homersapien

I haven't posted any opinion pieces that "cover" for Cuomo. The only references I have posted - or even alluded to - regarding Cuomo are reports, not opinion. But don't you have bigger "personalities" to worry about?

I can speculate why that may have seemed like the best option at the time, but I don't know. Neither do you.

That's quite a tale. But since there are no references, so I will assume it's woven solely from your personal opinion.

I think you are vastly underestimating the possibility for a governor - any governor - to simply **** up. But if you don't think it was a "honest mistake", what do you suppose was his motivation? I mean, I understand Trump's motivation to downplay the pandemic, but I don't think that applies to Cuomo. There's no reason for me to think he was making operating decisions based on wishful thinking or because he "didn't care about these people". That just doesn't pass the common sense test. (Now the reporting issue - which came later - is different. That does smack of a CYA cover-up.)

Is Cuomo Directive to Blame for Nursing Home COVID Deaths, as US Official Claims? By Michelle Andrews August 24, 2020 [Updated at 1:45 p.m. ET on Feb. 16, 2021: Editor’s note: In recent weeks, N.Y. Gov. Andrew Cuomo has faced increasing scrutiny regarding his handling of information related to covid-related deaths among nursing home residents. A recent report by N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James noted that the death count may be 50% higher than what Cuomo’s administration provided. The attorney general’s estimate includes deaths that occurred after residents were transferred to the hospital, for example, a potential for undercounting that was mentioned in this fact check. The fact check itself focused on a policy issued by Cuomo in March directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having covid-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Our ruling of “Mostly False” is unchanged by this new information. That rating was based on evidence that while the introduction of covid-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on the spread of the coronavirus, Michael Caputo’s statement suggested it was solely responsible. That’s not what the evidence showed, then or now.] “Does the #DemConvention know @NYGovCuomo forced nursing homes across NY to take in COVID positive patients and planted the seeds of infection that killed thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers?” — Michael Caputo, assistant secretary for public affairs, Department of Health and Human Services, in an Aug. 17 tweet On the first night of the Democratic National Convention, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was among the first in a weeklong parade of speakers to issue scathing critiques of the Trump administration’s coronavirus response. Cuomo’s criticisms drew a quick reply in a tweet from Michael Caputo, an assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Health and Human Services. “Does the #DemConvention know @NYGovCuomo forced nursing homes across NY to take in COVID positive patients and planted the seeds of infection that killed thousands of grandmothers and grandfathers?” he wrote. It was an easy jab: Cuomo has been dogged by criticism for months over his March advisory directing nursing homes in the state to accept patients who had or were suspected of having COVID-19. As long as they were medically stable, the notice said, it was appropriate to move patients in. Further, nursing homes were prohibited from requiring that medically stable prospective residents be tested for the virus before they arrived. Between March 25 and May 8, approximately 6,326 COVID-positive patients were admitted to nursing homes, according to a state health department report. While experts say this policy was flawed, is it fair to say that the governor’s directive “forced” nursing homes to take patients who were sick with COVID-19? And to what extent did that strategy sow the seeds of disease and death? When we examined the evidence, we found it was less clear-cut than the statement makes it seem. The policy likely had an effect, but epidemiologists identified additional factors that fed the problem. What’s more, the policy did not “force” nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients. Nursing homes interpreted it this way. We checked with HHS to find the basis for Caputo’s comment but got no response. The Back Story As the virus tore through nursing homes, killing dozens at some of them, Cuomo came under withering censure. His administration’s policy, implemented with an eye toward freeing up hospital beds for an onslaught of COVID patients, seemed to disregard the risks to frail and elderly nursing home residents who were especially vulnerable to the disease. According to the COVID Tracking Project, 6,624 people have died of COVID-19 in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities in New York, accounting for 26% of the state’s 25,275 COVID deaths. Some say the true number of deaths is much higher because, unlike many states, New York does not count the deaths of former nursing home residents who are transferred to hospitals and die there as nursing home deaths. Cuomo’s explanation for the policy — that he was simply following guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — didn’t cut it. A recent PolitiFact piece examining his claim rated it “Mostly False.” In May, the governor amended the March order, prohibiting hospitals from discharging patients to nursing homes unless they tested negative for COVID-19. A Misguided Approach In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when New York was the epicenter and more than a thousand people were being hospitalized daily, there was a genuine fear that hospitals would not be able to