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Gov. Cuomo Says GOP ‘Playing politics’ Over NY Nursing Home COVID Deaths

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Screenshot 2020 04 15 12.43.10

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo shifted the blame for the thousands of COVID-19 nursing home deaths in his state, saying that the Republicans are “playing politics” over it, in an interview with MSNBC host Stephanie Ruhle on Monday.

Despite Cuomo’s denial, he did in fact order nursing homes to admit COVID-19 patients in March, knowing that the elderly were one of the most at-risk populations. And, later, The Governor attempted to cover the order up, according to The Daily Caller’s Peter Hasson who reported last month that the order was mysteriously deleted from the New York State Department of Health’s website.

“The Republicans, Stephanie, are playing politics. They don’t want to talk about how they are now handling this COVID virus,” Gov. Cuomo said.

He added, recognizing that thousands of parents’ and grandparents’ lives were lost in New York as a result of the policy, “Yes, I understand that. And there are facts, let’s look at the facts, right, rather than the political rhetoric. Yes, we had more people die in nursing homes than anywhere else because we had more people die.”

Gov. Cuomo then blamed the Federal government who “missed the boat and never told us that this virus was coming from Europe and not from China. And January, February, March before they did the European travel ban, 3 million people came from Europe and brought the virus to New York and the Federal government didn’t know and the Federal government and the CDC and all of them failed to handle this pandemic and warn this nation.”

“So New York had more cases, more deaths, and more deaths and more deaths in nursing homes because that’s who the virus affects,” Cuomo explained. “It affects senior citizens, we know that. You look at any state and they had a tremendous number of deaths in nursing homes. It’s all a political charade and it’s an ugly one, frankly to talk about a number of deaths and suggest there was politics added.”

Gov. Cuomo continued, saying that the number of cases of the virus “are still going up” in states like Florida, Texas, and Oklahoma. “Look in the mirror and say ‘you know what, we were wrong, we’re killing people unnecessarily by this irresponsible, reckless reopening. And it’s not working for the economy either,” he said.

House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, along with several of his Republican colleagues, sent letters last week to Democratic governors, including Cuomo, who enacted the lethal policy, requesting that they provide answers as to why they evaded early warnings from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to protect the elderly.

“He says it’s just ‘politics.’ People lost parents & grandparents. That’s NOT just politics. You know a Democrat is in trouble when even MSNBC is calling them out,” Scalise wrote on Twitter Monday in response to Cuomo’s interview.

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COVID-19

Former Harvard medical professor says he was fired for opposing Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates

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Covid

“My hope is that someday, Harvard will find its way back to academic freedom and independence.” That is the heartfelt message from Dr. Martin Kulldorff, a former Harvard University professor of medicine since 2003, who recently announced publicly he was fired for “clinging to the truth” in his opposition to Covid lockdowns and vaccine mandates.

Kulldorff posted the news on social media alongside an essay published in the City Journal last week. The epidemiologist and biostatistician also spoke with National Review about the incident. Kulldorff says he was fired by the Harvard-affiliated Mass General Brigham hospital system and put on a leave of absence by Harvard Medical School in November 2021 over his stance on Covid.

Nearly two years later, in October 2023, his leave of absence was terminated as a matter of policy, marking the end of his time at the university. Harvard severed ties with Kulldorff “all on their initiative,” he said.

The history of the medical professional’s public stance on Covid-19 vaccines and mandates is detailed by National Review:

Censorship and rejection led Kulldorff to co-author the Great Barrington Declaration in October 2020 alongside Dr. Sunetra Gupta of Oxford University and Dr. Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford University. Together, the three public-health scientists argued for limited and targeted Covid-19 restrictions that “protect the elderly, while letting children and young adults live close to normal lives,” as Kulldorff put it in his essay.

“The declaration made clear that no scientific consensus existed for school closures and many other lockdown measures. In response, though, the attacks intensified—and even grew slanderous,” he wrote, naming former National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins as the one who ordered a “devastating published takedown” of the declaration.

Testifying before Congress in January, Collins reaffirmed his previous statements attacking the Great Barrington Declaration.

Despite the coordinated effort against it, the document has over 939,000 signatures in favor of age-based focused protection.

The Great Barrington Declaration’s authors, who advocated the quick reopening of schools, have been vindicated by recent studies that confirm pandemic-era school closures were, in fact, detrimental to student learning. The data show that students from third through eighth grade who spent most of the 2020–21 school year in remote learning fell more than half a grade behind in math scores on average, while those who attended school in person dropped a little over a third of a grade, according to a New York Times review of existing studies. In addition to learning losses, school closures did very little to stop the spread of Covid, studies show.

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