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the post-acute care setting solely based on a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. Persons under investigation for COVID-19 who have undergone testing in the hospital shall not be discharged until results are available,” Persichilli commanded in her fateful March 31st letter. “Post-acute care facilities are prohibited from requiring a hospitalized patient/resident who is determined medically stable to be tested for COVID-19 prior to admission or readmission.”
You don’t have to be an infectious disease expert to see what happened here.
Long-term care facilities (for all their faults in some cases) were set up to fail by the state. The ensuing carnage was inevitable; nearly 53% of New Jersey’s over 9,000 classified COVID-19 deaths happened in long-term care facilities.
Enter Spartacus. Unsurprisingly, he’s squawking and attention-seeking on this issue, but he wouldn’t dare point a finger at Murphy or Persichilli. Perish the thought! He’s sponsoring federal legislation with Connecticut’s Sidney Blumenthal citing “training” and other preparedness items with the clear implication being that THEY are the root causes of the disaster:
This crisis has ravaged nursing homes in New Jersey and across the country. I'm working with @SenBlumenthal on legislation that would provide workers in senior care facilities with the training and equipment they need to keep their residents safe. https://t.co/wEFmsX5VPe
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) May 11, 2020
Booker’s release says his legislation, among other actions, “[r]equires weekly testing for residents and daily pre-shift testing for staff, or screenings until sufficient tests become available.”
For what purpose? The Murphy Administration won’t let them exclude anyone regardless of the test results!
And is more PPE and better “training” able to compensate for an asinine “shove all the old sick people into a few places” policy? I doubt it.
At least one of the New Jersey long-term care facilities in the news (the one were over a dozen bodies were crammed into a morgue) has been cited for violations. Assuming it deserved the citations? Then the laws were already on the books; they simply weren’t followed. Do nursing homes need to be “trained” to follow laws which were already on the books?
Trenton had a responsibility to enforce its own rules and regs. Trenton should’ve intervened on Day #1 of the crisis to make sure they were being followed.
It didn’t.
It’s obvious what Spartacus is trying to pull here. Senator Booker is helping lead the great whitewash that’s already underway, Save Jerseyans. We can’t let them get away with it.
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