accommodate the influx of desperately ill patients. Moving people out of the hospitals and into nursing homes was one strategy to help hospitals meet these needs. According to the CDC guidance cited in the earlier PolitiFact story, there were two factors to consider when deciding whether to discharge a patient with COVID-19 to a long-term care facility: whether the patient was medically ready, and whether the facility could implement the recommended infection-control procedures to safely care for a patient recovering from the virus. A document from the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services said nursing homes should accept only patients they were able to care for. Long-standing state guidance is based on the same condition. Still, nursing homes didn’t believe turning away patients with COVID-19 was an option. “On its face, it looked like a requirement,” said Christopher Laxton, executive director of the Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents medical professionals in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities. “The nursing homes we spoke to felt it was a mandate, and a number of them felt they had no choice but to take COVID patients.” While the overarching guidance not to take patients in unless they could be safely cared for may have been clear, nursing homes’ experience was often different, said. Richard Mollot, executive director of the Long-Term Care Community Coalition, an advocacy group for elderly and disabled people. “There was little reason for nursing homes to think they should only take in patients if they have the ability to do so safely because those rules are not generally enforced on a regular basis.” Bottom line: State and federal rules didn’t force nursing homes to accept COVID-positive patients, but many of them believed they had no other choice. A Lethal Result? How much of the blame for the deaths of thousands of people in nursing homes from COVID-19 can be attributed to Cuomo’s March advisory? That is the 6,000-person question. In a July analysis of COVID-19 nursing home deaths, the state concluded that the deadly virus was introduced by nursing home staff members rather than sick patients. It noted that peak nursing home resident mortality from COVID-19 on April 8 preceded the peak influx of COVID patients on April 14. In addition, it found that nearly 1 in 4 nursing home workers — 37,500 people — were infected with the virus between March and early June. Based on these and other factors, the report concluded that the state admissions policy could not have been a driver of nursing home infections or fatalities. Epidemiologists and nursing home advocates beg to differ. “To say that introducing patients [to nursing homes] who had COVID did not cause problems is ridiculous,” said Laxton. Calling the study’s approach “pretty flawed,” Denis Nash, an epidemiologist at City University of New York School of Public Health, said he didn’t agree with the report’s conclusion that the policy had nothing to do with deaths. Others had the same view. “I didn’t think they showed data to say [the policy] is not a ‘driver,’” said Rupak Shivakoti, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. But Gary Holmes, assistant commissioner at the New York State Department of Health, had a different take. Critics of the report, he said, must be deliberately ignoring the rising death tolls in nursing homes in hot spots across the country. “Public health officials in those states are experiencing (and acknowledging) what NY’s report indicated weeks ago: these facilities are microcosms of the community and transmission is occurring unknowingly by asymptomatic spread among staff members,” Holmes said, in an email. While public health experts quibbled with the report’s self-serving claim that the governor’s policy wasn’t a factor in COVID-19 nursing home deaths, they nevertheless agreed with the report’s broader conclusion that nursing home staffers as well as visitors, before they were banned, were likely the main drivers of COVID-19 infection and death in nursing homes. “Based on the timeline of the policy and deaths in the city, it is very unlikely that policy contributed to thousands of deaths,” said Shivakoti. Infection control is a long-standing problem at nursing homes, Nash said, and the COVID deaths were a basic failure of infection control. That said, “it’s unclear how many of the deaths the policy might have caused.” Also unclear: how many of the dead were grandmothers and grandfathers. Our Ruling In a tweet, the HHS assistant secretary for public affairs said that New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo “forced” nursing homes across the state to admit COVID-positive patients and that this policy fueled the spread of COVID-19 that led to thousands of deaths in the nursing home population. Although nursing homes felt pressure to accept COVID-positive patients, they were not actually forced to do so. State regulations require nursing homes to accept patients only if they can care for them, and they could have refused them on those grounds. In addition, it’s unclear the extent to which the governor’s policy was responsible for nursing home COVID-19 deaths. Infection control is a long-standing problem in nursing homes, predating the pandemic, and a report showed peak numbers of nursing home deaths came prior to the peak influx of patients as a result of Cuomo’s advisory. While the introduction of COVID-19 positive patients into nursing homes no doubt had an effect on infection spread, Caputo’s statement suggests it was solely responsible. That’s not what the evidence shows. We rate this Mostly False. https://khn.org/news/is-cuomo-directive-to-blame-for-nursing-home-covid-deaths-as-us-official-claims/ Cuomo's biggest mistake was in the reporting, which smacked of a cover-up.

