It’s pretty straightforward, folks:
Back on March 31st, New Jersey Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli told nursing home administrators on a conference call that they would need to accept COVID-19 positive admissions. NJ.com of all places broke the news on Sunday.
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Apparently, not all of the administrators took the Murphy Administration’s direction lying down.
“Patients will die,” one unamed administrator is reported as saying. “You understand that by asking us to take COVID patients, by demanding we take COVID patients, that patients will die in nursing homes that wouldn’t have otherwise died had we screened them out.”
When Perichilli discussed separating positive patients and their caretakers, she encountered more pushback.
“You have asked us to separate safely and create our own wing and take in COVID-19′s from the hospital,” said another administrator. “The problem, of course, is there is no separating safely. It’s almost certain that even though you have staff only on that unit, something will migrate.”
“Within a week, 200 facilities notified us that they could not accept new admissions,” said New Jersey Department of Health spokeswoman Donna Leusner according to the NJ.com report. The facilities complained (clearly correctly) that they couldn’t do what the Murphy Administration wanted without compromising safety.
The rest is history. As of this morning almost a full year later, the state’s *official* lab-confirmed death toll of nursing home residents and staff stands at nearly 8,000 (7,952 to be precise).
How many might’ve been saved at the Murphy Administration listened? We’ll never know, but it’s safe to say some of those 8,000 would still be with us today, staying ‘6 feet apart’ instead of being buried six feet under the earth.
Is this the first you’re hearing about this new major twist in 2020’s most awful story? Which is really saying something?
If ‘yes,’ then you probably get most of your news from broadcast television.
Fox News covered the NJ.com story on Tuesday. So did a number of conservative sites including The Washington Examiner and The Federalist.
WNBC, WABC, WCBS, WCAU, WPVI, KYW have all ignored the story. As of Tuesday morning – 48 hours after the NJ.com story broke – New Jersey’s broadcast media has devoted 0 minutes to the smok(iest) gun yet uncovered in the Garden State long term care facility debacle.
Also on Sunday, Phil Murphy appeared on Face The Nation and demanded that New Jersey nursing homes “pay the price” for their decisions during the pandemic.
If you ever wondered why Phil Murphy’s public approval rating isn’t upside down?
Wonder no longer. The answer is pretty obvious.
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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County).
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