Where would you have put them? They already were relegated to nursing home care and the hospitals were too stressed to serve as an ongoing nursing care facility. Sounds to me like the real problem was with the competency/capability of the nursing home facilities. What did these "other states" that did so much better do? How did they handle it? Serious questions.

First, no one has said he is "absolved" from any fair criticism or judgement. But what's "interesting" to me is the all the outrage being directed toward a Democratic governor - in hindsight -by MAGAs who were fine with Dear Leader lying about the severity of the pandemic, and actively fomenting protests against other Democratic governors ("free Michigan!) Timeline: How Trump Has Downplayed The Coronavirus Pandemic President Trump, who announced overnight that he and first lady Melania Trump have tested positive for the coronavirus, has repeatedly downplayed the severity of the coronavirus pandemic and often contradicted public health experts and members of his own administration in their more grave warnings about the virus. Most notably, Trump acknowledged to veteran journalist Bob Woodward that he knowingly downplayed the coronavirus, even though he knew it was more deadly than the seasonal flu. "I wanted to always play it down," the president said in a March interview, the audio recording of which was made public in September. "I still like playing it down, because I don't want to create a panic." Here is a sampling of what Trump has said about the coronavirus threat: Jan. 22 The day that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed what it then thought was the first case of the coronavirus in the United States, Trump told a CNBC reporter that the country had it "completely under control" and suggested that he was not concerned about a pandemic. "We have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine," he said. Feb. 27 During a February meeting with Black leaders, held as U.S. health officials warned that the coronavirus pandemic might stay with the country for some time, Trump said a "miracle" might make the coronavirus pandemic "disappear." "It's going to disappear. One day — it's like a miracle — it will disappear," Trump said. "And from our shores, we — you know, it could get worse before it gets better. It could maybe go away. We'll see what happens. Nobody really knows." March 11 During an Oval Office address, Trump said that for "the vast majority of Americans, the risk is very, very low" — though he did warn that the "elderly population must be very, very careful." That same day, Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the White House's coronavirus task force, told members of Congress at a House hearing that "bottom line, it's going to get worse." How much worse, Fauci said, would depend on the country's ability to contain the "influx of people who are infected" coming from other countries and "the ability to contain and mitigate within our own country." April 3 When the CDC made its initial recommendation that people wear cloth or fabric face coverings, Trump said it was going to be "really, a voluntary thing" and emphasized that he would not do it. "You can do it. You don't have to do it. I'm choosing not to do it, but some people may want to do it, and that's OK. It may be good. Probably will. They're making a recommendation. It's only a recommendation," Trump said. Trump — who stresses how often he and the people around him are tested — wore a mask in public for the first time in July, for a visit to the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. May 19 Trump told reporters that he viewed the high number of U.S. cases of the coronavirus as a "badge of honor" and a reflection of the country's testing capacity. "When we have a lot of cases, I don't look at that as a bad thing," the president said. "I look at that in a certain respect as being a good thing, because it means our testing is much better. So, if we were testing a million people instead of 14 million people, we would have far few cases, right? "So, I view it as a badge of honor. Really, it's a badge of honor," he added. "It's a great tribute to the testing and all of the work that a lot of professionals have done." Days later, the U.S. recorded 100,000 known deaths from COVID-19. July 19 During an interview with Fox News Sunday, the president seemed to suggest that some people without serious symptoms were being tested and confirmed as positives and added to the total number of infections. "Many of those cases are young people that would heal in a day," Trump said. "They have the sniffles, and we put it down as a test." He added that many of those sick "are going to get better very quickly." At the time of Trump's interview, more than 3.7 million coronavirus cases had been confirmed in the United States, and more than 140,000 Americans had died. Sept. 21 During a campaign speech in Swanton, Ohio, Trump claimed without evidence that the coronavirus "affects virtually nobody," downplaying the risk of the extent of the pandemic and the danger that it poses to individuals. In that campaign speech, he suggested that the virus is dangerous only to older people with heart problems and preexisting conditions, sentiments that go against the guidance of most public health experts. "It affects elderly people, elderly people with heart problems, if they have other problems, that's what it really affects, that's it. In some states thousands of people — nobody young — below the age of 18, like nobody — they have a strong immune system — who knows?" Trump said. "Take your hat off to the young because they have a hell of an immune system. It affects virtually nobody," he added. "It's an amazing thing — by the way, open your schools!" https://www.npr.org/sections/latest-updates-trump-covid-19-results/2020/10/02/919432383/how-trump-has-downplayed-the-coronavirus-pandemic How many lives did that cost? What a bunch of hypocrites you all are.

Waaaaah Waaaaaah Whaaaaah! Liberal press!! MAGAs. ******* cultist QAnon believers. And they think their biggest problem is a "liberal" press.

No, what you and your lap dog are claiming what AMA actually said is wrong. My responses - including a clarification by the AMA - explains how. And the AMA is America's foremost lobbying organization for doctors. Look it up. Where's that nihilistic cynicism that's your stock in trade??

Pointing out that a drug with potentially serious side affects has not been approved for the reason it's being taken is not "fear mongering". It's a simple statement of fact. But knock yourself out, take as much of it as you can get your doctor to prescribe. And if you're really concerned about avoiding damage, I suggest you would do more good trying to convince more of your fellow MAGAs to take one of the vaccines - or wear masks for that matter. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/27-vaccinated-coronavirus-republicans-conservatives-poll/story?id=70962377

Nevertheless - ad hominem attacks and typos aside - the premise of your OP is false. And I wouldn't try lecturing anyone about science, something you are obviously ill-equipped to do.

It's probably been used everywhere for months. As far as I know, it's not been "banned" anywhere for "off-label prescriptions". But, the FDA (not a doctor's lobby) has revoked their emergency authorization "that allowed for chloroquine phosphate and hydroxychloroquine sulfate donated to the Strategic National Stockpile to be used to treat certain hospitalized patients with COVID-19 when a clinical trial was unavailable, or participation in a clinical trial was not feasible." https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/coronavirus-covid-19-update-fda-revokes-emergency-use-authorization-chloroquine-and

The fact the AMA (essentially a doctors lobby) reserves the right of physicians to do pretty do much whatever they damn well want proscribing drugs (SURPRISE! ), does not constitute a scientific endorsement regarding the medical efficacy or safety of such drugs. I realize this is far too subtle for MAGAs to understand or appreciate, but it's hardly surprising, considering their disdain for facts.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/dec/16/rush-limbaugh/no-american-medical-association-didnt-rescind-stat/

Bo is starting to "push". And why not? It's not like we can grind our way back.

That was a difficult tackle to make. He lunged just at the right moment. Very athletic on his part.

Bo looked really fast. Anyone know his '40' time?

Without an effective oppositional party, we become a one party government. So, if Republicans can and do use constitutional (lack of) limitations to maximize partisan power it's better for the country that Democrats do the same.

And anyone who has a mailed ballot postmarked before that deadline has met it. Like Dub said, Kavanaugh's ruling is the exact equivalent of closing a polling place while people are still in line. And keep in mind that - pre-pandemic - more Republicans voted by mail than Democrats.

The obstruction against Obama was unprecedented. Guess you didn't notice, huh?

It doesn't. (Maybe that will eventually lead to constitutional change if the American people don't like it.) But if we are going to have a two party system and one party is playing hardball, the other has a duty to play the same way.

Republicans have already packed state supreme courts Norms against changing the size of courts for partisan reasons are selectively upheld By Marin K. Levy Marin K. Levy is a professor of law at Duke Law School and author of "Packing and Unpacking State Courts," published in the William & Mary Law Review earlier this year. Oct. 26, 2020 at 6:00 a.m. EDT The Senate’s bare Republican majority is poised to confirm Amy Coney Barrett to a seat on the Supreme Court. But the controversy sparked by her nomination will continue, and Democrats are already discussing whether and how to “pack” the court by creating new seats. That debate, though, and especially the Republican rhetoric against court-packing, is missing an important development: numerous recent efforts across the country, the majority of them spearheaded by Republicans, to pack (and unpack) state courts. Republican leaders have consistently described changing the size of the Supreme Court (which varied until 1869, when it reached its modern total of nine seats) in dire terms. At the Barrett hearings, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) said such a move would “do great political harm to our government.” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) stated that expanding the court would be "an abuse of power.” And Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) went one step further, calling court-packing a “partisan suicide bombing.” But such “bombings” have frequently been attempted at the state level, where courts collectively decide the vast majority of the country’s civil and criminal cases. In 2018, more than 33 million such cases were initiated in state courts, compared with 376,000 in federal district courts. State courts decide cases with at least as much importance to individual lives and national policies alike as federal courts do, including crucial matters, such as partisan gerrymandering, that the federal courts have tended to avoid. That makes the attempts to pack — or unpack — state courts especially important. In the past decade alone, lawmakers in 11 states have introduced at least 20 bills to expand or contract the size of their state supreme courts. The vast majority of these efforts were made by Republicans, often for apparent partisan advantage. That is, many of these lawmakers appear to have attempted to change the size of their highest state court to affect its ideological composition — and two of these attempts have succeeded. The first so-called success was in Arizona. Early in 2016, a Republican lawmaker introduced House Bill 2537, which sought to expand the Arizona Supreme Court from five to seven justices. The Republican-controlled legislature approved the measure, despite no support from Democrats. Nor was it supported by any of the court’s five justices, with the chief justice writing to the governor that additional seats were “not required by the Court’s caseload” and in fact would be “unwarranted” given how costly such a proposal would be at a time when other court-related needs were “underfunded.” Several news outlets called the bill an attempt to “Bring Back Court-Packing,” noting that the Republican governor, Doug Ducey, would select the new justices from a list created by the Arizona Commission on Appellate Court Appointments (whose members the governor nominates). Days later, the governor signed the bill into law. The two new justices (both appointed by Ducey) took their seats in December 2016, tilting that court further to the right. Georgia offers another example of successful court-packing. In 2016, the Supreme Court of Georgia had four Democratic and three Republican appointees. That spring, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a bill expanding the court to nine justices and giving the Republican governor — who promptly signed the bill into law — the power to fill the two new seats in the first instance. By early 2017, then-Gov. Nathan Deal had done so, resulting in a “more conservative-leaning court.” Although court-packing bills have not made it into law in other states recently, some have been seriously considered. A Republican-sponsored bill that would have split the Florida Supreme Court into separate civil and criminal courts of last resort — and added three seats in the process — passed in the state House but failed in the Senate. In Montana, a Republican proposal to unpack the state Supreme Court by removing two seats (the governor was a Democrat at the time) received a hearing but died in committee. Democrats, too, have made a few attempts of late to pack and unpack courts, including in Alabama and Louisiana, though they have no recent successes — perhaps due in part to the fact that Republicans have controlled many more state legislatures in the past decade. Court-packing is a dreadful option. Biden shouldn’t rule it out. It is nothing new, of course, to see politicians use the rhetoric of principle to advance partisan preferences. Nor do experiences with state court-packing and unpacking offer easy lessons about the politics or wisdom of the enterprise. But the state experience might suggest that norms against court-packing are not as strong as Republican leaders suggest. Thus far, state officials responsible for court-packing proposals seem not to have faced significant political repercussions. On the other hand, neither have such proposals always, or even often, succeeded. Still, any effort to alter the structure of the courts — whether through their size, their selection method or their jurisdiction — must be carefully weighed against the very real threats that doing so would pose to judicial decision-making and independence, which is hard to measure in the short term. That is why the debate over the size of the U.S. Supreme Court, even if sparked by Barrett’s nomination, cannot end with her confirmation. There are deeper and lingering questions about the size, structure and function of all courts — questions that should be asked, even if the answers are not immediately clear. And arguments over those questions must be informed not by what seems politically expedient but with what has already been politically attempted. One of the central tasks in law is grappling with precedent — the principles laid down by prior decisions. Lawyers and judges can argue why certain precedents are on point, or why they must be distinguished in some way. What they cannot do is ignore them. There may be reasons to distinguish state courts from the U.S. Supreme Court, but Republican leaders have not offered any. Instead, the current Republican argument against court-packing simply ignores precedent that Republicans themselves set. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/10/26/court-packing-republicans-states/

No, it's not sour grapes, it's a genuine concern about the aspects of our constitution that allow a McConnell and a minority party to refuse to even consider a SCOTUS nominee by a duly elected POTUS representing the majority of voters. (for example). As you say, our constitution was designed to deal with the politics of the United States 233 years ago. The country is not the same. The constitution needs to be amended to reflect modern conditions. I am fine with protection of minority rights, but what we have is a rule by a minority - as the article I posted illustrates.

That's broadly true, but the point of the article is that we are now entering a period in which the makeup of the court reflects an ultra-conservative perspective that has been literally engineered by a political party that does not reflect the majority of the country. The SCOTUS should broadly reflect the greater majority of the country, which is centrist, not the "tails" of the bell curve. This court has been aggressively stacked to reflect the politics of the far right "tail". It's minority power run amuck and is not good for long term future of our democracy.